Skins on Mac?

[Incon]

I am new to Macs, as well as VLC.
The reason for the recent switch to VLC is because I've never really liked the interface, and QT simply sucks, but now I am beginning to like the VLC player itself.
I do apologize as this topic is probably beating a dead horse, but I could not find a resolution after half an hour of searching through these forums.
As far as I can tell, skins cannot be changed in the Mac OS X Snow Leopard. If not, could someone walk me through this process?
Thank you in advance.

[3breadt]

Skins mode does not work on Mac OS X. However there are a number of modified interfaces you can find e.g. on deviantart.com

But I don't know exactly how you apply these, probably you have to replace some files in VLC.app

[reginagirl11]

Thanks man. I am looking for skins on mac too.

[SnidelyW]

There are a few nice black-based skins/themes for the Macintosh version of VLC which currently work with VLC 1.0.5 on Snow Leopard. They may work on older versions of OSX as well, but I am not sure.

One was made by "Fantomasss", and is called "Delicious VideoLan Mod".

The second theme -- called "BlackPearl" -- was made by Hirogen. You can find these two skins -- plus a third theme -- at the following link:

http://www.iconpaper.org/category/mac/skins-vlc/

The above themes are very easy to use. All you have to do is to do a "Show Package Contents" by right-clicking the VLC icon, and then replace a number of images in the "Resources" folder, as well as replace the "MainMenu.nib" file that is located in the "English.lproj" folder, which is a subfolder of the "Resources" folder.

I have just started looking for Snow Leopard compatible VLC themes, so there may be more out there that I am not aware of yet.

If any Macintosh users find any additional OSX-based themes for VLC, please post your links in this thread. Thanks a lot!

[ChemicalGus]

The problem with those "radical redesign" skins that move things around in the UI is that you can't just throw an old Interface Builder Design (like the "MainMenu.nib" that those redesigns use) into a newer version of VLC. The reason being that if a newer version of VLC changed names of or added new UI controls, those controls will be missing from your outdated definition and you will end up with VLC crashing as it tries to access something that isn't defined.

And I agree, THE DEFAULT VLC SKIN LOOKS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL, THE BUTTONS ARE BLURRY AND NOT *AT ALL* UP TO MAC STANDARDS, AND HAVE ESSENTIALLY REMAINED THE SAME FOR AT LEAST 6 YEARS. They weren't good then and they aren't good now. It's also full of bugs like the position searchbar for videos actually going out of bounds and going into the timer area in some cases. The graphics ARE adequate in that they are at least Mac-INSPIRED, I'll give it that, but you could do so much better. Fortunately, some people have:

There are three third party skins at the moment:

• The "A Better VLC by Default" skin (actual name: "VLC is better by default", definitely named by someone not fluent in English, hehe), is a skin which COMPLETELY cleans up all the default graphics, taking it from 1999 to 2010 in looks. It also doesn't go beyond changing graphics files, so it's very unintrusive as you don't need to change the UI DEFINITION files, making it quite resistant to version updates. It works with the latest version of VLC and will continue to work until VLC adds more interface graphics or restructures things. All you have to do is close VLC, then "Show Package Contents" on VLC, go to Contents > Resources, and drop in all the graphics from its "Drag the content in Resources" folder, overwriting the defaults. Next time you start VLC it will look modern and crisp. This is a great choice of a skin EVEN FOR THOSE THAT DON'T LIKE THE DEFAULT VLC BUTTON LAYOUT, since it cleans up the default layout TREMENDOUSLY and makes it very Mac-like, something the default skin lacks!
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/ameeps/09070700b.jpg
  > Official Download/Preview: http://erambert.me/vlc-better-default/
• "Black Pearl". This is an invasive skin which moves the control bar into the main video window. It isn't a very aesthetic or well designed skin, since the author has wasted HUGE amounts of space by making the video controls overly large, making them take up a huge portion of the video area. A very poor design choice. The graphics resources are quite fine, and with a redesign to make the bar 50% thinner and less obstructive, it would be a good skin.
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/09032811b.png
• "Delicious VideoLan Mod". This is another invasive skin which changes the interface design definition to move the control bar into the video window. That is actually something I *AGREE* with in general; that is to say, VLC is quite perplexing in the choice to have a separate control bar (which causes it to go hiding behind other windows on the desktop, and makes it harder to access if for instance it sits BEHIND the video window, it is also overly large for what could easily be a single, thin bar inside the video window). This is also an example of a skin which did the control bar "move" well, in that the resulting bar is very thin, yet still houses ALL the controls. The VLC designers could really take a hint from this guy. Not only that, but the actual design is VERY slick and 2010. Sadly, since it uses an outdated interface design file, it cannot plug into the latest VLC.
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/09052801b.jpg

What we can learn here, are a couple of things:

The VLC core developers that are calling the shots about big changes like this, can, AT THE VERY LEAST, and with NO EFFORT AT ALL, plug the "VLC is better by default" (there's that incorrect, odd name again, hehe) graphics into the CURRENT, UNMODIFIED VLC player and keep it like that forever. It'll update the player to a good graphical standard while keeping the layout. No effort required and it gives a beautiful result.

