Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

[Yuki]

I put this in 'Wish List' first, but it belongs here:

It's a nice player. And some of the skins are awesome. But NONE of the skins are resizeable. (Seems to go with skin "territory" and a lot of players for some unknown reason.)

Listen up guys . . .

People are migrating to flat panels. About half are already there, and the other half will follow soon. Flat panels are ONLY getting bigger, and they run at fixed native resolutions that are ONLY getting HIGHER as panel size increases.

I have a 19" Samsung, and of course it's native at 1280 x 1024. You do appreciate, I hope, how impossibly SMALL these skins look on my premium display??? A person would go blind rather quickly trying to see the controls, or the song titles, or album titles, or anything else related to these skins on my screen.

Nobody is going to put up with it, I guarantee you. Real Player's default skin is resizeable. WMP's is too, and even other skins for it are, too, I think.

Note: I don't give a flying crap how much incrementally better your player is than theirs, and nobody else does either, if we can't see the *&^$#* thing, clearly, and easily.

You folks are missing the forest for the trees.

In two or three years, CRTs are going to be in the Smithsonian for the most part. Sure, I can change the res on my *incredible* flat panel if I like, and look at the world through fuzz. Not gonna happen. The world is going to be running mostly at 1280 x 1024 OR HIGHER (1600 x 1200) real soon. These beautiful (and they are) skins you guys are cranking out are NEVER going to see the light of day. One look, and boom -- back to Real Player or WMP. Bye bye.

Has anyone here got a clue? You either design the skin engines to be forms that can be sized, or you might as well hang it up: you're finished in that case. Nobody is gonna be interested in this work down the road a bit.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but somebody seems to not be getting it.

Yuki

[xoas]

[donny]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

"DIE" this is not a nice thing to say ... now is it ?
not all of the world is going on huge monitors, and even so, I know a lot of people who work in 800*640 on their 15" and 17" monitors...

the point of dap isn't in the skins and the graphics, but in the feel and the methods of work (although the skins add to it ), so dAP is not going to die....

and there are skins with huge displays, and for one Stereo Ga Ga has a huge display that is not on top of all other windows... also many of the new skins are geting bigger... You can also try QueMaster if you want big diplay...

no, real dap users won't give it up for the GUI

[Archon]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

A wise Protoss Templar once said : "Quel she'tar kenno alfe' torreda'ss Xel'Naga ^Spoon^ Yaro eco archoonned", which would loosely translate to "Those who say DIE in the genreal direction of the Creator (Spoon) shall be obliterated".
Henceforth I am the closest one (in the planetary sence) ....
you have been WARNED!

[Yuki]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

"DIE" this is not a nice thing to say ... now is it ?
not all of the world is going on huge monitors, and even so, I know a lot of people who work in 800*640 on their 15" and 17" monitors...

You don't know that many, and FPDs are the inexorable wave of the future. And they run at native resolutions that are high, and getting higher. As I say, CRTs are going to be in the Smithsonian before too long -- the price differential is shrinking, and CRTs are pretty much doomed. Anyone who doesn't see this is either stubborn or silly.

And yes, people will simply walk away from players that cannot be adjusted, and that are designed for tiny monitors or low screen res. They are simply gonna take a hike.

Sure, some die hards will hang around, but it will be a very small club, and the little club will have no chance to influence standards or anything else related to the game. This player will never grow. Maybe Spoon likes that. Personally, I'm sad. But that doesn't mean I haven't written the absolute truth, which is: Flat Panels are here, they are taking over, and they look rather bad at other than non-native resolutions, which are high and getting higher. And a non-resizeable form designed for school kids who run Windows 95 @ 800 x 600 is not gonna cut it anymore. Stick your heads in the sand if you like. :(

Yuki

[Spoons]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

i think the only merit your post has is that it's a great idea to be able to resize skins. i am pretty sure this was on Spoons "to do list" but it wasn't high priority.

crt's being fased out? hmmmm i don't think so. crt's are still the most favourable choice for serious gamers. i guess when flat screens can cope with gaming software then things might change a little bit more. but flat screens have a long way to go before they are second nature.

i still have my sony 15 inch crt and i use a huge 14.1 TFT laptop screen .

i'm not saying that it won't happen one day becasue it probably will. but not any time soon that's for sure.

