Rainmeter skin designs

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So what do you think ?

I think it's cool
1
100%
It's alright
0
No votes
Not sure
0
No votes
I don't like either
0
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Total votes: 1

Cov
Posts: 396
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2008 2:37 am
Location: London
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Rainmeter skin designs

Post by Cov » Thu May 12, 2011 10:45 pm

Hi, I'm currently working on some concepts and wonder whether you can help me.
To make it clear, I'm very keen in creating designs but I'm not able to program that yet.

After having read through an avalanche of information of how to modify skins, I don't see myself being able to learn developing a skin by myself anytime soon. It will take time.
Because I'm a litte impatient, I have decided to just show you my concepts in progress and see what you think.

Please do make any suggestions you may have to improve the design and if anyone is even willing to help doing the hard stuff (programming), that'd be absolutely awesome.
Although there are a massive amount of different skins existing, I have not found the skin of my dreams yet. That's why I thought it would be ever so cool, to get it tailored to my very personal taste.


Concept 1 - Pocket Peak


Image


Image


I find the idea of the uniformity of so many bars appealing.
Still missing are the actual values within each of the bars. User should be able to select color, refresh rate and transparency.


Concept 2 - Spin


Image


I have been inspired for this skin by an existing clock called Reloj.

I would like the clock to show 24h instead 12h, and if possible, I like the change of numbers to be animated the way, as if wheels spinning downwards to increase and upwards to decrease the numbers.
Not sure yet whether multiple numbers should be separated into single digits or not.

I'm not really happy with location nor size of the labels for both concepts. On concepts 1 (Pocket Peak) I'd like to put the labels together with the values (percentages, sizes or degrees) within the bars. Problem might be to make it easy to read.

On concept 2 (Spin) I'm still not sure yet, but I could imagine the labels to be placed in smaller letters, aligned on either side of the gauges. But acyually I like Pocket Peak more than Spin.


Here is the first re-design of Pocket Peak:

Image

The spaces between the bars have been decreased considerably. Do you think it looks too tight now?
The actual values have been placed infront of the bars rather than within.
I have the feeling it looks too crowded, or should I just remove the frames around the values again ?
Was thinking of dividing the bars into smaller bits like below - not really sure what looks better.


While I was at it, I have drawn five more bars for the most common folders.
  • Documents
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Music
  • Programs

Image

The user can assign any amount of disc space to each bar and by clicking one, the assigned folder opens up.


Here is a rather unusual (useless?) idea of mine to express date & time with bars:


Image

s = 60 seconds in a minute
m = 60 minutes in an hour
h = 24 hours in a day
d = 30 / 31 days in a month
w = 52 weeks in a year
m = 12 months in a year

Example:
  • May (5th months of the year),
  • 19th week of the year (out of 52),
  • the 11th day of the month,
  • the 10th hour of the day (out of 24),
  • the 45th minute of an hour
  • and last but not least: 8 seconds.
Image

It might look better when up side down.

If all bars have the same length, unfortunately there are some ugly gaps at the end.
I could have bars with different lengths and without gaps, but it looks even more crap.

I think I'll scratch that idea again.


And here another re-design:

● Each bar is capable now of displaying 100 segments.
● The frames around the values have been removed for more clarity.
● The color of the frames around the bars have changed from white to gray.
● A gap of one bar has been placed between CPU info, System info, Network info and Sound info.


Image

... and with black background ...

Image

I think I will offer to change the appearance of the bars in the options menu.
One set of bars with segments and another one in one piece.

Please make any remarks or suggestion you can think of.

Thank you

Image

Cov
Posts: 396
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2008 2:37 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Rainmeter skin designs

Post by Cov » Sat May 14, 2011 1:48 am

Hi, I have just re-designed the concept of Pocket Peak a little more:

Image


The peaks on the left hand side are segmented into 100 bits per bar.
The peaks on the right hand side are without any segments.

Hard to decide which one to choose.
If possible, I'd like to have the option of selecting either of them as variants.


Here are the sizes matching to the picture above:
------------------------------------------------

First box: 16 px (h) x 47 px (w)
Gap between the first and the second row: 5 px
Second box same size like first box
Gap between second row and third row of bars: 7 px
Gap between the (horizontal) lines: 7 px
Frame for each bar: 16 px (h) x 502 px (w)
Bar: 12 px (h) x 498 px
Each segment of a bar: 12 px (h) x 3 px (w)

Image


The modules
-------------

CPU _ average load of all cores. Full bar is equivalent to 100% load.

Fan _ rpm (revolutions per minute) of the CPU Fan. The full bar could be either equivalent to 1000 rpm (10 rpm per segment) or else 100% of the max speed. The first option is for a CPU fan that does not exceed 1000 rpm. The second option is for CPU fans that have higher rpm (i.e. 2400).
It would be nice if a second and maybe a third bar could be placed underneath (optional) for the system fan(s). Can we get the readings from the BIOS?

C1 - C4 _ the load of each core will be displayed on a separate bar (0 to 100%).

T1 - T4 _ the temperatures of each core will be displayed on a separate bar (xx to 100 degrees). Readings from Everest.

RAM _ will show the used RAM on the left hand side and the free RAM on the right hand side.

Swap _ (or pagefile) I'm not 100% sure whether this is useful or not. I need to find out about why the display of swap file is necessary.

C to D _ the bar will show the used (left hand side) and the free space (right hand side) of each HDD.
It would be great, if a user could add another bar for each HDD, SSD or ODD he has.

TC to TD _ the temperatures for each drive from xx - 100 Degrees. Readings from Everest.

GPU _ the temperature for the graphics processing unit. Readings from Everest.

DL + UL _ download and upload speed. The user would have to input the maximum DL and UL speed of his connection first.

Vol _ this should enable the user to change the system volume by simply clicking on any part of the bar.

R + L _ these bars should display the level meter of any sound going through the system. I'm really not sure how to get this working.


Miscellaneous
-------------

The following features are not absolutely necessary, but would make the skin more desireable:

1. The user can change the colors of each bar separately
2. Or even better: the user can assign max 3 colors to each bar.
Example: Blue from 0 to 50 percent / degrees, orange from 51 to 75 percent / degrees and red from 76 to 100 percent / degrees.

3. The user can change the font
4. The user can change opacity / transparency

Alright, just need to do the coding now.

Image

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