Skin Submission Guidelines
The purpose of these guidelines is to ensure that a minimum skin quality is maintained in Xion's Skin Database. Once in effect, they will be the baseline by which new skin submissions will be judged against. Special cases and conditions apply, detailed at the end of this document.
The guidelines are as follows:
- A submitted skin should contain at minimum the following elements
- Play, Stop, Previous and Next buttons
- Track title
- Elements in the skin that have practical functions should be visible and recognizable at first glance
- Buttons should have symbols that convey their purpose
- Labels should be present on any sliders
- All functional elements should show a clear outline of the effective area, if they do not stand out from the base of the skin itself
- All submissions, regardless of size, style and purpose, should contain at least one element that makes the skin moveable. This element should not be a part of the skin that already has a function attached to it, such as a Play button.
- When submitting the skin, the preview that will be displayed on the website should show the skin in a clear environment, so that the background used to showcase the skin is not mistaken as part of the skin, or used to obscure the design of the skin itself.
- To be politically correct, as usual, skins must not contain offensive material.
If a submission does not meet these requirements, the skin may be declined and sent back for a revision by the author.
When a skin is declined, the author will be notified and the detailed result of the assessment of the skin will be given, along with steps required to properly meet the requirements to publish the skin. The author will then have 30 days to submit a revision of the skin. If this date is passed, the submission is purged from the system, immediately and a new skin submission must be lodged to begin the process again. This must be followed correctly to avoid duplicates.
Special cases:
There are some categories such as Minimalist, where some of these requirements cannot apply without defeating the purpose of the skin. Because of this, submissions to these categories can ignore some of the guidelines and will still be accepted as valid.
Button labels do not have to be present if the layout follows a standardized media player style, assuming a play button in the middle, with other functions branching off equally on either side of it. See Windows Media Player as an example. It is, however, still advised that you label buttons whenever possible.