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Old 08-17-2007, 12:13 AM   #1
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Working on a new skin, easy to read, easy to use

I am working on a simple easy to read, easy to use skin, here's what I have so far.
Beta release coming very soon! (Hopefully before the end of October)

UPDATE - I finished the bulk of the work on this skin, but it will be posted in a new thread due to enough changes in the design. This will be considered version 0, and the actual release will be version 1.0. I just have to make sure the folder is complete and the fonts are included... that will be up tonight (10/22/07)

One thing that I want to update is the screens with the big buttons (the main screen or audio screens) have a larger radius for the corners, whereas the other buttons are more square. I am going to make the big buttons more squared to match the theme better.

Also, as requested, this will be redone in .png format (eventually) so that different backgrounds can be used. (although I think that just complicates the look and negates the theory of having an easy to read skin.)

hAv!c CONCEPT:


Main Menu working:



Common Menu: (accessible from any sub-skin, only the middle two columns of buttons compose the menu.)


Audio Player: (moved the text in a little bit, 5 pixels was right.)


Audio Browser:


GPS: (This shows what skins that need a little more screen space for the embedded application will look like; video player, launch, etc.)


Weather: (I really like this one for some reason)


Skin Browser:


Application Launcher:


There will be only a few different images, making the total impact on your hard drive very small, less than a few MB, and the user can also customize where they want certain buttons, text color, etc fairly easily without photoshop. All the text and icons are actually just labels, and a few of them are a custom font I made that will be released with the skin. If you don't install the font I made, the labels show up wierd. If anyone has any ideas for other symbols to use, please post a sketch here, and I will try and implement it in the font so that you can place it anywhere on my skin.

My thinking with this skin is to make something that is very simple, yet does all the things I need it to. I still wanted something that looked pretty nice too though. All the master skinners out there are making some really nice skins, and I appreciate the inspiration they've given me, and other skinners here. I just wanted something solid that works every time, with not really any extra set up.

I am calling it hAv!c because my other skins were based on the Pioneer Avic nav systems for inspiration, and this skin uses some elements from those skins, but no longer anything from the pioneer avic systems, so it's a h(acked)avic skin in semi-1337 speek.

If there's a certain feature that you want implemented, send me a link to an example skin and I can try to get it going for you.

Also, this is fairly customizable, if you want play and pause to be in a different spot, then open the skin in the editor and reassign the button. The images don't have any labels or icons encoded to them.

Enjoy!
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Last edited by monkeyracer; 10-22-2007 at 07:02 PM.
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Old 08-17-2007, 01:42 AM   #2
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looks pretty good to me

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Old 08-17-2007, 03:50 AM   #3
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Clean. Very back to basics type skin. Post some more screenshots.
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Old 08-17-2007, 09:42 AM   #4
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I think i might dedicate the bottom field to just the track title, rather than having current time and current track time. I think I'd just remove those altogether. (I have a clock on my Deck, and it's not important to me to know what part of the song it's on.)

added main menu screen in action.
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:46 AM   #5
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Love it, looks very functional, which is always good while driving. Save your work as PNG so any background can be used. I am a big fan of large easy to use buttons and interface. Don't like to hunt for buttons at all.
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Old 08-18-2007, 10:30 AM   #6
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there's not really any space for a background, the main screen has the album art and/or visualizer, and the buttons. No room for logos or anything. I'm doing it the old school way, buttons are hard coded to the image...

I wanted this to be as easy to use as possible, something that I could easily train my hand to, so that I can perform functions without even looking away from the road.
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Old 08-18-2007, 11:51 AM   #7
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Quote: Originally Posted by monkeyracer View Post
I wanted this to be as easy to use as possible, something that I could easily train my hand to, so that I can perform functions without even looking away from the road.

I completely agree with this. My skin is designed the same way and I can operate it without looking. Looking forward to a release to try out.
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Old 08-18-2007, 12:56 PM   #8
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ya, work is going slowly on this, new schedule at work doesn't leave much free time for fun, for now at least.
It shouldn't be hard to get the rest of the screens together though...
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:03 PM   #9
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You will be surprised how fast it can all come together on a simple skin once you have the main menu code done.

Just a little input, I would move the VOL + - buttons to one horizontal bar and the stop / mute to another. Seems it would flow better that way.
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:04 PM   #10
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I know you will model it for your purpose but i think it's more natural to go left/right on the volume instead of up/down..then make one big button for mute..
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:06 PM   #11
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lol looks like treetop and I are on the same page here.
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:21 PM   #12
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i was talking to a coworker of mine about optimizing this, and I think I am going to make a font with the symbols that we use (releasable soon) and then the end user can just move the labels around. this will also make it minimal on the processor since there will be one or two back images, and then just labels for everything.
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Planning.......[---------X-] 95%
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Fabrication...[---------X-] 90%
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:24 PM   #13
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Hotness monkeyracer, If you can develop a skin with only 2 jpegs for all menus that would be so fast. Just have labels switch for different menus. Love it.
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:29 PM   #14
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tried that with the avic z2v2 skin, just never kept going through with it since the buttons weren't that easy to touch...

I got that skin to less than 1mb of disk space.

It would definitely help those with older or slower processors (or those of us with desktops and want to keep it cool...)
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Old 08-18-2007, 01:40 PM   #15
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what about a name?
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Planning.......[---------X-] 95%
Parts...........[---------X-] 90%
Fabrication...[---------X-] 90%
RR Skin........[---------X-] 95%
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