Since all other buttons now have a graphic, can I suggest that PFL buttons have an optional graphic as well? The PFLs do now stand out as the only ‘text’ button on a Player, if you have enabled graphics buttons.
My suggestion for a PFL symbol would be either an ear symbol or a headphones symbol. Examples of both of these are available in the Webdings font on Windows PCs (ear = Alt+0078, headphones = Alt+0178), which you can look at in Character Map.
I’m not saying that either of those are perfect, but a properly designed stylised version of one of them would I think visually convey the sense of what the PFL button does; that, and the bright cyan colour, of course!
This would of course need to be implemented in Cartwall Players and Playlist Players, as well as in the Extra PFL Player.
The stop, pause, play and close icons are “hand-drawn” with polygons, because I didn’t have any suitable bitmaps in reach, and scaling is very easy this way. I thought that “PFL” is a good caption also in graphic mode, as it is almost as short as a single symbol.
Abusing the Symbol font is not favorable either, especially when I start to get serious with the Linux port one day …
Maybe anybody can provide me a set of nice looking bitmaps for all of the buttons? Should be copyright-free, at least 64x64 pixels (will be downscaled automatically) and possibly transparent.
Maybe anybody can provide me a set of nice looking bitmaps for all of the buttons? Should be copyright-free, at least 64x64 pixels (will be downscaled automatically) and possibly transparent.
I am presuming that what you want are simple two-colour black-on white bitmapped images, correct?
Please let me know your ideal format, preferred bitmap size, etc. and I will be happy to oblige! I can certainly make transparent GIFs or PNGs, which are probably the best cross-platform formats unless you or Delphi have a preference?
Please let me know also which actual images you need, over and above PLAY, NEXT, PAUSE, STOP, (and PFL!).
I thought the button sizes in the Playlist Player, Playlist Toolbar, and Cartwall Players were fixed and never change: am I wrong?
You are wrong. The playlist/player/cartplayer buttons automatically adjust their size according to what is set as the ToolbarFont (or ButtonFont, respectively) in layout.ini. Even when the graphic buttons option is set, the font size is taken as a measure.
I see two possible solutions:
Design a set of icons for mAirList’s default button size, and rescale them if someone changes different size. However, I would have to find a component which is able to smooth the downscaled image to avoid pixel artefacts.
Design a number of sets of icons in different standard sizes, for examle 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64, as you suggest. mAirList would then use the largest version which still fits in the specified button boundaries.
Firstly, I don’t know quite why we swapped bodies (see your last post, which is from you and not me!)?
Anyway, what I will do is create the three sizes of icon sets and then send them to you. I will make them 16-colour (4-bit), PNG format, with a transparent background. Unless you prefer/require a different format, in which case please specify?
No doubt you will hate them :), but at least it may inspire a REAL artist out there to create something better! I will e-mail them to you once they are done. They should be with you by the time you return, and probably a few days before that.
I designed them to look good on both bright and dark background colours.