MYiniMeter - A minimalistic title-bar skin suite

[Yincognito]

Point by point:

1. I can do it - does not mean it should not be already present. I get people want to toggle their skins or hide-unhidden and unhide-hidden skins, but remembering makes it better. (C'mon its just a line/word change)

2. I know implementing it is super-easy. But, its your skin, so, whatever you think would look good - should be done.
As for your slow motion - It is for you, not me (Restarting Rainmeter can do wonders sometimes - Even reinstallin' it ! In this case deleting the plugin and example skin and adding/installing it again should work).

3. I am suggesting scaling, not asking for help in padding the font (You know, you could have said use the settings gui, but noo). But thanks anyway.
"(free change and automatic proportionality)" is also a good thing.

4. I was referring to (b) the progress of the track playing. Its too old-looking for me. As for defining the gradients, I checked it out a long time ago this year and already know how to do so.

Also, I never knew the volume bar was at the bottom. Just noticed .

1 and 4 are fairly easy and for the betterment, so, maybe (fingers-crossed) can/will you implement them?

1. Well, it's just a line/word change for you too, so... but I get what you mean.
2. I see, thanks for letting me know that the behavior is specific to my case.
3. The changes I mentioned are exactly for "scaling" the padding along with the existing "scaling" of text through the font size change (i.e. the automatic proportionality system). It's only the free change that can currently be done via the settings gui, hence the additional details and code.
4. Now who's criticizing other's work, lol? Just joking, but on a serious note, what would be a good looking track progress indicator from your perspective? Can you give an description / example or some link with a picture of it? I did it this way because it doesn't take skin space and doesn't cover the text either, but if you know a better way of doing it, feel free to let me know.

From my POV, all but the Frozen Glass thing might be implemented, as long as they don't take from the advantages of the current system. So, yes, the prospects are looking good.

[ZXCVBOT]

Sorry if I sound like a criticiser, but, the gradient really looks like 2000s. (If you want, use chameleon and use the bg colors?)
Anyways, if you want to look a bit tidy, whilst not messing up your default text and everything and keeping in ceck both light and dark coloured backgrounds, check if you like this:

...
[MT_NowPlaying_Progress]
...

Code: Select all

ProgressGradient=180 | 0,0,0,0 ;0.001 | 0,128,255,75 ;0.02 | 0,128,255,75 ;0.20 | 200,75,128,75 ;0.60 | 255, 45, 100,75 ; ((100/(([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:]=0)?(1):([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:])))*0.5) | 255,0,0,64 ; ((100/(([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:]=0)?(1):([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:])))*1.0)

...

Finally, if you want, give the volume bar a lil-more height - just a tiny bit

Tell me if you like the above.

Now, thanks to you I found 2 bugs (was not looking but saw it), thought I can report here:
1. Battery:

a) MS_RunCommand_BatteriesInfo shows ∆ 0_0: active, discharging at -2147483648​ milliwatts​
when charging - in the tooltip.

b) Also, while copying above, saw similar measures (They had a similar values): MS_Power_BatteryPercent and MS_Rainmeter_BatteryPercent They both give only battery percentage; MS_Rainmeter_BatteryLifetime and MS_Power_BatteryLifetime They both give "Indef." and "Indefinite".

2. Player:

a) The string end gets cropped (by a few pixels), maybe change the width bit more? For me, it was the "]" symbol, you can try it. (I am gonna guess here: It's related to padding isn't it?)

b) Other language symbols appear as ???????
Attachments below show 1: The Player Skin (I was only changing the gradient - did not touch another line). 2. My skin showing symbols.

Screenshot 2023-10-31 162302.png

Screenshot 2023-10-31 162329.png

[Yincognito]

Sorry if I sound like a criticiser, but, the gradient really looks like 2000s. (If you want, use chameleon and use the bg colors?)
Anyways, if you want to look a bit tidy, whilst not messing up your default text and everything and keeping in ceck both light and dark coloured backgrounds, check if you like this:

...
[MT_NowPlaying_Progress]
...

Code: Select all

ProgressGradient=180 | 0,0,0,0 ;0.001 | 0,128,255,75 ;0.02 | 0,128,255,75 ;0.20 | 200,75,128,75 ;0.60 | 255, 45, 100,75 ; ((100/(([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:]=0)?(1):([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:])))*0.5) | 255,0,0,64 ; ((100/(([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:]=0)?(1):([MS_NowPlaying_Progress:])))*1.0)

...

Finally, if you want, give the volume bar a lil-more height - just a tiny bit

Tell me if you like the above.

