Question to skin designers

2024-02-22 21:54:09

How do you test your skins versus different devices/resolutions?

the example/default skins come with 4 screen dimensions.
As it is unlikely that anyone has 4 devices with these screen ratios, or any other pixel arrangement, lying around, i would like to know how you deal with the pletora of screen sizes out there?
make mockups in gimp?
ignore it and just make just one optimized for your device?

Re: Question to skin designers

Reply #1 – 2024-02-23 16:35:20

This is the process I use.

1. Design your concept (on paper , with gimp or any other software)

2. Use Square graph paper or Excel and add the elements of your concept to the paper.
I went with 50px grid squares.
Start with 2250x4000 portrait
Calculate coordinates and dimensions.

3. Code the layout.

4. Rotate and repeat 2 & 3 for landscape

5. Run an android emulator ( I use Nox Player with android 9 ) with the same aspect ratio.
Install foobar2000.apk
For 2250x4000 16-9  I used a resolution of 720x1280

The emulator has a shared folder with the host where you add/edit your skin files to load to the app.

6. Repeat 2 3 4 5 for other aspect ratios.
Change the resolution in the emulator to the one your working on
eg. for 16-10  800 x 1280

Re: Question to skin designers

Reply #2 – 2024-02-23 23:37:03

This issue has always bothered me as well because now I have no Android device including DAPs.

Previously, foobar2000 for mobile for the Microsoft Store was supported and could be tested on Windows machines with free software such as Sizer4.0, which allows you to specify the screen size.
This method is no longer available since the application is no longer supported for Windows.

 
Currently, the only way to test our skin in different device (i.e., aspect ratio) would be utilizing third-party Android emulators such as noxplayer, as zeremy has mentioned.
This would be the only way to do it, since the old dedicated compile application does not support the new skin format.