Disclaimer

Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

About the new skin recently introduced.

Recently the Viewer saw a massive skin overhaul (twice in a row to be exact) and so far the latest skin version seems to be fine for most people i asked inworld, my question here is, what do you think about it? Is it good? Does it look clean and readable? Did i promise too much with it? How does it compare to other skins?

I'll give you some pictures of my previous skins (in correct chronological order) as comparison in terms of my own Viewer but i would also like to know how good it compares to other skins from other Viewers or even separate skins like Hitomi's mods for Linden Viewers.

Note that most skins also came with huge modifications of the UI to fit the new skin, i'll want feedback of the skin itself not the actual skin modifications, please keep your feedback focused on the overall look, readability and so on.

1. Azure Skin


2. Darkness Skin


3. Darkness Red


3. Darkness Blue


4. Cloud Skin


5. Planned Black Dragon Skin


6. Actual Black Dragon Skin


7. Artistic Skin


8. Steam Skin



Niran.

17 comments:

  1. wait there's an option to change skin? where? :O

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    Replies
    1. Code wise there is one but it is not used in the UI. There are no other skins you could switch to anyway. As mentioned in the post, every skin came with major changes across the UI, keeping more than one skin at any given time is a huge time consuming act that will drag down development speed, stability, functionality and most importantly skin quality. This is why there aren't any more skins to select from other than the one i deliver the Viewer with by default.

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  2. I really like the current steam skin. It really looks professional and premium. The blues used are excellent. I'd be sad to see it go. My favourite, however, was the actual black dragon skin. I really liked that color, and the hexagon pattern on things. It was overall consistent, and really looked like good UI design. The artistic one was really interesting, but it looked too experimental, especially in the top bar. I also disliked the brown color used in buttons and fonts. I also loved the transparency in darkness, but it didn't look as polished. I'd want to stay in steam though, it's really good.

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    Replies
    1. Pretty much my thoughts. If i had to choose i would choose as follows:

      Planned BD < Cloud < Azure < Darkness < Darkness Red < Actual BD < Darkness Blue < Artistic < Steam

      They all had their ups and downs, every new skin introduced a variety of new things that made it special in its very own way, thus all of them were good to some degree but some were less fleshed out than others with Steam being the most fleshed out in such a short time. It took me a very long time to make Darkness what it was at the end (Darkness Blue with freely colorable floaters and UI colors basically making it Darkness [insert color here])

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  3. When are you going to fix glow. Since it doesn't seem to be that noticable with graphics set up to everything and iterations set to 5.

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    Replies
    1. Glow is intentionally toned down. This is not a bug. I will try making it a bit stronger without breaking everything else.

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    2. New:
      https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/5-fZHOVZUt5lqQNlUH3R-R1BXBQXLFhYo56iERJCHVs=s1920
      Old
      https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/SPEtjox4iiB7DZjhaI7VF5umSQDYyXztINROjO-HRz0=s1920

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  4. I really like the Planned BD skin best, it's functional, minimalistic and still artistic.

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    Replies
    1. But sadly introduced some serious issues like toolbars not working... but yea it was a nice idea but would have needed major overhaul of many many things.

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  5. I got only one problem.. The main chat is not always visible, like it was in the old viewers and on firestorm now, it's hidden into the chat windows, which makes things a little more confusing for me... I tend to keep many windows open, such is the way for anyone who builds stuff or code. This is so far the only reason I couldn't fully switch to Black Dragon.
    By the way I reaally like the planned BD skin. Fancy hexagons everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Select the local chat tab, click the undock/separate button (diagonal arrow). Local chat is now permanently visible as chat history (extra floater).

      Additionally you can shrink it to a chatbar only, it will show chat as popups like on pictures of previous updates.

      You can also disable the autohiding on focus loss/deselect aswell as auto deselect/autohide when pressing enter (sending chat) in Preferences - Chat.

      If you want a V1 like chat just undock the local chat tab and shrink it to a chatbar, move it into the left lower corner and everything else is already set like it was in V1 (autohide on focus loss and autohide on enter)

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    2. Example:
      https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-78-Yxkf1nCo/VI_L1L-8vtI/AAAAAAAAPaI/ir09Lb3JGj4/s1920/Snapshot_2667.png

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    3. Oh nice, I didn't know that. Thanks, Niran!

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  6. if i could pick th eone for my skin i wiould go with the darkenss skin it has that niran's viewer skin to it even i am unablie to use niran's viewer any more due to my gpu and ram :(

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  7. For me (yes my honest opinion) "Artistic Skin" is the best and it suits the name "Black Dragon" itself. It is the most non-obstructive skin for SL viewer. If I want to use or pop out something, I just use shortcut key.

    2nd would be "Planned Black Dragon skin" , but it still looks somewhat out of flow especially the top right section compared to the top left one. (yin yang anyone? haha).

    The current "steam skin" just looks like any other viewer for me. nothing special. (yes still my honest opinion)

    Questions:
    1. The video memory slider:- I saw it can go up to 2048MB, but does it really works? I see no difference on MSI afterburner, max will be around 7++ishMB memory usage with one or 2 cards. (yes I got SLI scaling working in fullscreen by tinkering with nvinspector, not just the SLI bits, but some other stuff. but SLI still won't play nice with some deferred lighting/shadows combination)
    -- my gfx-> 2 x msi gtx680 lightning first batch with unlock V, before msi and nvidia voltage controversy came up. :P --

    2. any easy way to hide top favorite panel without tinkering with the skin .xml files?

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    Replies
    1. 1. It should work, never tested it. Check the texture console, its more precise since it shows what SL really does.

      2. No, these features are coming in upcoming updates, still.

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