Why do I keep Winamp around?

[mitrich]

I have had Winamp for a long time, and never really liked it. I do not like the user interface, I do not like how my 15 gigs of saved files in the Library are displayed, I do not like the skins.

But, I really dislike Rob Glazer of RealAudio. Real is the player that can do everything, play WMP files, Winamp files, you name it.

Today, though I succeeded in saving as bookmarks enough of my internet radio stations (USA public radio music stations, and some Winamp stations) to open Winamp in the morning and use it all day, except for stuff on Live365 and one site which is a money site.

But, here again, the process of saving stuff was so arcane, drilling into drop downs and right-click context sensitive menues.

I am notr sure why AOL keeps Winamp around; but, if they do, Winamp needs some serious modernization. Not underneath. It functions beautifully. But the user interface needs real help.

[STanger]

There are a lot more people that think as you do, but I got to give u props for posting that here and not getting flamed out of your shorts ...well not yet anyways.

[Omega X]

I doubt that he will be flamed. His thread title alone makes hardcore users skip it.

[STanger]

well yeah but I was expecting some sort of flamage to be going on ..meh

[Rocker]

change your skin if you don't like the UI, thats why we have a full freeform skinning interface with thousands of free downloadable skins.

there would be buttons coming out of our ears if we had a button for each feature, and it would then be unusable. Thats why we have context menus.

winamp plays everything and more than realplayer could ever play. winamp can even be made to play quicktime and realplayer files, if you have the right plug-ins and codecs.

[mitrich]

I am not very technically oriented. I wouldn't know where to look for a codec or a plug in, or what to look for. I am, in short, like millions of users. RealPlayer, which I would like to be rid of, does not ask me to go looking for anything.It's just really easy to use. And all of the players sound exactly alike these days.

I looked at the "skins", and from what I saw, they were more of the same. The user interfaces for the other players, Real, WMP and MusicMatch have gotten very sleek and easy to navigate over the past few years. Winamp has not advanced (I use that word advisedly)at all.

Please do not indulge yourselves with the flaming nonsense. That has even died out at the Firefox forums. I said nothing in an uncivilized manner.

My view is that Winamp is marginalized, the musical home of a happy few, and, if the user interface wre made more civil, it could have a much larger user base.

Regarding my willingness to subject myself to any irritated folk, I have been through all of that before. I still try to be constructive where I can. I want to like your product. I don't really care if you like me.

[billyvnilly]

probably 2 of the most noticiable improvements on the UI as far as what skinners can work with come from kameleon and vortex (well at least the dashboard mode)

are you just arguing that the multiple window interface is not longer good? or that the playlist is just a text file w/o interactive columns?

besides foobar2000, winamp serves to the geeky niche that likes to fine tweak their music players. IMO, most people dont care enough to put in effort... i mean, its just a silly mp3 player.

[Rocker]

Originally posted by mitrich
My view is that Winamp is marginalized, the musical home of a happy few, and, if the user interface wre made more civil, it could have a much larger user base.

if winamp was included with windows, it'd be bigger than WMP.

the only reason people use realplayer, is because its the only program that will play that propriatry format.

its not that these players are good at all, its that microsoft includes WMP with windows and real use their own format to sell their product.

both players I find are ugly and clunky. they offer little media support other than their own formats. (both of which are crap compared to open formats like vorbis or xvid)

Their UI systems and visualisations are nowhere near as advanced as winamp's.

If you wanted to have either UI in winamp, i'm sure its mostly possible. (but the other way around?? no way)

microsoft and real have hundreds or thousands of core developers, nullsoft has i think 5.

if you think you can make a better UI, go for your life, this is the place to ask questions on how to do things.

[mitrich]

billyvnilly-

I think that the standard modern skin, the one I downloaded, is fine within the context of the UI. It is the whole user interface which just looks dowdy.

And the text file thing, that is not a problem for me. Rather, it all of the panels, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, sometimes two, sometimes three.

Very important for me is internet radio. It took me forever to figure out how to load and then save URL:'s for radio stations, some NPR affiliates, and some Shoutcast. It should be obvious how to do that.

What is "foobar2000". And, hey, the players are not silly little utilities. To me, ,and to you folks, they are obviously very important. I spend hours trying to get the players to do what I want, but, again, I am not technical. I want it to be all there, up front, so to speak.

Rocker-

I could not agree with you less.

Thanks for your time folks, I appreciate your responses, I don't want to bore you, I am listening to one of my Winamp players right now, and I have agood reason to keep it.

Best,

::RSM

[billyvnilly]

people that say winamp is too bloated... they use foobar2000.

my brother is a computer science grad and he still rolls his eyes at me when i tell him winamp is better then WMP... its still silly to some

Ah yes, media library is pretty funky. it needs to be streamlined as far as appearence. I use Dynamic Library
(in plugin database), however it doesnt have shoutcast, so i have to go back to the media library for that

[DJ Egg]

Can you be more specific? I find the UI very simple, straightforward and easy to use, and especially with the default Winamp Modern skin or one of the SingleUI skins.

