1001Skins

[garetjax]

yes, I have been doing little things here and there to improve usage of the site. Though, most are seamless. While others are 'invisible' to normal users.

[Victhor]

Well, I won't publish it in the newspaper tomorrow but it's good to know , keeping a changelog wouldn't hurt either, in fact it would make visible some of the invisible..

[garetjax]

I do have a change log...but, keeping it updated is a terribly difficult proposition considering some of my own personal challenges. We will see if that changes over time.

[garetjax]

1001Forums are being written; coming close to a release and will soon be ready for prime time. All existing members, with active accounts on 1001Skins will be able to post directly to our new forums. Though, the forums will not be as robust as say phpbb or vbulletin; I will be adding functionality over the next year to bring the solution as close as I can to them. In addition, to this update the profile pages, member information and etc will be apart of this major update.

Important, this is a custom built solution in c# by me... I will be releasing the forums eventually as a 'stand-alone' script (Open Source ASP.NET C# Forums).

[Victhor]

That's really great news! Can't wait to see it! (I should be working on the theme contest... I don't have that much work but it's getting late hehe)

[Victhor]

PS: I'm looking forward to the "edit project" tool too (we, non-english-speakers re-do a lot of what we write).. Even more than the forum actually, since there are a lot of features to add yet; an HTML formatting for "description field" would be ideal, but for now with a working "edit project" would be enough

[garetjax]

Okay, the forums are pretty much done. They are at present very 'simplistic' but, allow threading. I am building out the admin features currently and will soon have the profile feature completed.

Access is simple at the moment, and posting can be done but, uploads for forum posts are not yet, possible until I build out the forums upload control and etc.

Only registered members have access at all.

More Soon...

[Victhor]

Wow! You're taking the long way all along! You write from scratch a forum engine?? Why? (I tested it and I can't post yet, by upload you only mean "file upload" don't you? Or "upload content"? like texts / posts?)

[garetjax]

Yes, I have been quietly building out a forum engine, profile engine, comment system, multi-language support, skin management, content creation (yes) and a few more secrets.


This includes a site theme engine that is built from bootstrap. Every part of the site is enabled to use bootstrap. This means that every part of the site is/will be enabled for any device display.

[Victhor]

Great to hear it!

In the meantime.. this is something that called my attention before; I'm amazed how much more downloads my skins get in 1001 against other supposedly bigger sites like DeviantArt, see the pic:



Top windows are Aluminum 1.3 and Venus port, against the 1001 screencap on the bg, you can see how even though both skins have been online much longer, 1001skins is already in practically the double of downloads each (even more)... outstanding!

[garetjax]

Generally, it is because deviantart is so much of many differing things it is way to hard to find what your looking for. 1001 has alway been about skins and the primary focus of the site is visibility of skins. Though, I have categories etc for other types of skins by and far there are more skins for winamp than any other site except maybe the original winamp. Even that is contentious.


Also, keyword grouping and density helps with regards to search. 1001!will continue to improve but will never be a deviantart site. My focus is on skins for sites, apps and media players. All provided freely. I will also be soon removing disqus as it's ads are annoying and they detract from the site to much.


In any event slow progression; but solid and continuing!

[Victhor]

Glad to hear you motivated, this world (Winamp, desktop UI, skinning) isn't too rewarding nowadays, so it's important to persevere and be patience (my personal thought is that there are so many awesome things now that good stuff gets mixed and disolved most of the time.. but that doesn't mean is less worthy!)
(I hope I'm being clear in my I-don't-know-how-bad-english)

[Victhor]

Joe, I'm planning on upload in 1001 the rest of my skins that I still haven't uploaded, but I have to prepare a specific preview pic for each since 1001 has its own proportion so it doesn't get weirdly stretched. What do you advice me to do? I wait for you to upload the "new engine" (assuming it contemplates the skins upload system..) or I can upload it now and it will be kept as it is (previews and description text)?

[garetjax]

Upload them the preview you provide is actually scaled to fit the dimensions of each pafe showing a preview of the skin. The submissions engine won't change to much with the exception of editing, deleting skin archives.

The preview of classic skins will be different but that is for a later discussion; or I may be able to use a similar method of preview extraction as the classic. Again, all a future conv. So ya submit them as classic pro ver 2

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by garetjax

Upload them the preview you provide is actually scaled to fit the dimensions of each pafe showing a preview of the skin..

