Who says that MPT's appearance sux?

[LPChip]

You have to be a bit creative, but eventually you can get MPT to look very good so you can be more creative!!!

You don't believe me? Watch this screenshot.



The skin i used for this one is HalfLife2 skin, that can be downloaded from DeviantArt. You'll need StyleXP or the patch to install other styles and ofcource windows XP.

Don't have one of these? then try Windows Blinds, or set your appearance to windows classic and use the buildin color manager to make your own colors. You can get the colors quite close to what I have on the screenshot.

If I can find a way to export the colors from whitin MPT, I'll share them too.

[Squirrel Havoc]

Wow, that looks like old school 3DS max, and it doesn't break accesibility. Not bad

EDIT: StyleXP is for windowsxp/2K3 only, according to the website

[xaimus]

WindowBlinds should work just as well.

Meh, I can't say I care about the appearance much.  It's gotten pretty bad ever since an upgrade to Wine .9 decided to trash my saved font metrics and ignore Tahoma in favor of some terrible monospace font, but MPT's interface lets me get what I want done, without getting in my way.

[MisterX]

I never understood the importance that some people may place on the appearance of a program used to make music.  Do you want to be able to make good music easily, or do you want a pretty program to look at?

I would place sound quality and ease of use above the interface, but that's just me.

[Squirrel Havoc]

Different interfaces bring out different creative qualities in me, but thats just me

[LPChip]

I can track any music with one simple interface, and probably everyone can. In order to do so, you have to have enough inspiration to do so.

If you alter the colour scheme though, different aspects of your creativeness brain will be stimulated and that allows you to boost your inspiration depending on what that set of colours does to you.

Required? no. But it will come in handy when you have a writers block!

[Squirrel Havoc]

I use a few programs to make music, Skale, MPT, Renoise, Reason, and all my works with each program have a theme common to other songs made in the same program, while each programs theme is different than the others. I think having a selectable colorscheme (like saving presents and such), that would help with people like me who need an extra boost for their creativity. Like one preset for dark ambient music, one for happy trance, and so on.

[DMNXS]

I only use color schemes/skins when I'm tired of the normal look, such as in Winamp or Psycle. But an overall more modern look wouldn't hurt OMPT, I guess .

[Sam_Zen]

I never had an urge to change the appearance of MPT. It could do the job, fine by me. In that way I fully agree with MisterX (but that's just us), but I understand the point about different interfaces by Squirrel Havoc and LPChip.

The design of the interface indeed can have an influence on the process. But to me more on a functional level. Which options are directly available and for which ones you have to dig deep in some menu ?

I can see he trick with the different colorschemes to stimulate the creativity, but my idea when confronted with a writers block is different : Just go work on some other project and be confident that 'the urge to lay that egg' will come back. I don't like any artificial pressure on the creative process from the outside personally.

DMNXS mentions color schemes/skins. An indication of the dangers of a drastical need for change of appearance.
Color schemes : ok, it's a personal system-choice, nothing wrong with that. But skins is another story.
They often mean change of the interface itself, or loosing total control because of automatics.
Ask blind people about skins, where the buttons are bitmaps with a text on it.
A distinction should be made here between appearance of an Editor and a Player.
A Player can be modern (so with rounded corners nowadays), but an Editor doesn't have to.

[Snu]

i guess if you can be inspired by colors, then more power to ya, but i sure cant... the only reasons i can see for changing the colors is to make it less bright and easier on the eyes.
on this note tho, i just had to reinstall windows and had to reset the colors, would really be nice to have an export/import...
or just save in the ini file instead of the registry (yah, i know you are working on this rewbs).

[Louigi Verona]

I like white patterns of MPT. But now when I looke at what you guys did with the interface, I'll try new colors!

[rncekel]

I think that the aspect may be important if you keep a lot of time working with the program. It is important to have contrast enough to help reading, and a dark background helps not to get your eyes tired too soon. But, of course, it is far more important to have a good funcionality.

[Louigi Verona]

r u sure dark background makes eyes less tired? I thought the green color makes eyes relax. Green shouldn't be dark.

[Squirrel Havoc]

I thought green made you smoke pot? :lol:

[xaimus]

The Impulse Tracker preset is the only color scheme anyone could possibly need.  :P