The VideoLAN Forums

Hi.

I have never made a skin before, and I tried to follow the the "VLC Skin Editor - Online Help" but it seems that it is written only for people who knows about these things!
For example, there is no step by step guide on how to give a button a function (but maybe I just dont understand it) There is a lot of talk about what this and that means, but no; "Do this - Do that....."

Is there no guide that in a simple way explains how to do it, for example:
1: Push x
2: Push z
3: Type xx and so on?

Hello Kroll,

the Skin Editor is the simple way to make a skin for the VLC Player. Most parts on it are related to the skins2 dtd and give you a graphical WYSIWYG envoirement. If you add a button in the skin editor, they create a line of code in the xml, that you else had to do with your own hand. Many of the editor functions have a help icon near to them.

Along with the Help you mentioned, there is another Guide that explain a bit: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=39609
You should remember that it is essentially for bug fixing and better workflow to know what you are doing. It does´t help you if the "push x and push y" fails and you don´t know why.

Read a bit of the guide and open the default skin in the editor to see how it works. At least, the Skins2 documentation give examples for every feature.

It won´t help you if i write hints to press x and y to do that, on every error occuring, you´re back to ask whats wrong then

Edit: The mentioned Skins2 documentation works again now: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins2-create.html

Hi spyme.

Thanks for the reply and the links, I only had a quick look so far, but it seems that is what I am looking for =o)

Be honest, three month ago I didn't know about skin editor. But, after I learn step by step from this forum, I found that I could implement with practice. VLC Skin Editor lets you join in, but be warned, it's not an easy process. As well as being creative, you'll need patience! To get going you need to install both the editor and also the Java Runtime Environment. It's far from intuitive so check out the 'extras' above for an online tutorial - it's very necessary!

Before you create your skin you have to make PNG images for it with an external image editor (eg: GIMP), as VLC Skin Editor only allows you to add the various player attributes to the skins, not create the graphics. The step by step tutorial is pretty clear, but to get to a working skin will take quite a lot of work.

It's good to see an attempt at opening up skin design to a broader audience, but this is still far from a user friendly experience.

Enjoy!!

(http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins2-create.html)

Thanks for information !

Hello Kroll,

the Skin Editor is the simple way to make a skin for the VLC Player. Most parts on it are related to the skins2 dtd and give you a graphical WYSIWYG envoirement. If you add a button in the skin editor, they create a line of code in the xml, that you else had to do with your own hand. Many of the editor functions have a help icon near to them.

Along with the Help you mentioned, there is another Guide that explain a bit: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=39609
You should remember that it is essentially for bug fixing and better workflow to know what you are doing. It does´t help you if the "push x and push y" fails and you don´t know why.

Read a bit of the guide and open the default skin in the editor to see how it works. At least, the Skins2 documentation give examples for every feature.

It won´t help you if i write hints to press x and y to do that, on every error occuring, you´re back to ask whats wrong then

Edit: The mentioned Skins2 documentation works again now: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins2-create.html.

Thanks for the guides, but I still find it difficult to create a skin that I want. Like sulli said, it's not very user-friendly.