[Spoons]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

And yes, people will simply walk away from players that cannot be adjusted, and that are designed for tiny monitors or low screen res. They are simply gonna take a hike.

tell this to the 3 million people who downloaded dap in the last 12 months.

[xoas]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

Yuki-
1. Skins for dAP are designed through the dAP skin designer program. Anyone who wants to is welcome to use it. It does not have any built-in option for resizing. If you are proposing something like WinAmp's feature to double-size the skin, I was of the opinion, when I was a WinAmp user, that this seemed to be a kind of wasted feature since the double-sized skins often (in my limited experience) seemed to suffer from the "jaggies". I realize that this would not necessarily be a problem for a higher resolution display. In any case, this is not currently a feature of the default skin and it is not an automatic feature built into the Skin Designer program. The Skin Designer program is Spoon's product and you have made Spoon aware, I'm sure, of your suggestion.

2. The skin designer program is remarkably flexible and certainly allows skin designers to built for any resolution they choose. Some skins (The Studio, Quake 3, Stereo GaGa, and dAP HK AMP) feature large screen displays (Quake 3 has three levels of large screen display-up to 1152, Stereo GaGa has 2 levels of large display, the others are large displays at 800 by 640). The point here is that the Skin Designer program allows designers the freedom to build to different sizes.

3. While there are several skins I would not recommend for your screen resolution, there are many that work quite qell at that resolution (and I say this as a man of very late middle age who has to wear bi-focals). I have 33 skins in my collection at this time and I would say at least a dozen work very well at 1280 resolution. Among these skins are Beyond, Craze (aka Curt) -The Studio, Curt's Golden Wonder, dBlade, Narler's Metalastic, Nature, Pedeko's Blue Car, Pioneer, Quake 3, Tasmanian Devil, Matrix Revisited, and Wodeko's Big Tower. Some other skins that work well (at least in part) at 1280 resolution are: 3D Wood (check out the Extreme Track Information screen which has a control panel to go with it), the BestRip CD skins (Alyssa and Red), Dual Pro (you can adjust the colors of the print on the display which can improve legibility), dAP HK Amp (the large display, which has a nice set of controls built in), Palmtop Zire, Pedeko's Pioneer, Stereo GaGa (the large and "huge" displays), and XMPlay.

4. Unless you have had much experience with dAP you might not appreciate the many touches that designers have introduced to dAP over the past few years. I feel confident that dAP skins will continue to expand to serve a diverse range of interests and system resources. Please keep in mind, however, that many of our users are working with smaller displays and fewer system resources than you have at your disposal. While you may not have as many dAP options as you would like, it is not like you are without some good options (see #3 above).

5. If you would like to be helpful toward the general goal of getting more quality skins for 1280 screen resolution here's some things you can do: design some skins, become a skin reviewer or post some commentary on skin features you appreciate and to suggest some possible paths for future skin designs, or make positive suggestions for the skin designer program or offer to help improve the skin designer program if you have the skills to do so. Please understand, if you say that you are too busy to spend your time designing a skin, that nobody who designs skins for dAP does this as other than a hobby the time for engaging in which has to be carved from their personal lives as well.

6. It is not like people are making money off of this or that Spoon is trying to get enough notice to sell out dAP to Microsoft, or that we want to achieve global digital audio supremacy or some such. If you don't like the options you have with dAP and you don't want to help it along in the direction more suitable to your needs, then by all means take a hike, if that is what you want to do. Come back and check us out later. Really, we are a collectivity of individuals pursuing parts of a larger goal. Implying that we are out of touch with trends, that we will be (figuratively speaking) dead, that people will stop using dAP is not likely to persuade us even if all those things were to come to pass. But if you want to ask for help with your issue ("I have a problem with skin size on my preferred screen resolution, how about a resizable skin engine or at least some skins that work well at higher screen resolutions?") I do think you would find a much more receptive response.

Bill Mikkelsen

[Yuki]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

Bill, I'm sure you're right in suggesting I came on a bit strong. It's just very frustrating to see what is obviously a *fantastic* skin that has virtually invisible controls, or title information, because of this problem.