Mmmm.. "scaled" is not actually the word, it's stretched, it doesn't just fit the witdth or height (which would be good), it shrinks (down) to a different proportion to make it fit. If my main preview is too wide or too tall it looks bad on the thumbnails. I took the measures and now I know 387x475px is a good preview size to ensure it's visibility (if it's bigger it will be covered by the Description panel bg and won't look cool on mobile version either).
You can see all I mention with the previews of my last skin (cPro Styler) against one of the first ones (cPro Venus Alpha). It's all in the screenshot above in fact.

Anyway, the thing is I will have to do new preview pics (I kept all my Winamp.com promo pics, but it's a different proportion hehe..), and then I'll upload the rest. I'm thinking about doing something extra to each skin so it's sort of an "exclusive 1001 version"... (probably extra Color themes will do..)

[garetjax]

I mean to say that the original preview is left alone at its original submitted size; then it is scaled according to the displaying page and device that loads it. Features get a bit more room as they have 50% of the page width!

[garetjax]

Just FYI:

I have been working steadily on 1001 with many new services being built that will extend out the features, and bring more closely in-line the vision I have had for this site. While not an exhaustive list of features, and not everything is ready for primetime; I wanted to give an outlook of the future by way of what my updates are and when they are fully implemented what they will change.

While building I am keen to make sure that the site remains accessible which is why things are progressing at a snails pace. I'd rather verify that the site is accessible regardless of the updates that I do. Most of my work is done on a local instance of 1001; and as a result with changes I rollout pieces that are unaffected by 'integration' solutions. Which is why the forums where released.

They are stable and do not impact other areas of the site.

http://www.1001skins.com/forums/topicView.aspx?id=2

[garetjax]

Forums and other areas are undergoing maintenance/dev;
- as I'm sure your aware I have been working on a forum engine; as such I have joined my development efforts with another 'senior' project; and I will migrate my code to this solution and then implement the full solution to 1001.

Features being developed / Nearing Final rollout

1. Q/A Style Discussion Threads
2. Fully Integrated Social Connectivity and Authentication
3. Social Sharing and Integration
4. Site Content Driving through Forum and Forum Content through Site.
5. Profiles ****
6. Lucene Search (for everything) - this has been the single most heaviest undertaking for my development. I didn't want to speak out of turn; nor identify it as a result of how I am doing my implementation. Zip Content Indexing and more...which will provide a huge boost to searching skins submitted to 1001.
7. Skin Editing (Preview Attached)
8. Skin Archival (delist and remove indexes for your own personal cloud type archive).
9. Skin Convert (early stages but soon will be ready for primetime) this will include maki library, and maki updates.

New Feature coming very shortly....

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by garetjax

4. Site Content Driving through Forum..

..

Mhm.. I can't wait to see how this works..

Originally Posted by garetjax

6. Lucene Search (for everything) - this has been the single most heaviest undertaking for my development. I didn't want to speak out of turn; nor identify it as a result of how I am doing my implementation. Zip Content Indexing and more...which will provide a huge boost to searching skins submitted to 1001.

Wow! I'm speechless, I was happy just at first to see you didn't use something like "integrated google search", now I imagine this is would be even better. Can you tell more or less how results will be displayed? (thumbnails? thumbnails + details? List?)

Originally Posted by garetjax

7. Skin Editing (Preview Attached)

Excellent!

Originally Posted by garetjax

8. Skin Archival (delist and remove indexes for your own personal cloud type archive).

Will it work in reverse? I mean, will be enabled to upload an "out of index" skin and later make the final submission? (sort of a draft of the submission)

Originally Posted by garetjax

9. Skin Convert (early stages but soon will be ready for primetime) this will include maki library, and maki updates

!! I can't imagine what is this but it sounds.. more than interesting..

[mike-db]

I tried logging in today. Wish I knew my password. :P

[Victhor]

Joe, are you still planning to remove Disqus? I wasn't too fond about it but now I have an account I'm finding a lot of the sites I visit have it, specially customization sites.. so I'm not sure about how good would be to remove it.. :/

[garetjax]

I have removed it for dev; I am placing disqus on its own page and comments will drive their rather than on each page.


@mike-db - you can retrieve your pass by choosing lost password.

[Victhor]

I'm not exactly following what you mean, you say each page (i.e. Each skin's page) will have its Disquss page but this won't be visible through other pages like it is now?

[garetjax]

There will be no Disqus on each page.
There will be Disqus on it's own page.
Each Skin via the comment button, will drive to the Disqus Page.
Each Skin comment button selected will only show comments related to that skin on the Disqus page.




cPro2 Styler - Skin Comments
Noistromo Comments

[Victhor]

Now we're TALKING!!