If they want to go even further and take a hint from the extremely well designed "Delicious VideoLan Mod" and unify the control interface with the video and update to slick, dark, modern graphics, then they can do that as well with a bit more work.

Contacting the original authors for permission is of course required, but they would be flattered to have a design credit in the program, I am sure of that, and they'd give up their original design resource files so that the design can always be updated by the VLC developers in the future, so there is NO issue of "what about doing future updates?", not for a second. It's all easily solvable once you have the original design layers.

The last option is to stick with the awful current design and have every user with taste scrambling to at least do the simple drop-in replacement graphics ("VLC is better..." skin).

And don't act like "nobody cares about the design". People OBVIOUSLY DO. There has cropped up a whole 3rd party, invasive skinning community, and there are several ALTERNATIVE PLAYERS to VLC with the EXPRESS STATED PURPOSE of making "a more beautiful, more mac-like player than VLC"; Movist for example.

Now, we have three different authors that have laid all the groundwork for a redesign; where the "VLC is better..." skin is a drop-in replacement that sharpens up the default graphics tremendously; and the "Delicious VideoLan Mod" is an incredibly beautiful, modern skin. All that work has already been done, and if anyone at VLC cares about design (and they seem to, considering all the skinning activity on supported platforms) then contacting the authors and getting one of those two solutions implemented is not only DOABLE, but the authors would be HONORED to help the team with getting everything integrated into the official build and providing all the source graphics. At the very least there's NO excuse not to implement the sharp "VLC is better..." drop in update of the default graphics. Everything stays the same and simply looks a lot better! It couldn't be less intrusive than that, and would finally make the Mac version of VLC beautiful!

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Take care everyone!

[ChemicalGus]

To contact Damien Erambert, the author of "VLC is better...", visit his site at http://erambert.me/

He is a talented designer, who has also done other unreleased VLC skins, such as this one:
http://erambert.me/vlc-x/

Please do take the time to get his talent onto the VLC team.
Mac users deserve better than a 6+ year old blurry, non-Maclike skin.
Especially since we can't officially skin anything, so you'd want to make the default skin as good as possible.

His "About" page lists ten different ways of contacting him, so it couldn't be easier.


-- G

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

The problem with those "radical redesign" skins that move things around in the UI is that you can't just throw an old Interface Builder Design (like the "MainMenu.nib" that those redesigns use) into a newer version of VLC. The reason being that if a newer version of VLC changed names of or added new UI controls, those controls will be missing from your outdated definition and you will end up with VLC crashing as it tries to access something that isn't defined.

And I agree, THE DEFAULT VLC SKIN LOOKS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL, THE BUTTONS ARE BLURRY AND NOT *AT ALL* UP TO MAC STANDARDS, AND HAVE ESSENTIALLY REMAINED THE SAME FOR AT LEAST 6 YEARS. They weren't good then and they aren't good now. It's also full of bugs like the position searchbar for videos actually going out of bounds and going into the timer area in some cases. The graphics ARE adequate in that they are at least Mac-INSPIRED, I'll give it that, but you could do so much better. Fortunately, some people have:

There are three third party skins at the moment:

