Basix Collection

[DavidRGreen]

The Basix Collection is my last 4 skins which have been sharing assets, brought together in a single package to eliminate duplicates.



although this time, the screen shot has included a portion of my desktop wallpaper. And this is how I use it, stacked in this order, the storage monitor has to be at the bottom as it is the only one that potentially has dynamic height.

Basix Collection_1.0.rmskin

Not sure at this stage what can be added to this suite, maybe weather? That could be useful. That will be challenging…

[balala]

Interesting and well looking skins, however I have a few comments:

• Maybe (but just maybe!) you should have to add a layout with the four skins of this package. I say maybe, because this is not always a good approach, many users don't like when a layout is loaded for instance after an installation and the previously loaded skins are unloaded. At least partially, I understand them. So, this is an idea which has to be taken into account, but don't know if it has to be implemented.
• What instead should definitely taken into account is to modify the basix\Intro\Intro.ini skin in way to not have the skin names onto an image, but to create them with some String meters. This would allow you to add clicks onto the skin, to load / unload the appropriate skin whenever you click its name on this Intro skin. For instance if the user would click Clock onto Intro, the appropriate skin (basix\RingClock\RingClock.ini) should be loaded / unloaded, based on its previous state.
• This being a package (or a suite) with more skins, I suggest you to include all resources into the @Resources folder (has been discussed previously I think). For instance don't store the resources used by the RingClock.ini skin into the basix\RingClock\Images folder, but into a new created folder under @Resources. And you should have to do this even if those images / resources are used only by one single skin of the suite. Believe me, it is much more "natural", good or whatever...

Not sure at this stage what can be added to this suite, maybe weather? That could be useful. That will be challenging…

Not sure it worth. Lately there a lot of problems with weather skins, I also thinking to renounce to my Weather skin from my Mirage suite. I had a fully functional such skin, then at the beginning of the year, wxdata has been deprecated. Finally I rewrote my skin, but after a month (or so), weather.com has made a modification so now I have to rewrite my code again. And I suspect there will be more such problems on the upcoming period.
So although I don't say it's impossible, it definitely is not, but I simply don't think it worth...

[jsmorley]

Not sure it worth. Lately there a lot of problems with weather skins, I also thinking to renounce to my Weather skin from my Mirage suite. I had a fully functional such skin, then at the beginning of the year, wxdata has been deprecated. Finally I rewrote my skin, but after a month (or so), weather.com has made a modification so now I have to rewrite my code again. And I suspect there will be more such problems on the upcoming period.
So although I don't say it's impossible, it definitely is not, but I simply don't think it worth...

Quitter...

[DavidRGreen]

include all resources into the @Resources folder

There wasn't a single doubt in my mind that a statement along the lines of this would appear. And while that may make sense to some, for me though (and maybe for others), it flies in the face of convention. @Resources makes sense for suite wide (reused) assets. Single use assets kept with the relevant section. Not unlike how we maintained websites back in the late 90's.

As for Layout, well, far be it for me to impose rules or suggestions about how to arrange meters. I just put in a suggestion, "Here's how I lay them out, and why". I also put them on the far top right edge of my screen. Does layout include screen co-ordinates? What if my positioning is off-screen for the next person.

For instance if the user would click Clock onto Intro, the appropriate skin (basix\RingClock\RingClock.ini) should be loaded / unloaded

Except under certain circumstances, I would have thought any Introductory screen would be single use, and that generally the skin manager would be used to fetch other skins from a specific suite. If, for instance, I had a suite of clocks, then I might switch to an Intro if it acted like a menu to select a different clock face.

Quitter...

I think he has a point.
However…

modification so now I have to rewrite my code again

That is an obvious problem. But I would have thought that XML/JSON data feeds would be more stable than using Regex to scrape a page. That would seem to be the best line of attack.
Of course, I could be wrong too… This is all new to me.