Thread: nGhost Media Center Linux Front-end

i don't mean to offend you, but it is pretty ugly. i can help with the ui design if you want.

Originally Posted by tominated

i don't mean to offend you, but it is pretty ugly. i can help with the ui design if you want.

The GUI design is patterned after the age old saying "less is more". When I look at other front ends all I see is buttons. It seems like developers were asking "how many buttons can you fit on the screen?". I took a different approach: The less options people have (as far as buttons go), the quicker they can navigate through the interface to find what they want. I decided to categorically organize the buttons into something that made sense.

With the advanced graphics engine I'm using, I wanted to take the graphics to a higher level. I wanted to use some of the effects provided by the engine to create for some "eye-candy". Thus the GUI uses nice transparencies, and will incorporate some nice motion effects and transitions between menus. I believe this to be an advancement over many of the current front-ends that are used today.

That said, I'm a coder not an artist. Although I spend a fair amount of time working on how the GUI looks, functionality also needs attention. I don't want to sound like functionality is more important because it's not. To many programs fail or succeed based upon appearance alone. I believe there definitely should be a very defined balance between functionality and the user interface. Functionality is basically useless if it is beyond what people can understand clearly through the interface.

In conclusion, if there are any here that are willing to help in the design of the skin and user interface I will gladly provide documentation for it. Re-skinning nGhost is by design as easy as "paintbrush"... literally. Please visit the nanonymous forum if you are interested.

Thanks for the input
cheers,

-kev

Here is a short video preview of the upcoming nGhost media center beta.

video and notes

NGMC should be up on the server as early as next week.

nGhost Media Center Beta is now ready for download

Download Site

you didn't take into consideration what i told you

if you want i can help with making graphics and stuff

For those interested in helping with the gui design and skinning here is what you'll need:

Gui Image Files

nGhost skinning howto

Thanks

-kev

I just put the newest version of nGhost on the server. If anyone wants to take a look feel free. I also posted a picture of a sample custom skin (that I drew up in a few minutes using paint) as an example of what you can do to skin nghost.

Download | Version Notes | Skinning

nGhost is officially getting a new skin and skinning engine, so check out the website and forum for more details on that.