• The "A Better VLC by Default" skin (actual name: "VLC is better by default", definitely named by someone not fluent in English, hehe), is a skin which COMPLETELY cleans up all the default graphics, taking it from 1999 to 2010 in looks. It also doesn't go beyond changing graphics files, so it's very unintrusive as you don't need to change the UI DEFINITION files, making it quite resistant to version updates. It works with the latest version of VLC and will continue to work until VLC adds more interface graphics or restructures things. All you have to do is close VLC, then "Show Package Contents" on VLC, go to Contents > Resources, and drop in all the graphics from its "Drag the content in Resources" folder, overwriting the defaults. Next time you start VLC it will look modern and crisp. This is a great choice of a skin EVEN FOR THOSE THAT DON'T LIKE THE DEFAULT VLC BUTTON LAYOUT, since it cleans up the default layout TREMENDOUSLY and makes it very Mac-like, something the default skin lacks!
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/ameeps/09070700b.jpg
  > Official Download/Preview: http://erambert.me/vlc-better-default/
• "Black Pearl". This is an invasive skin which moves the control bar into the main video window. It isn't a very aesthetic or well designed skin, since the author has wasted HUGE amounts of space by making the video controls overly large, making them take up a huge portion of the video area. A very poor design choice. The graphics resources are quite fine, and with a redesign to make the bar 50% thinner and less obstructive, it would be a good skin.
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/09032811b.png
• "Delicious VideoLan Mod". This is another invasive skin which changes the interface design definition to move the control bar into the video window. That is actually something I *AGREE* with in general; that is to say, VLC is quite perplexing in the choice to have a separate control bar (which causes it to go hiding behind other windows on the desktop, and makes it harder to access if for instance it sits BEHIND the video window, it is also overly large for what could easily be a single, thin bar inside the video window). This is also an example of a skin which did the control bar "move" well, in that the resulting bar is very thin, yet still houses ALL the controls. The VLC designers could really take a hint from this guy. Not only that, but the actual design is VERY slick and 2010. Sadly, since it uses an outdated interface design file, it cannot plug into the latest VLC.
  > Preview: http://www.iconpaper.org/preview/09052801b.jpg

What we can learn here, are a couple of things:

The VLC core developers that are calling the shots about big changes like this, can, AT THE VERY LEAST, and with NO EFFORT AT ALL, plug the "VLC is better by default" (there's that incorrect, odd name again, hehe) graphics into the CURRENT, UNMODIFIED VLC player and keep it like that forever. It'll update the player to a good graphical standard while keeping the layout. No effort required and it gives a beautiful result.

If they want to go even further and take a hint from the extremely well designed "Delicious VideoLan Mod" and unify the control interface with the video and update to slick, dark, modern graphics, then they can do that as well with a bit more work.

Contacting the original authors for permission is of course required, but they would be flattered to have a design credit in the program, I am sure of that, and they'd give up their original design resource files so that the design can always be updated by the VLC developers in the future, so there is NO issue of "what about doing future updates?", not for a second. It's all easily solvable once you have the original design layers.

The last option is to stick with the awful current design and have every user with taste scrambling to at least do the simple drop-in replacement graphics ("VLC is better..." skin).

And don't act like "nobody cares about the design". People OBVIOUSLY DO. There has cropped up a whole 3rd party, invasive skinning community, and there are several ALTERNATIVE PLAYERS to VLC with the EXPRESS STATED PURPOSE of making "a more beautiful, more mac-like player than VLC"; Movist for example.

Now, we have three different authors that have laid all the groundwork for a redesign; where the "VLC is better..." skin is a drop-in replacement that sharpens up the default graphics tremendously; and the "Delicious VideoLan Mod" is an incredibly beautiful, modern skin. All that work has already been done, and if anyone at VLC cares about design (and they seem to, considering all the skinning activity on supported platforms) then contacting the authors and getting one of those two solutions implemented is not only DOABLE, but the authors would be HONORED to help the team with getting everything integrated into the official build and providing all the source graphics. At the very least there's NO excuse not to implement the sharp "VLC is better..." drop in update of the default graphics. Everything stays the same and simply looks a lot better! It couldn't be less intrusive than that, and would finally make the Mac version of VLC beautiful!

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Take care everyone!

Do you understand ANYTHING about open source?
You have improvements? Send them to VLC development mailing lists and stop complaining. Until you do that, nothing will happen.

[ChemicalGus]

Do you understand ANYTHING about open source?
You have improvements? Send them to VLC development mailing lists and stop complaining. Until you do that, nothing will happen.

You're a funny man. I've posted HERE to alert some of you to the existence of these improved graphical resources, and how to get in touch with the guy if you want to improve the OS X version. That's a decision that I would think was up to the core developers since it's not a bug fix or new feature, it's an invasive change of graphics that were once decided upon and I doubt it's something that just anyone can submit as a revision to the version control system.

If I posted the same tip on the mailinglist, it would be seen by more people, sure. You have a point there.

Lastly, haven't you learnt not to quote large posts when you reply? It's standard internet forum etiquette. It's enough to type: "Name: The reply".

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Do you understand ANYTHING about open source?
You have improvements? Send them to VLC development mailing lists and stop complaining. Until you do that, nothing will happen.