Now, thanks to you I found 2 bugs (was not looking but saw it), thought I can report here:
1. Battery:

a) MS_RunCommand_BatteriesInfo shows ∆ 0_0: active, discharging at -2147483648​ milliwatts​
when charging - in the tooltip.

b) Also, while copying above, saw similar measures (They had a similar values): MS_Power_BatteryPercent and MS_Rainmeter_BatteryPercent They both give only battery percentage; MS_Rainmeter_BatteryLifetime and MS_Power_BatteryLifetime They both give "Indef." and "Indefinite".

2. Player:

a) The string end gets cropped (by a few pixels), maybe change the width bit more? For me, it was the "]" symbol, you can try it. (I am gonna guess here: It's related to padding isn't it?)

b) Other language symbols appear as ???????
Attachments below show 1: The Player Skin (I was only changing the gradient - did not touch another line). 2. My skin showing symbols.Screenshot 2023-10-31 162302.pngScreenshot 2023-10-31 162329.png

On colors: I think what you're talking about is "accent colors". I won't do that automatically via Chameleon, but I could give the user the choice to set the 3 gradient colors himself. That should fit all tastes in that regard. Yes, I like your gradient, though I can't see how's that's different than mine besides using different colors.

On volume: I think it's a good idea to make the volume line's stroke width proportional with the skin height. That way, I'll continue to keep my 1 pixel for a Tahoma of size 7 text, while others can have it thicker when using a larger font size.

On bugs:
1.
a) yes, I am aware of that bug on v. 1.4.0 and corrected it a while ago for the upcoming version, it's just that it's not released yet:

Battery Discharging.jpg

b) no, those two measures are not duplicates, they have different roles as one is for the main skin and the other for the tooltip skin; indeed, the "Indef." and "Indefinite" will show when the system is connected to a power source (whether it's a laptop with a battery in it or a desktop computer), that's perfectly normal and the expected behavior - after all, you can't tell how much AC power will last till a power shortage and such, hence the "indefinite":

Battery Charging.jpg

2.
a) I don't get the issue you're describing (maybe providing the audio file and the font and font size settings for which that happens could help, you can PM or upload it somewhere if you're worried about posting it here); padding can't really be at fault unless it's set to negative values:

Player Pixels.jpg

b) again, I don't get what you're getting, and it shouldn't happen in the first place considering that the file encoding of nearly all skins in the 1.4.0 version (and all in the upcoming version), including the Player one, is already set to UTF-16 LE BOM in Notepad++ (there are some regex substitutions here and there since the skin falls back to getting the artist and track directly from the file name if getting it from NowPlaying fails due to partially or unsupported players usage, but shouldn't affect it as regex is Unicode compatible):

Player Encoding.jpg

Your skin looks a lot like mine, despite the 2000s look - I'll take it as a compliment and not charge you for copyright infringement (just kidding)...

[ZXCVBOT]

Since all 1s have been explained, I'll roll over to 2s.

2.
a) I don't get the issue you're describing (maybe providing the audio file and the font and font size settings for which that happens could help, you can PM or upload it somewhere if you're worried about posting it here); padding can't really be at fault unless it's set to negative values:
Player Pixels.jpg
b) again, I don't get what you're getting, and it shouldn't happen in the first place considering that the file encoding of nearly all skins in the 1.4.0 version (and all in the upcoming version), including the Player one, is already set to UTF-16 LE BOM in Notepad++ (there are some regex substitutions here and there since the skin falls back to getting the artist and track directly from the file name if getting it from NowPlaying fails due to partially or unsupported players usage, but shouldn't affect it as regex is Unicode compatible):
Player Encoding.jpg

2. a) Okay, I use the default-font, font sizes: 10 (Small), 12 (Medium), 14 (Big). Padding is also set to default. The last ] looks somewhat italicised and top-right edge is cropped fitting into a rectangle. Also, I played an edited-song to recheck, it's not happening again. I did not use any italicized font-style/font. But, the text is getting italicised nonetheless.
Edit 4: Before you tell me, I got it that it is the behaviour of the skin when paused to get italicized. (I did not use the player earlier, hence, the confusion).
Both are taken within a minute.

Screenshot 2023-11-01 150844.png

Screenshot 2023-11-01 150710.png

Edit: Caught it red-handed:

Screenshot 2023-11-01 153246.png

2. b) This is happening again:

Screenshot 2023-11-01 145523.png

Screenshot 2023-11-01 145557.png

Edit 2: Also, notice the o/ō

Edit 3: I guess, this is not a fault of your skin, I tried the Marquee-answer (https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=219088#p219088), this also shows this, it is unicode compatible (UTF16-LE):

Screenshot 2023-11-01 161848.png

I can explain it no more than this.

