manicwave Surf the wave

Skinning the eyeTuner

My teaser screenshots of eyeTuner garnered a lot of interest. A kind soul offered to put together some graphics to soup up the UI. One thing leads to another and I've embarked on full skins support for eyeTuner.

I spent some time looking around for a custom control set for the .NET Compact Framework. A few commercial offerings, but nothing approach the richness needed for eyeTuner.

I'm now in the process of writing a skins library for .NETCF applications. It is tailored to the specific needs of eyeTuner. I started by writing a brief specification of the control types and file format for laying out the UI. In addition to supporting buttons, stateful buttons, sliders and text, I've added control types to represent the library tree and image boxes (to support album art). The control set works around the notion of panels, so the now playing panel is just a collection of controls as is the main panel. Users will be able to construct screens with the most useful controls assembled on a single panel if desired.

I've got the basic Window/Panel/Control hierarchy worked out. Standard Buttons are done. Currently working on the Vertical Slider. The file format is undergoing revision as I flesh this out and the loader evolves with it.

Time is the bottleneck now. With an average of one hour a day to work on this, progress is slower than anyone would like. I suspect that the skins support will be done in a week or three. I'll reach out and try to get Eric to build the default graphic set while I wire the skins back into eyeTuner.

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