You're a funny man. I've posted HERE to alert some of you to the existence of these improved graphical resources, and how to get in touch with the guy if you want to improve the OS X version. That's a decision that I would think was up to the core developers since it's not a bug fix or new feature, it's an invasive change of graphics that were once decided upon and I doubt it's something that just anyone can submit as a revision to the version control system.

This is exactly the opposite that should happen.

People that have the copyright on the design should submit patches.

[3breadt]

@ChemicalGus: Lunettes (new GUI for OS X VLC)

[ChemicalGus]

Do you understand ANYTHING about open source?
You have improvements? Send them to VLC development mailing lists and stop complaining. Until you do that, nothing will happen.

You're a funny man. I've posted HERE to alert some of you to the existence of these improved graphical resources, and how to get in touch with the guy if you want to improve the OS X version. That's a decision that I would think was up to the core developers since it's not a bug fix or new feature, it's an invasive change of graphics that were once decided upon and I doubt it's something that just anyone can submit as a revision to the version control system.

This is exactly the opposite that should happen.

People that have the copyright on the design should submit patches.

Yes, that is how Open Source works, I've even submitted a patch or two to VLC years ago so I know that. But I still don't see anything terrible about what I did; what I did was outline ways to say "okay, if you want to update the graphics, these guys have done the work already and can be contacted to ask for permission to use their graphics, which they would be more than happy to share as it'd be a great honor for them". Anyone with a bit of say on the core project, such as yourself, could then check out the various redesigns, settle for one and contact the guy to see if he's interested in merging his work with VLC and providing the design as a PSD for future updates. I was helping, even though I did put things strongly. But I did that because I'm really not that good at sugar coated talk. The current design is ugly. That's also why aLtgLasS's reply made me happy:

@ChemicalGus: Lunettes (new GUI for OS X VLC)

As soon as I saw that page it put a smile on my face:

Code: Select all

VLC for Mac death is "greatly exaggerated" / What is Lunettes? VLC for Mac is being maintained. However the old Cocoa graphical interface of VLC, is not being maintained at this time. The reason is that we are in the process of rewriting a new interface for VLC. Its codename is Lunettes. Why a rewrite? This is something really easy to see. VLC for Mac is just not "Mac" enough.

It is EXCELLENT that work has already begun on redesigning the UI to make it more Mac-like. While I *did* rant in my initial post in this thread, I actually put forth the SAME points that are now cited as the reasons for "Lunettes" existing (I was not aware of the Lunettes sub-project at all until now). The page also says that: "VLC for Mac must attract designers". Wouldn't THAT then be an excellent reason to take your pick of the three designers I listed and just contact the best one to see if they want to contribute? Safest bet is to go with the french guy with the "VLC is better..." re-skin since it's a simple drop-in graphics refresh that makes VLC look GREAT and requires NO work.

I can see two objections to my way of bringing this to your attention: 1) Why didn't you just post this to the mailing list so it's seen by more people? (VALID point and I agree with that). 2) Why don't you contact him yourself and THEN approach VLC? (Two reasons: Firstly, because I'm not part of the VLC team apart from my small patch contribution years ago, and I am already SWAMPED with other work, and secondly, I could have spent days talking to that guy, gotten his permission, approached the VLC mailing list, and gotten the reply "we're not interested". It's better if you take the decision and THEN contact the guy.)

[Chaodam]

To contact Damien Erambert, the author of "VLC is better...", visit his site at http://erambert.me/

He is a talented designer, who has also done other unreleased VLC skins, such as this one:
http://erambert.me/vlc-x/

Please do take the time to get his talent onto the VLC team.
Mac users deserve better than a 6+ year old blurry, non-Maclike skin.
Especially since we can't officially skin anything, so you'd want to make the default skin as good as possible.

His "About" page lists ten different ways of contacting him, so it couldn't be easier.


-- G

"VLC X" isn't a skin, I mean, it isn't live at all, it's just a mockup I designed some times ago and I *really* wish that could be possible to have a VLC just like this (even if this mockup needs huge improvement).
And I don't really think that Lunettes will make this possible, the only way to achieve the QuickTimeX-like effect would be to permit the UI to override the video, and it's look that isn't possible (for the moment ?).


PS : Yeah, it's Damien Erambert, just using an oooollld account

EDIT : Oh no wait, it looks like the "Black" style from Lunettes 1.0 ß8 can do that ( http://cl.ly/2YS9 ), so nevermind, there's a hope, I'll probably wait for a stable/final release of Lunettes to digg about the theme making for it