To those who do not admit that flat panels are here to stay, and that they are knocking CRTs off the desktop faster than ever, I suggest they read some manufacturing and sales data. Yeah, some gamers will keep their CRTs, but not for long. Nobody is going to *make* CRTs much longer, because the flat panels are knocking the retail prices of CRTs down to the point where the economics of manufacturing them are beginning to bite. And pixel refresh for panels is mostly down to 16 ms now, except on very cheap panels, and falling fast. Bascially, 16 ms is getting like 192 kbps VBR: 99 percent of the folks are not going to know the difference anyway.

I'm in my mid-50s, and CRTs killed my eyes. I finally dumped them, and now I am up against forms that cannot be resized in some cases. Really aggravating.

I don't think doubling the form is the answer. Allowing it to be resized to *any* dimension, a la Real or WMP is the answer.

I hope someone will appreciate this. I'm not a programmer or I'd work on it myself.

Sorry,

Yuki

[Yuki]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

tell this to the 3 million people who downloaded dap in the last 12 months.

I appreciate that. :blush: However, downloaded does not necessarily equal use. :smile2: It's a huge world out there, and free downloads are a very, very popular thing, and love of music is a worldwide human bond.

It's a good program, for sure. I just hope somebody will make it more flexible for folks with high res flat panels. Seriously, ya need a magnifier to see the controls in some cases.

Same thing with Real Player. For some reason, the skins are cannot be resized -- although the default skin can.

Yuki

[Spoons]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

I just hope somebody will make it more flexible for folks with high res flat panels. Seriously, ya need a magnifier to see the controls in some cases.

well thats all you had to say instead of mouthing off ranting and raving like you did in your first post.

you made it sound like this is a novelty around here without doing any research into the history of dap/dmc and the skin engine.

this project has been ongoing for at least 4 years that i know of. and it's a wonder we even bothered replying to your posts. but hey you have the benefit of the doubt that you were just either ignorant or just plain ill mannered by showing a lack of respect to at least the developer who has possibly spent thousands of hours in coding/developing just to get it where it is now.

please show a little respect next time, and explain what it is you would like without the rest of your crap.

and yes it's good flat display is here to say and great it is becoming more affordable. but hey that's another off topic discussion.

[Yuki]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

well thats all you had to say ...

That's about it. Sorry, but I've never been the most diplomatic lady on the block. But, I stand by most of what I said. 1) FPDs are the wave of the future. 2) They run at high and higher native resolutions that look terrible at non-native resolutions. 3) Applications (or skin toolkits) that use forms that are aimed at low-res CRTs and which are not resizeable are basically doomed to obscurity.

Next year? The year after? Later? I don't know, but I suspect not that far away. The price of *really* fine and quite large FPDs is plummeting. CRTs that die are not being replaced with CRTs any longer in a large majority of cases. Check it out; the marketing research and sales data are easily searchable. CRTs are headed for Mac-dom. They'll always be around, but you won't exactly stumble over them.

That means we need resizeable skins. :smile2: Soon, I hope.

Yuki

[Paddy]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

Even with a large CRT screen you can get high resolutions :D I've got a top of the range 19" CRT and I run that at 1600*1200 (it can go higher, but then the text is too small to read!!) and a mate has got a 22" CRT display. On mine I use my dBlade skin without any problems. I designed it to be small and compact so it can sit comfortably in the bottom of the screen without obscurring your other windows, though I do admit the controls are a bit small, but I find it ok But I did add the large OSD screen that can be selected to display all track info in a large clear window, especially useful when away from the PC screen.

[drspy00]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

I have a solution to this problem. Get a smaller screen, lol. Or simply lower your screen resolution, if you want to get the biggest and best technology of display devices you can't expect everyone to be able to afford these. If they become very popular in the future im sure the developer will add features for larger displays but lets face it dbpoweramp are an excellent group of programs.

[dig412]

Re: Resizeable forms . . . or DIE -- no joke

In Japan TFT's may be taking over, but the CRT still reigns supreme in the UK. Only higher end PCs come with TFT's, and not many use 1600 x 1200 res anyway. If you are that bothered, make a skin that works for you.