I'm not totally insane.  Despite the copious amounts of cough medicine I consume.

I'm kinda sensing santini is a bit of a dullard, preferring the boring ones.

Here's the same set with a copper effect on the panels.

We captured a few different backgrounds to see what kind of style people prefered.
It's actually pretty easy to make a range of backgrounds and produce more than one screenset.

Just 5 more screens to go.......

Well It's MachSteelBlue from me.....

I know it's getting a bit late in the night Beano.. Are you suffering from sleep depravation ?


I cannot belive you posted our pink theme..... You promised not too

It is nice to see you guys having fun!

Damn you.  Santini.

MachSteelBlue was my ace card to redeem myself for the humiliation of posting all the girly ones.

That is actually my favourite and will make into a complete screenset.

Oh well.  I have one more "colourfull" one in the bag.  So here comes Mach-Chrome-Gold

Well I'm out screens I can post with some hope of pulling back some credability......

Please Beano..... Think of the reputation.....


Well thats about it from the Laurel & Hardy boys. After creating these screens I now appreciate the work that you do  on the screens you produce Benny. Our screens have been created over a few night MSN sessions and splitting the work up makes it so much easier. Hopefully we have your attention now Art and maybe you could do a couple of fixes /  requests for us on Screen4. It's either that or you never know what creation Beano will produce.... Trust me I've seen some of them...... Mach Pink is only a taster of what he can create......


Benny, You have more experience than anyone with Screen 4. How about a thread where we can list any issues or future proposals.. i.e how on earth do you move a really small LED around. It seems impossible to get it to move when really small.

Goodnight....

Proof that these are actual working screens.  Here's a shot of our graphic loaded into screen4.

It's been fun and given us something to do late at night.  But now we have to get back to it, and make the rest of the set.
It's actually easier working with someone else.  It keeps the motivation going.

Hopfully it won't be too long before we have a set you can download to try.

Mr.Bean,

Would you send me the .set of any of these(machsteelblue preferred) in its current state? I'd like to try moving some buttons around whilst keeping the general look/feel...

I assume you're using Realdraw as well?

Thank you,

Ballendo

ballendo*@*yahoo.com (remove *)

Proof that these are actual working screens.  Here's a shot of our graphic loaded into screen4.

It's been fun and given us something to do late at night.  But now we have to get back to it, and make the rest of the set.
It's actually easier working with someone else.  It keeps the motivation going.

Hopfully it won't be too long before we have a set you can download to try.

SantiniUK,

I've just looked back at this one because it seems you've lost something in the derivatives just posted...

While they look great and i LOVE the "sheetmetal panel" effect, please have another look at this one against them--side by side as it were--and see if you agree that the arty of the new has outweighed the clarity of the old...

Are you using RealDraw?

Could you please send me the .set file of this unfinished "Mach Blue" screen? (Or just the realdraw file, if that's what it is...) I'd like to pursue fleshing this one out.
 
As for your questions below: keep in mind that a screeen using indiviudual items is more configurable forthe end user than one which has all the buttons in place on a background bitmap. For instance, with this screen I can change around some buttons IN S4 without much trouble--to suit my "ideal" arrangement within YOUR major groups. But in the bitmap background version I have to edit the bitmap, reassign the functionality of the hotspots, etc. MUCH harder IMO. 

What S4 bugs and limitations? Please list them for Art/ John/ Brian/ Us ?

Thank you,

Ballendo

But more dissapointingly I think our method  creating the screen is wrong. The buttons are all individual graphics.
Is this the new way to go ?

I have discovered some of the bugs and limitations of screen4 on the way and hope to see these fixed soon. i.e LED states not correct on loading.

I call this screen Mach Blue..... Because...... It's Blue........

Forgot to say it was work in progress but is now about to be abandoned......

Well it looks like Mr Bean & Myself got a bit carried away last night. Nothing better than those 4am sessions.... 

Ballendo, I guess that screensets are every much a personal thing. I look back at our original post and hope that the later screens have not gone too 'Arty' as this is certainly not our intension. Apart from the brushed panel look not a lot else changed.

The original screen used more than 50 seperate graphics and on my main PC which is 3Ghz + I didn't see any change in screen updates. On some lower spec machines I have I did find them not as responsive although I would say it was acceptable.

I'm afraid the single bitmap background and hotspots makes it so easier to develop. In our case we split the work with myself generating the button graphics and the screen 4 settings. Mr Bean did the hard work doing the background panels with cutouts for the button icons and generated a lot of themes. It worked well, MSN allowed us to chat the design through and the new MSN 8 beta has a superb feature of folder sharing allowing us to syncronise our work effortlessly. (The MSN 8 Beta is a closed one but I do have some spare invites if anyone would like one. It has some good new features).

Our aim for the 1st screen we would release is 1024*768 and would follow the original screen that is bundled with Mach 3. Nothing radical at this stage to rock the boat. Hopefully we are on track to do this.

Unfortunately as you say the method for screen producing now does not really lend itself to tweaks or changes when released.

We are not using RealDraw. The unfinished .set for Mach Blue was abandoned. I don't think I have a copy of it either but I will take a look.

If you post some ideas or layouts that you would like we could always try and adopt a screen for you.

Cheers

Hey guys,

Pretty cool screens, some a little more colorful than others.
I have something to suggest, something I also mentioned to Benny in his screen post.

As a test for how the GUI actually works with a user try squinting your eyes while pulling a little farther away
from the monitor. Ask yourself if there is enough clearity and contrast between the data and the underlying graphics.

The reason neutral gray works so well and is found in so many GUI's is that ANY color is pretty visable against it without
conflicting (either in contrast or in compliment). A compliment conflict example is to put red text over green backgound.
when looking at it the two colors combined makes a kind of neutral mud color.

I'm not suggesting that you're breaking these rules, just thought you may consider the affect of certain colors and their effect on the user.