If you want to test, edit your metadata temporarily:

Title: 魔神城のねむり姫 [Majin-Jō no Nemuri Hime]
Album: 大全集 [Daizenshū]
Artist: 菊池俊輔 [Shunsuke Kikuchi]

If you want the song, I'll PM you.

Dare anyone edit the below part!

DON'T JUDGE! I AM SEARCHING FOR A SONG FOR ALMOST A MONTH! I AM NEITHER JAPANESE NOR DO I UNDERSTAND IT!

Your skin looks a lot like mine, despite the 2000s look - I'll take it as a compliment and not charge you for copyright infringement (just kidding)...

I am keeping the outline! (Although, I will reduce its opacity). I'll add a background too. I would use frosted glass, but, it has a problem (told by the maker himself): it covers entire skin. I can't use it as I have a visualizer and hiding controls. It does not look good. What else is giving off 2000s vibe??

[Yincognito]

Since all 1s have been explained, I'll roll over to 2s.

2. a) Okay, I use the default-font, font sizes: 10 (Small), 12 (Medium), 14 (Big). Padding is also set to default. The last ] looks somewhat italicised and top-right edge is cropped fitting into a rectangle. Also, I played an edited-song to recheck, it's not happening again. I did not use any italicized font-style/font. But, the text is getting italicised nonetheless.
Edit 4: Before you tell me, I got it that it is the behaviour of the skin when paused to get italicized. (I did not use the player earlier, hence, the confusion).
Both are taken within a minute.
Screenshot 2023-11-01 150844.pngScreenshot 2023-11-01 150710.png

Edit: Caught it red-handed:Screenshot 2023-11-01 153246.png

2. b) This is happening again:
Screenshot 2023-11-01 145523.png
Screenshot 2023-11-01 145557.png

Edit 2: Also, notice the o/ō

Edit 3: I guess, this is not a fault of your skin, I tried the Marquee-answer (https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=219088#p219088), this also shows this, it is unicode compatible (UTF16-LE):
Screenshot 2023-11-01 161848.png

I can explain it no more than this.

If you want to test, edit your metadata temporarily:

Title: 魔神城のねむり姫 [Majin-Jō no Nemuri Hime]
Album: 大全集 [Daizenshū]
Artist: 菊池俊輔 [Shunsuke Kikuchi]

If you want the song, I'll PM you.

Dare anyone edit the below part!

DON'T JUDGE! I AM SEARCHING FOR A SONG FOR ALMOST A MONTH! I AM NEITHER JAPANESE NOR DO I UNDERSTAND IT!

I am going to keeping the outline! (Although, I will reduce its opacity). I'll add a background too. I would use frosted glass, but, it has a problem (told by the maker himself): it covers entire skin. I can't use it as I have a visualizer and hiding controls. It does not look good. What else is giving off 2000s vibe??

2.
a) thanks so much for reporting the "bug" and catching it red handed in a screenshot, now the explanation is perfectly clear: it's not the padding nor a technical bug, but rather something I didn't think about when writing the skin; the style of text is changed to italic when paused, but its width is not recalculated when that happens, despite such a change typically adding a few pixels to the regular width (which is actually used), depending on the font and its size; so yes, this omission will be corrected in the next version
b) thanks again for the test parameters, I'll try that and see at which point the wrong characters occur and what can be done about it (hopefully something can be done and it won't require some keyboard / language to be installed in Windows for that)

Well, you took a 2000s vibe skin as an inspiration for yours, that is giving off the latter's vibe, lol. Anyway, it was just a joke, a fun way to write a comeback about it - artistic taste is a private matter and so are the skin designer's choices. We (including you, obviously) don't have to comply to someone else's opinion on that, especially when we share the result for free.

P.S. If you're looking for a song and know its title / artist, discogs.com can help in identifying it. If you don't know its title or artist but you have a sample, you can upload it to aha-music.com and see if it identifies it (there is Shazam too, though English titles are typically preferred). As for downloading it, you can convert a YouTube clip to an .mp3 or you can go underground and look for other sources (obvious ones here not mentioned, to not promote piracy and such). Finally, if your finances permit it and you care enough, you can eventually buy it.

[ZXCVBOT]

Well, you took a 2000s vibe skin as an inspiration for yours, that is giving off the latter's vibe, lol. Anyway, it was just a joke, a fun way to write a comeback about it - artistic taste is a private matter and so are the skin designer's choices. We (including you, obviously) don't have to comply to someone else's opinion on that, especially when we share the result for free.

What skin? I made it from scratch, copied and pasted few things (5-10 at most), looked at examples, manuals and forums. I am a bit saddened by the part some skin looks like mine.

