Gnome and Midnight skins

[mejogid]

I've been working on two skins, one based on the HUD & Firefox 3 OS X styles and once designed to integrate with the Gnome desktop environment.   I've set up a page dealing with the two themes at http://mejogid.ohallwebservices.com/site/index.php?q=node/56, and I welcome feedback either here or on that site (including its own small discussion forums which I'm afraid I'm likely to check more frequently).

Previews:

[kakaroto]

hi, they look really nice and neat! congrats!

p.s. the dark theme might need a dark combobox at the bottom and menu backgrounds..

[luismanson]

WOW, its a really nice theme! its my new default, and i never used a skin before!!!

here are some tweaks you may need to do:



chat windows: the mail/nick text seems to be in the middle of an horizontal line....

main window: i have a plugin to check my gmail account...(i dont know if its realated) but the hotmail text is white "on mouse over"

search contact plugin: white background, same problem with de log dropdown box

bye! thanks for this nice skin

[mejogid]

kakarote - I'm not entirely sure how to skin either of those.  I started work on the Gnome theme with a different build of aMSN that had themeable menus, but unfortunately can't remember how I went about building that.  If yours are currently themed to look Clearlooksish, I guess it's still working but can't really implement that in Midnight until I can get them working on my PC.  The combobox is, it seems, unskinable in aMSN 0.97.

luismanson:
Chat Window - Judging form the aliased fonts I'm guessing you're using older Tcl/Tk builds?  The theme looks significantly better with newer builds but that may be difficult on distros that haven't packaged it yet.  Regardless, settings the font size to something from 8 to 10 should fix that - I was forced to use the background for the contact status to polish of the tabs, since there's no other themeable element below them.

Main Window - Yup, it's a bit ugly but the hotmail status text is completely hardcoded.  I'm hoping there'll be more control over it in a future release.

Search Contact Plugin - I'll have to seek this one out, but I'm skeptical as to whether it'll be themeable.  Do you know of any themes which colour to lift code from?

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Edit: It looks like Nuitari's changes may make this possible in aMSN 0.98.

[luismanson]

i have TCL/Tk 8.5 with antialiasing, i have a wide monitor, and MAYBE my DPI are bad.... i dont know the right setting 22 inch monitor 1680x1050 88x88DPI

[mejogid]

i have TCL/Tk 8.5 with antialiasing, i have a wide monitor, and MAYBE my DPI are bad.... i dont know the right setting 22 inch monitor 1680x1050 88x88DPI

Right, I guess it's just the jpeg compression that gave that impression.  In that case, go to the Appearance tab in preferences, click the change font button and try choosing a smaller font.

[dyzzi]

absolutely EPIC looking dark skin sir, given the correct resolution it looks absolutely gorgeous... and i thought i could never fall in love with the group borders... wow is all i have to say.

i have such poor artistic skills, i submit to this skin, except that i like my version of the chat window better lol.. can't all be perfect.

kudos to you for all the effort sir

[EDIT] alright so in the end i feel that i REALLY enjoy the Gnome chat window and i REALLY enjoy the Midnight contact list.... but i hate the counterparts to each of them on their own.... geez.. thats a real bummer. LOL

[mejogid]

absolutely EPIC looking dark skin sir, given the correct resolution it looks absolutely gorgeous... and i thought i could never fall in love with the group borders... wow is all i have to say.

i have such poor artistic skills, i submit to this skin, except that i like my version of the chat window better lol.. can't all be perfect.

kudos to you for all the effort sir

[EDIT] alright so in the end i feel that i REALLY enjoy the Gnome chat window and i REALLY enjoy the Midnight contact list.... but i hate the counterparts to each of them on their own.... geez.. thats a real bummer. LOL

Any suggestions for improvement?  I'm planning to redo the tabs/status bar on the chat window, and am trying to figure out why aMSN aligns the buttons in such an odd way on linux builds.  Regardless, I'm pretty busy at the moment so it could be a while before there's an update.

[billiob]

I really like your skins. They are great!
You should try to work on them against amsn svn.

[Fabioamd87]

awesome skin!

[dyzzi]

well out of sheer curiosity i combined a bit of your skin with my own just for my own personal enjoyment... i hope you don't mind  

i found that everything about the regular midnight is done right except for the chat window... (although i do enjoy a black personal status bg at the top of my contact list, but thats just me)

i could just as easily use your version of the contact list as the hybrid version i put together.

my only trouble is that the gnome chat window has better, more colorful icons that stand out better and just overall feel less stale than midnights current scheme.

the tab bar in midnight would do very well to mimic that of the gnome tab bar as that is perhaps the best set of tabs i've seen yet.  out of curiosity i decided to play around with the gnome tabs in gimp and i found that if you invert color, and mess around with the contrast a bit as well as setting the white tones in the gradient to the same color as the above color bar, you get a kind of neon glow as if you turned on a translucent black light over the top of the tab itself... looks pretty neat!

if you want to see what i mean for yourself pm me for some screens, i don't want to post them here... i'd rather you give me the say so on all of that... after all it's your project

but yeah man props.. lol

[luismanson]

luismanson:
Chat Window - Judging form the aliased fonts I'm guessing you're using older Tcl/Tk builds?  The theme looks significantly better with newer builds but that may be difficult on distros that haven't packaged it yet.  Regardless, settings the font size to something from 8 to 10 should fix that

my fonts was in 10, now is 8, i still have the same problem... any ideas?


By luismanson

[mejogid]

luismanson:
Chat Window - Judging form the aliased fonts I'm guessing you're using older Tcl/Tk builds?  The theme looks significantly better with newer builds but that may be difficult on distros that haven't packaged it yet.  Regardless, settings the font size to something from 8 to 10 should fix that

my fonts was in 10, now is 8, i still have the same problem... any ideas?


By luismanson

I'm not entirely sure why that's happening, but I'm probably going to change the tabs to something a bit simpler and more... working in the next version.  

billiob - cheers, I figured it's probably more practical to get them working well with a stable version first, but once everything's to my liking as far as possible I'll have a crack on the SVN version.

Fabioamd87 - thanks a lot.

[luismanson]

... im on SVN BTW, and i dont use tabs if that helps you

[mejogid]

Sorry for neglecting this thread, I've been busy but am now working on what is pretty much a rewrite of midnight considering yours criticism and suggestions which should be a huge improvement.  If there are any more suggestions, feel free to post them here - I'll be keeping an eye on the post.