[garetjax]

I'm sorry for my delay's in updates...however, I'm still reeling from a some personal issues and a motherboard failure. At present, I am having to re-download my tools that I used to create skins, development IDE's and SQL Management.

I have in addition to the loss of the motherboard; believe I may have lost recent updates to the WMC Build, Latest Skins and etc.

I will get them done...however, at a dramatically reduced rate of publish.

Thank You,

-jax

[Victhor]

[Victhor]

[garetjax]

Heh, You caught me in the act of beta running the new design...

[Victhor]

Well.. it isn't hard if it's still online haha

[garetjax]

I am migrating 1001skins from one host to another; there may be brief outages while this occurs. ~

[garetjax]

All done.

[Victhor]

Cool, I like the new design, although it still has some overlap / sizing issues diminishing the final result.
Still, it looks a lot more professional than the previous owner's version.

Looking foward to edit my skins / submissions, it's a must have feature if the whole site revolves around it..

[garetjax]

just an evil laugh to reply to your request....bwuahahahahahhaa.
(my skins * no guarantees * yet * but, hey your welcome to try.)...bwuahahaha.

[Victhor]

Heh, cool, let me know when it's fully functional (I've just tried and no luck).

[garetjax]

bah, thats the problem with 'cache' and 'multiple' site locations.


Sorry, about that I rolled from dev to production. Should be all good; Keep in mind edits to skins require a new screenshot and file upload.

[Aminifu]

Hi garetjax,

The new 1001Skins site design looks good and assuming it is still being tweaked, I have a couple of comments.

The panel at the top of the home page that repeatedly scrolls thru 5 featured skins has a couple of usability problems, imo.

When the panel is moused over, the forward and reverse controls appear and the one on the left blocks easy access to the author profile button making it difficult to select, since the panel keeps scrolling until 1 of the scroll controls or 1 of the 1st 3 buttons is clicked (which initiates the applicable action). Clicking on the 4th button (number of downloads) does nothing, so it probably should not appear as being click-able. Elsewhere on the home page and on the Skins Gallery page, this button functions as a 'back to the top of page' control (which is helpful, but unexpected).

Clicking 1 of the scroll controls causes the automatic scrolling to stop on the appropriate next or previous skin, but then I have to use the controls to get back to the skin whose author profile I wanted to select (and maneuver around the scroll control to select it). Moving the scroll controls down to the bottom of the panel would be a better location for them.

Once the automatic scrolling is stopped, it doesn't start again until the page is refreshed (either by going to another page and returning or using the web browser's reload page control). I think it would be better if the auto-scrolling stopped when the panel is moused over and restarted when the mouse is moved away.

These issues could be due to the browser I'm using (Pale Moon 64-bit v25.0.2). Is the site best viewed with a particular browser? Anyway, I'm still exploring the site, but everything else I've looked at works great and seems to respond faster than before.

[garetjax]

Updates - 11/3/2014 0136 UTC/GMT

1. Panel - Updated
2. Slider - Updated
3. Changed - PageIndexer
4. Updated Gallery
5. Mouseover - Pause on Hover
6. Download Count - Moved to badge of Name on Gallery
7. HTML Fixes
8. Tightening Controls
9. Reducing Overhead
10. Adding in new profile settings

Site Skin Submission

• Live Preview System to submit Site Skins (Bootstrap themes)
• Marketplace (more on that later)
• Paypal/ePay (See above)

Skin Site Engine

• Unpacks Skin (Winamp 2/5)
• Generates Running Screenshot
• Validates Some Controls (this is a biatch)
• XML for WAL/WMC/CPRO Skins are read and comments are attributed to the skin in LuceneIndex (search)
• RGB Color Profiler is matches to a primary tagging (this is a hybrid convert to sRGB and Analyze color profile of graphic)
• Name Read from ZIP/WSZ/WAL/WMC Skin packs (using xml)

Why? Well, honestly you should only have to submit the file at some point in the future and the site will read all data if it can; and show you the validated information. Based upon its finding you will be able to review the submission or just one-click done.

Skins passing the Skin Site Engine will be auto pushed and eventually be available via cdn.1001skins.com (web-service for polling specific skins ie cdn.1001skins.com/wmc_adoelite.wmc <-- not yet working for public).

[Aminifu]

Thank you for acting on my comments, and so quickly too.

Returning to the selection buttons in the top panel works great. However, their highlighting is barely noticeable (not enough contrast). Maybe a different color would work better.

[garetjax]

yea, that is a standard highlight effect of the bootstrap theme (which is slate); of which I'd like to not have to change unless necessary...at this point they work though, the change is slight there is a difference....