Skinotronic Display Style for Growl (New Version!)
Hey kiddles! Do you like Growl? Is your Mac connected to a 1080p display? If you answered, "FUCK YES!!!!!" to both those questions then friend, Skinotronic is the Growl style for you! Never again will you have to leave the comfort of your bed or the couch to read a Growl notification because Skinotronic is HUEG LIEK XBOX!
What’s New
Here it is, a new version of Skinotronic. This version supports more resolutions (Retina) aaaaand positioning the dock on the side. To make this work I had to split Skinotronic into two versions: S and B.
Use Skinotronic S for when the dock is positioned on the side and Skinotronic B for when it's on the bottom. Easy to remember, right? I'd rather keep it to one file but that's impossible because of reasons. The details are boring; don't worry about it.
Skinotronic Employs All Five Priority Levels:
Very Low - Pretend this static image is pulsing green and you'll get the idea.
Moderate - As as you can see in this screenshot multiple lines of text are no problem.
Normal - Your standard issue white on black. No pulsing.
High - Smaller size and font but still legible from a distance. No pulsing.
Emergency - Pulses faster than Very Low and Moderate. You should use this one to warn you when you're in danger of running out of disk space from all the porn, anime and music you're downloading.
The Big Picture
What!? You're still not convinced? Here, take this beautiful 1920x1080 PNG screenshot and make it your desktop wallpaper. Now see how far away you can stand from the display before the message becomes difficult to read. How far were you able to stand? I'm guessing very. If you liked that test drive just imagine how INCREDIBLE it's going to be when the notifications are live and pertinent to your interests!!
P.A.Q. — Preemptively Answered Questions
"Skinotronic"? What up with that name?
The name is Fallen's contribution. I explained what I was working on and that I needed a name. He said he would text me his suggestions. I was typing the names into Google as he sent them and Skinotronic was the first one with zero results—Shocking!
—and that's why I chose it. This occupied less than half an hour.
What other names did Arsen suggest?
In order from first to last: Noticefaction, Annoying Notification Program For Random Shit (ANPRS for short), Ballercon v5.0, Random Skin 5.0, Shnizlefizzledorf, Kokanaynay, Skinotronic Skin v0.5, Boilface, Crotchcomet and Zingzongzoom. Boilface and Crotchcomet were my favorites but they came up in too many search results.
Is Skinotronic based on WebKit or Cocoa?
WebKit.
Can you port Skinotronic to Growl for Windows?
No, but it's not for a lack of trying! I downloaded the Display SDK but they lost me at the Getting Started section. It says you need to know C#, VB.NET, or VC++.NET and have a copy of Visual Studio. I have neither the skills, the time to learn them, nor the software, my apologies.
What about Snarl?
If there was demand for it I'd be willing to port Skinotronic to Snarl. It would be a fun challenge to see if I could make it identical to the Mac version. I don't use Snarl on my PC but it looks nice.
There is a space between the bottom or top edge of my screen and the notification when I use Very Low, Moderate, Normal or Emergency. Why is that?
It is because the screen you're using it with has the dock and menu bar on it. I tried every CSS trick in the book but there's no way to offset that space through WebKit. You can manually offset the space by changing GrowlPaddingY in the plist to a negative number like -11 or something. Download a new copy of Skinotronic to do this. You have to restart Growl for the change to take effect. When you have it looking the way you want feel free to delete the extra copy of Skinotronic.
The drawback to changing the offset is the alerts no longer stack. Your alerts will now be displayed one at a time. But you might like it better that way.
I installed Skinotronic on Growl 1.1.5 but it's not working. Oh wait, I'm missing a lot of styles here...
It's been confirmed that WebKit styles are broken in version 1.1.5 of Growl. The Growl team is already aware of this. I recommend reverting back to 1.1.4 until it's fixed, that's what I did.
Where ca—
How di—
LUCKY GUESS!
Are yo—
RELATED TO BRIAN STACK? NO, WHY DO YOU ASK?
Uh, no reason...
THAT WASN'T A QUESTION A-HOLE!
Changelog
Version 1.7 | Oct-1 2015 (Current Version)
Support for Retina Displays
Split Skinotronic into two versions (S and B) for greater customization.
This update is dedicated to Par Wannman who hit me up on twitter exactly a year ago and requested this. Sorry I took so long, bro.
Version 1.0 | Jun-16 2009
Initial Release