Skinning requirements for Winamp 5.

[hammerhead]

When will the new site be launched?
-hh

[Mr Jones]

When it's ready.

[Xerxes]

Jones, ever thought of going into the Press Secretary business?

[Mr Jones]

No comment.

[simon snowflake]

@ hammerhead. Right before the day that eastern and Ascension Day are on the same day.

[LuigiHann]

Originally posted by wildrose-wally
I had a discussion with Steve tonight about the minimum skinning requirements, and this is what he would like:

Classic skins:
Main Player Window.
Equalizer.
Play List.
Buttons and Sliders should be visible, use discression, depending on the skin.
New requirements: Video and General Windows(gen.bmp and genex.bmp).
Browser and AVS Windows are no longer required.

This means basically the whole skin will be skinned, except for cursors in the classic skins.
All excisting skins will be granfathered to the new site as is, although skinners will be encouraged to update them to Winamp 5 standard.

These new requirements will go in effect the same time as the new site is launched.

Do the existing skins even need to be "grandfathered" in? These new rules seem almost less strict than the current rules, so I don't see how existing skins could break the new rules, hm? Unless I'm missing some point.

[Rellik]

I think a good portion of the current skins still lack the general window.

[Wildrose-Wally]

Old requirement: Browser
AVS was never a requirement, just a suggestion often made.
New requirement: Video and General Windows

Basically, there is more to skin now, eh?

And yes, most of the current skins are not up to the new standard as they are lacking Video and General Windows, but they will stay published though.

Up till Winamp 5 and the new site go life, we will accept skins with the new components absent, after that they will be rejected and only fully skinned skins will be published.

[skinme!]

Seems a little foolish to carry on accepting skins which will soon be incomplete. Surely you should ween us onto Winamp5-milk asap. Or does this signify WA5 is less imminent than one might hope?

[amano]

"granfathered"?

My wish for the new site would be that those skins updated for winamp 5 are labelled as winamp 5 skins and can be searched for this criteria as well.

or just divide the skins section into "Modern skins", "Classic Skins", "Granfathered WA 2/WA3 skins".

Determining whether a skin is 2.9x compliant or not, is quite a mess now, I hope this will change.

[net-cruizer]

I just noticed something that doesn't look right.
Using a 2.9x compatible skin, I noticed that the drop down menus in the internet radio and tv windows, the button now use the skin's scrollbar images from the genex bitmap instead of using the default ones from Windows, which really is a cool feature, but I notice some parts around the button that don't look right.
The most noticable, is a white line befor the button, which I've noticed on all the skins I've tried.
Anyways, I've never noticed this problem befor.
Is there anything special that has to be done to fix the problem?

Actually, it looks like even the Winamp Modern skin has the same problem too. Could it be just me experiencing the problem? lol.

[rovingcowboy]

and yet i did all the skins on my 2 that i submited

even though they are not required for use in winamp 5 i did the old ones with the few people that do not wish to upgrade to win winamp 2.1 and or older versions i thought that if i left in the bmp's for the old versions then they to could get new skins that work.

was i wrong in thinking like that?? do you cancel out the use of the new skins made with winamp 2.91 on the older versions?

i guess what i am wondering about is are we to make the skins backword compatible with all winamp versions so as nobody would get a cheap looking half baked skin.

[J_Bloggs]

rovingcowboy: So long as you meet the requirments, your skin will get published here, and it's up to you if you want to go above and beyond that.

[net-cruizer]

Well I still skin the old AVS window and the Minibrowser, as well as all the new components.
I don't see why not, it's not like it's much trouble to do a skin fully.
Besides, if someone makes a skin and leaves out older components, and someone uses the skin and has default Winamp skin showing too, then it just makes a person's skin look bad.
And vice versa, like if a person made a 2x skin, and didn't make a Media Library skin or new AVS skin, then the skin would look the shits on a newer Winamp version.
So I say, skin all new and old components, just to make you're skin look goood no matter what, lol.

[Wildrose-Wally]

The skin database will be merged into one, containing both freeform or modern skins and classic skins. There will not be a seperate section for Winamp 2 or Winamp 5 skins. You will be able to search the database by modern skins, classic skins, and a few other criteria.
There will be a handy "uninstall current skin" button in your skin browser to quickly delete those skins that you don't want for whatever reason, including not being complete.

[LuigiHann]

How convenient! My skins will be even easier for people to delete! ;-)

[skinme!]

Even more conveniently, there's the Rename Skin button for fuggered filenames

[outcydr]

Hi y'all!
I'm new here. Actually, I'm new to Winamp - only been using it a few weeks. I don't seem to be able to post in the tips and tricks forum where it talks about the new genex bmp, so I hope I'm in the right place.

quote:
1. The dimensions of the bitmap should not be altered from the default size of 130x75
2) The background colour shouldn't be altered from the base skin colour of (0,198,255), it is recommended you leave this as the default colour , for any future changes may become dependant on this.
- end quote.

I've been using Skinner's Atlas to try my hand at a skin and noticed when I saw the above, that in the atlas this bmp is smaller. That's easy enough to change but, what I was wondering is, should I worry about the size and bg color of any of the other bmps?

[Mr Jones]

Skinners Atlas will have to be updated, it's author knows this

The gen.bmp is still open for any future changes that may be made to the skin engine, for example, at some point in the future they may decide they want to add more button support to some window or other and use gen.bmp for these images, obviously if people go shrinking it down and suddenly winamp is looking for new buttons in the bits that may have been cropped, then you have a problem, so for now, keep it at default size.

Same goes for the colour, it may or may not at some time in the future be used to decide placements, delimiters or any number of things, so if winamp suddenly starts checking for a specific colour and it's not there, then again you will have problems.

The other older windows are pretty much carved in stone, don't expect any changes to those in the future, there are too many skins out there already using these windows, it would be madness to go altering them and break classic skin support, however, gen.bmp is still a developing idea, and is subject to change

And you can't post in the tips and tricks forums, cos it's read only

[outcydr]

Thanks for the (unexpectedly) speedy reply!

[kiilu]

how abut the media library buttons...

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by kiilu
how abut the media library buttons...

What about them?

[outcydr]

OK then, I've gotten to the final testing of the (classic) skin I'm making and I think I know what kiilu might be refering to. In the media library, on the "Name", "Now Playing", "Genre", etc. buttons the cursor is the standard windows cursor (for me anyway). I downloaded some other skins to check and it's the same. Is there a .cur file for this? Or will there be one? What is the name, if there is?

I know this is just a minor detail among many, and I'm sorry if I've strayed from the topic.

[skinme!]

Aren't there cursor issues with the MB. Or at least there used to be. Now it's incorporated into the ML. There should be custom cursors for all windows, general or otherwise.