rohan
In the zone
Lesson no. 4.1, 5,6 also updated now. Have a look at the fourth post in this thread.
Epilogue:Hi! aLL
First of all hi! to you all. Today is the first lesson of our skinning tutorial. So, the faculty as of now is of me. Let's begin. From 21st of this month, this tutorial will be avilable through RSS feeds also. Please give me your comments through e-mail on what do you think about this. The previous post was locked because it did not actually start teaching or know what. But this is completely true.
Lesson 1: Introduction to Skinning
Skins are basically of two types: Bitmap Replacement skins and Dynamic Layout skins. Bitmap Replacement skins are nothing but skins that have simple image files that simply replace other images of an application meanin' that the play button has same size, same position, same dynamics, but just a different look. Ex. Winamp Classic Skins
Dynamic Replacement skins, on the other hand are very dynamic and give alot of power into the skinners hand. You can do anything {almost} with such skinning abilities. You can place any item anywhere, you can animate the play button, you can animate it when the mouse rolls over and all this power is given to you by MAKI, the scripting language for Winamp. This will be one of the last lessons becuase you just cannot script until most of the skin is in place. You'll soon know why...
The tools you will be needing:
1.Image Editing: Adobe Photoshop OR Jasc PaintShop Pro, GIMP or any software you prefer but make sure it can export your images in .PNG format.
2.Text Editing: EditPlus2 is recommended although, Notepad is anexcellent tool in such a case.
The formats you need to know:
1. .PNG: Portable Network Graphics, it is an excellent skinning formatr because of it's low size and it's support for multi-depth transperencies.
2. .XML: All of our coding will be with XML only. Not to fear, please it's simple and you'll enjoy it.
3. .m: A .m file is an uncompiled MAKI file. It can be read by any text editor because it is a text file. You'll learn more later.
4. .MAKI: .MAKI is a compiled MAKI file that can be used by Winamp for implementing your MAKI scripts. {I'm not involving you into MAKI know as it is a bit pro-type. We'll get to it as it needs a lot of attention}
Lesson 2: Undertanding the heirarchy of XML
Let's see a basic XML code:
Let's have a simple look at that code. The xml code gives us a suggestion that it is an XML script used or generated at a library. So, library here is the parent. It is the parent because it contains other tags also. Then comes shelves. We have two sheleves and they are the children nodes. They both in our case are siblings, because they belong to the same parent. Now, comes the books. In context to the library the are grand-children, but in the yare also the children of 'shelves'. In case of the two books mentioned they are the children of 'shelf 1' and so on.
Remember a child cannot have more than one parent but a parent can have more than one child.
Now, let's study the 'book' tag more carefully. It says: <book id="name" subtitle="sub-title" author="author" RentLimit="3" cost="Rs. 230" cvar="230"/>
Now, here we can see that the tag 'book' has an id that states it's name, a sub-title, author and so on which are attributes of the tag 'book'. These attributes make the two book tags different. Notice that you close the tag here only by a '/>' ending rather than a '>' ending like in other tags. The <library> tag as such completes when all the items inside library are covered.
The whole contents of shelves, books come under library and the books come under shelves, but the books are not parents and henve do not have anything under them.
That's all for XML now. Don't be mislead that its difficult. If you find, parent, child a bit confusing, leave it. We don't need it. It was just for making you understand the basic structure of XML.
So, the next lesson we will learn about making our first window and put some images in it. We will also learn how to name your skin, the author of it, his/her e-mail, website and the rest such that Winamp understands it. So, stay tuned!!!
For live XML feeds: *www.geocities.com/tritium_studios/tutXML.xml
Copyright Rohan Prabhu
Epilogue:Hi! aLL
First of all hi! to you all. Today is the first lesson of our skinning tutorial. So, the faculty as of now is of me. Let's begin. From 21st of this month, this tutorial will be avilable through RSS feeds also. Please give me your comments through e-mail on what do you think about this. The previous post was locked because it did not actually start teaching or know what. But this is completely true.
Lesson 1: Introduction to Skinning
Skins are basically of two types: Bitmap Replacement skins and Dynamic Layout skins. Bitmap Replacement skins are nothing but skins that have simple image files that simply replace other images of an application meanin' that the play button has same size, same position, same dynamics, but just a different look. Ex. Winamp Classic Skins
Dynamic Replacement skins, on the other hand are very dynamic and give alot of power into the skinners hand. You can do anything {almost} with such skinning abilities. You can place any item anywhere, you can animate the play button, you can animate it when the mouse rolls over and all this power is given to you by MAKI, the scripting language for Winamp. This will be one of the last lessons becuase you just cannot script until most of the skin is in place. You'll soon know why...
The tools you will be needing:
1.Image Editing: Adobe Photoshop OR Jasc PaintShop Pro, GIMP or any software you prefer but make sure it can export your images in .PNG format.
2.Text Editing: EditPlus2 is recommended although, Notepad is anexcellent tool in such a case.
The formats you need to know:
1. .PNG: Portable Network Graphics, it is an excellent skinning formatr because of it's low size and it's support for multi-depth transperencies.
2. .XML: All of our coding will be with XML only. Not to fear, please it's simple and you'll enjoy it.
3. .m: A .m file is an uncompiled MAKI file. It can be read by any text editor because it is a text file. You'll learn more later.
4. .MAKI: .MAKI is a compiled MAKI file that can be used by Winamp for implementing your MAKI scripts. {I'm not involving you into MAKI know as it is a bit pro-type. We'll get to it as it needs a lot of attention}
Lesson 2: Undertanding the heirarchy of XML
Let's see a basic XML code:
<library>
<shelf id="1">
<book id="Harry Potter" subtitle="Prisoner of Azkaban" author="J.K Rowling" RentLimit="3" cost="Rs. 230" cvar="230"/>
<book id="Seven Seas" subtitle="" author="S.U Person" RentLimit="none" cost="Rs. 100" cvar="100"/>
</shelf>
<shelf id="2">
------------------------
------------------------
</shelf>
</library>
Let's have a simple look at that code. The xml code gives us a suggestion that it is an XML script used or generated at a library. So, library here is the parent. It is the parent because it contains other tags also. Then comes shelves. We have two sheleves and they are the children nodes. They both in our case are siblings, because they belong to the same parent. Now, comes the books. In context to the library the are grand-children, but in the yare also the children of 'shelves'. In case of the two books mentioned they are the children of 'shelf 1' and so on.
Remember a child cannot have more than one parent but a parent can have more than one child.
Now, let's study the 'book' tag more carefully. It says: <book id="name" subtitle="sub-title" author="author" RentLimit="3" cost="Rs. 230" cvar="230"/>
Now, here we can see that the tag 'book' has an id that states it's name, a sub-title, author and so on which are attributes of the tag 'book'. These attributes make the two book tags different. Notice that you close the tag here only by a '/>' ending rather than a '>' ending like in other tags. The <library> tag as such completes when all the items inside library are covered.
The whole contents of shelves, books come under library and the books come under shelves, but the books are not parents and henve do not have anything under them.
That's all for XML now. Don't be mislead that its difficult. If you find, parent, child a bit confusing, leave it. We don't need it. It was just for making you understand the basic structure of XML.
So, the next lesson we will learn about making our first window and put some images in it. We will also learn how to name your skin, the author of it, his/her e-mail, website and the rest such that Winamp understands it. So, stay tuned!!!
For live XML feeds: *www.geocities.com/tritium_studios/tutXML.xml
Copyright Rohan Prabhu