P.S. If you're looking for a song and know its title / artist, discogs.com can help in identifying it. If you don't know its title or artist but you have a sample, you can upload it to aha-music.com and see if it identifies it (there is Shazam too, though English titles are typically preferred). As for downloading it, you can convert a YouTube clip to an .mp3 or you can go underground and look for other sources (obvious ones here not mentioned, to not promote piracy and such). Finally, if your finances permit it and you care enough, you can eventually buy it.

Its just a song I heard - a random song - not on internet; Its just stuck in my head in a loop, so, yeah I can't possibly even pirate it , let alone the fact finding it. Believe me I tried on Google and Shazam. I'll check out aha-music. It's not a matter of finance, I'll just add it to playlist on Youtube/Spotify once I find it. Pff its gotta be free somewhere, right? (I'll get it. Don't worry.)

[Yincognito]

What skin? I made it from scratch, copied and pasted few things (5-10 at most), looked at examples, manuals and forums. I am a bit saddened by the part some skin looks like mine.

Oh, don't be saddened, it's most likely a misunderstanding from my part, now that I looked at it better. I saw the screenshots here, the • (bullet) characters and something that looked like the beginning of a purple progress bar after the 1st • and thought it was visually similar to mine in that regard. I didn't open the image in a new tab or maximize it on my color distorting laptop screen to see that the purple area was probably a part of your wallpaper / skin background, hence the part about the inspiration. Sorry if I've been mistaken, I'm the first one to appreciate a skin made from scratch the way you did. It was a bad joke, after all...

P.S. Not saying it was the case, but you do know that one can start a skin from scratch without even looking at another and still come up with a visually similar result on occasion, right? I mean, I didn't say you copied the code, just that it looked visually similar (at least the screenshots on first look), which is nothing to be saddened of. Lots of things end up looking similarly when coming from different sources or techniques.

[ZXCVBOT]

• (bullet) characters are in the title itself.
It was a bad joke, but no harm done - but I get it, you had nothing to do with it.

This skin is just a revision of MMPI, yep, still working on that. And yeah that is my BG, I was quick to take screenshot when made possible - to make it a bit clear on the issue at hand, so yeah, I did not change my desktop background .

Take Note: Never click rapid-fire on next/previous track - it kills the player and rainmeter in one shot.

[Yincognito]

• (bullet) characters are in the title itself.
It was a bad joke, but no harm done - but I get it, you had nothing to do with it.

This skin is just a revision of MMPI, yep, still working on that. And yeah that is my BG, I was quick to take screenshot when made possible - to make it a bit clear on the issue at hand, so yeah, I did not change my desktop background .

Take Note: Never click rapid-fire on next/previous track - it kills the player and rainmeter in one shot.

Yeah, no worries, you don't have to explain yourself. I should have looked closer at that time to avoid being inaccurate, but I focused on the bug reports and skipped that. The joke would have been fine if it had been accurate in the first place (which was not), but as you said, no harm done.

Hm, thanks for letting me know of the crash. In that regard, I would tend to doubt that it's the skin itself at fault for it (bar some other omission of an edge case), since it might be related to the issue in the other thread about a ping ping marquee (which I'll take a look at after submitting this). Maybe one has to "wait" for the NowPlaying to get its data completely before taking action on track changes...

EDIT: Just realized you were probably talking about your / MMPI skin when mentioning the crash - at first read, I was under the impression that you were talking about mine (which doesn't crash, no matter how quickly I scroll to change tracks back and forth in both the skin or Winamp). Anyhow, the ping pong thing and the issue you described might be related. Since the crash doesn't happen in mine, it must be about the code though.

[ZXCVBOT]

What? I can't understand this: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=219090#p219104

Anyways, I was talking in general... Do not click the rapid-fire button: an actual mouse button that sends a defined-key in rapid-succession, consistently - within few ms; behaviour modifiable - in my case the left-mouse button for my player, and scroll down for yours...

Also, MMPI has a new name: Neo Music Player, I have been modifying its behaviour for quite some time, and seeing that it's not exactly "Minimalistic", I thought it needs a Neo-Name. (See what I did here?)

It (Your Player skin) certainly does hang the player and Rainmeter; Now that you are saying it does not do this in your case, it must be the fault of my low-memory (which is actually not that low, seeing how other things remain totally-unaffected other than aforesaid apps).

Edit: I don't know if it crashes other players or not, but it certainly does AIMP. (This is prevented by providing it a higher memory-cache and priority). So, Rainmeter crashes nonetheless, but Player remains intact after this. So, if I were to point fingers somewhere (other than the keyboard ), it would definitely be skins - both your and mine.