skin gallery from french meizu blog - all converted and ready to download

makd511 · 09-04-2007

Just found a very useful tool on the french Meizu blog site.
They have created a full skin gallery with all the skins from this site.
The viewer is in flash and present thumbnail images, click on one to view screen shot and also a link at the bottom allows you to download the current selected skin.

The site author claims to have scoured this site and collected all the avialable skind AND converted them all to the latest 2.003.2b firmware version (using the tools from this site).

i know there is already a small site running here and that DChronos was looking to make a site also but why re-invent the wheel. i have not yet downloaded any of the skins from this site and tried them yet but i will do so and see how they perform.

so, go here for the google translated version of the page and have a look, i must admit i did not realize there were so many skins out there (113 on my count).

well done to the guys in France and keep adding the skins

Link to french skin gallery

nice2know_u · 09-04-2007

Thanks for the link, good idea! Maybe someone from meizume could do the same?!

Edit: Oh i see they have collected the skins from here too! (Mines are there too, thanks!)

PoUëT · 09-04-2007

Yes !

I just discoverd this site a few days ago, and it's fantastic.

The skin gallery is awsome, and I can see that they are now available in english.

DChronos · 09-05-2007

And do they have an uploader for members to submit them, as well as descriptions?

Also, some people might not want to update their firmware to the absolute latest to use those. I'm creating a gallery in alphabetical order, sortable by creator, date, alphabet, rating, player type, and firmware version once it's done, and it will all be run by the vBulletin system the forums and gallery here use. Also, why go elsewhere when this site is the place to go for everything Meizu M6/M3 and MiniOne.

That reminds me, the gallery here will also have skins for the M3 and MiniOne, if skinning is possible with it.

I'm going to have a tools section as well as a firmware download section all built in once it's done, and already have plenty of it coded in html. After that, it's a matter of creating the php phrases and adding them into the vB system, then setting up a new section.

Mine won't look as flashy as that, but it will have thumbnails to view a simple preview, clicking on them may pop up a small window with the full animated preview that the resource editor makes (I think, haven't checked it out lately, but seen the animated previews). It will allow members to upload new skins as if they were new threads, allowing them to upload their skin, the thumbnails, a preview, and a description of the skin, as well as a rating system.

Most of this, if not all, is already a part of the vB code, so it shouldn't be too overly hard to do the hardest part: setting up a database and posting system for the skins. I just have to do some research there.

Other than that, it looks pretty nice... but like I said, I, for one, still want the 1.010 firmware so those skins would do me no good.

EDIT: Also... *DChronos

makd511 · 09-05-2007

DChronos (sorry about earlier - i have edited post.

you make some good points that a more structured database system needs to be created for these skins. The french skin gallery is really nice but it gives no indication of how many skins and if new ones have been added etc. it was just nice to see all the skins in one place, all converted to latest firmware and ready to download. i think it was you DChronos that started a thread a while back trying to keep a list of all the skins but i can guess this would be hard to maintain.

cant wait to see your skin catalog, good luck and keep up the good work

darkofdawn · 09-05-2007

Hi there people ! I'm the "french guy" who set up this blog and the gallery.

Ok, i wasn't supposed to talk at all about it on MeizuMe until someone else did but anyway if i had been, you'd still have beat me to it.

A few months ago I started to work with err0r on a php skin gallery just like DChronos has (re-)imagined it. I had an operational upload system and started working on a thumbnail and rating system too.

But look at it from this point of view :
- Multiple skin versions = multiple resource files. People are always asking skin creators to update their old skins to the latest version. Not the other way round.
- A resource file is approx. 6.5mb => upload via http is painful, for some people it's impossible (depends on the server too).
- Thus, people would have to zip or rar their skins.
- Who knows what's in the zip or rar file ? Personally I hate having lots of crap in my archive files when I DL something. Not to mention the possibility of having a wrong version of resource.bin in the wrong archive file. If the Admin uploads files, things are much more likely to be organized and bear clean, normalized names.

Making users upload their own files is pretty cool, but IMO it just makes things harder when it comes to maintain a clean, efficient skin sharing system.
And that explains why all skins are in 2.003.2b.

By the way, back then, err0r didn't want the gallery to be a full part of MeizuMe, more of a secondary site. So even though I love coding, i was not going to build an entire website coding thousands of php lines all by myself without making a living out of it.

So when I started this french blog, I thought "oh the hell with all this structured time-eating skin-sharing site, what we need is a gallery. A skin gallery". Sure, a rating / commenting form would be nice, and vB has lots of gallery plugins of this kind.

- But hey, what do people want ? Skins.
- How do they chose them ? By browsing through thumbnails.
=> ok let's make the simplest gallery there is, allowing people to quickly browse and download the best-looking skins without making a fuss. No page reloading, everything is loaded in flash and the whole application is ultra fast and easy to use.

When I began this french "gallery", I skimmed all the skin topics one by one, and downloaded / converted / translated / screenshot each and every skin. Took me a whole day, but still much less time than building an entire website, for a still pretty cool result.

I'm not trying to cast a shadow on you work, i guess we're working on two slightly different things. And I truly hope you succeed and work out something as big and cool as you describe it

So keep up the good work d00d :D

iversonjack · 09-05-2007

And we thank you for it, darkofdawn. Looks awesome!

makd511 · 09-05-2007

[quote=darkofdawn;33988]Hi there people ! I'm the "french guy" who set up this blog and the gallery.

Hi
thanks for making yourself known and well done for all the effort.
This gallery is great and extremely useful but there are just a couple of this i would like ti know.
what order are the skins in, are they listed chronologically or just a random list and when new skins are added do they appear at the start of the thumbnails or are they on the end.

many thanks for the gallery, excellent work

darkofdawn · 09-05-2007

Skins are listed by date added => last skins shown first.
If two skins were added on the same date, sorting is by alphabetical order.

PS: i've added an english paragraph on the page so no need to go through google translation anymore => http://fr.meizublog.com/skins/

makd511 · 09-05-2007

thanks for the English translation and downloads darkofdawn - excellent