What is it that you find difficult, or don't understand exactly?


You say you want to get rid of RealPlayer... so why don't you?
Uninstall it, install RealAlternative, then see here for details on how to make Winamp play RA, RM, etc.

[retchless]

In terms of UI design, the media library's tree format coupled with the playlist concept for queuing is quite natural for intermediate to advanced computer users. We use trees all the time in our various travels and, for a new user, using Winamp for a couple of hours is enough to gain an understanding of the interdependancies between the various windows.

There is something to be said for more intuitive, context sensitive UIs, especially (but not only) for a beginner user. Where do I click when I open the library? What happens when I click on a radio station or a song? Where does my song go? It can be very easy to lose context if you don't know where to look.

The Media Library tree is probably the most complex aspect of the Winamp UI. But it caters perfectly to Winamp's target user. Unfortunately, skinning can only go so far in the customization of this part of the winamp interface.

Luckily, skinners come up with nifty UI improvements on a regular basis. A perfect example is a skin that I saw a few weeks ago that had car radio style bookmark buttons along the bottom for storing favorite shoutcast streams or playlists. I'd never use that feature, cause I tend to favour the more robust side of the basic to complex spectrum but for someone with more basic needs, that's a great idea. In other UI design areas, Microsoft took a risk with Office 2007, and people have been impressed so far. Winamp is awesome already and has succeeded for a very long time. It's not feasible to change the default classic or modern skins without alienating most of the Winamp's user base. It just may be time to enhance skinning even further to allow for broader changes to the library/playlist relationship. On another note, online services could be further improved to allow for presets and more personalized sorting/filtering. One release at a time

[mitrich]

billyvnilly-

Shoutcast is great. I don't knoiw how this occurred, but since I installed 5.24, I have some sort of scripting error which porevents me from accessing it from Winamp. Maybe you guys can help me with that.

DJ Egg-

I find the UI for WMP, MealPlayer, and MusicMatch to be much easier to use. They are just much simpler. What caused me to look for this forum was what I needed to figure out to save internet webstreams as bookmarks in Winamp. There is just too much drilling and too many right clicks for context-sensitive menus.

I am sure that you guys fool around with the other media players, just to stay up on what the competition is doing.

As far as dropping RealPlayer, in all actuality, I don't think thast naything that I do is in any RealPlayer format. My own database of 15 gigs of music is all mp3. All of the radio streams are mp3 (everyone's and no one's), .pls (Winamp). or .asx (WMP). I control the music in my office. Real allows me to flip from any one thing I have to any other thing, at a couple of clicks. And, BTW, while I can save Shoutcast streams *and* Live365 streams as Favorites in Real, I can not save Live365 streams as bookmarks in Winamp.

I will be using Winamp much more now, since I have my whole library of mp3's, five PubRadio music sources, and four Shoutcast streams (two Classical, 2 Goth) in Winamp.

retchless-

You know, I can find my stuff in the library. I close out with Local Media/Audio as my setting, so that's where Winamp opens on its next lauch.

What I need for you folks to understand is that I want to like Winamp, and I reflect the gazillion users who want things to be simple. We don't tinker with our Hondas and Toyotas, and we are not going to tinker with Winamp. But, Winamp, the granddaddy of all players, is, maybe unfortunately, an AOL property, and as such is subject to the scrutiny of the dollar guys at Time, Inc. They are not very charitable. In a short while, now, thousands of AOL's most loyal employees are going to be out on the street if AOL (Time, Inc) goes ahead with allowing all comers to access the AOL site for all content so that Time Inc can drum up easy cheap ad supported revenue.

BTW, I am also a heavy user of Netscape 8.1, another AOL property. I have participated a great deal in the Netscape 8 forums. Jay Garcia's bunch is working with the same shortages of talent as the Winamp team. But, look at Netscape 8.1: it is far and away the most advanced browser in the field. I know that 8.1 depends heavily on the Gecko code and on IE. But no one else has the individual on the fly site security that Netscape has.These guys have essentially dumped the old Netscape code (taken over as the basis of Mozilla, and the root of all of the efforts of the Mozilla Founbdation and now the Mozilla Corporation)and what they put out is the best thing available.

If there is any help on the scripting thing, I would appreciate it.

And, thanks for the civility of your debate.

::RSM

[amano]

The shoutcast browser uses the Internet Explorer engine. You might have some IE features turned off (ActiveX, Javascript, ...) which leads to these errors.

Simply add www.winamp.com and www.shoutcast.com to your trusted sites in IE. (Extras --> Internet Options --> Safety tab --> Trusted sites --> "Sites..." button --> untick the https checkbox on the bottom --> Add www.winamp.com --> Well, you are done.

[JonnyMac]

@ mitrich


More info on script errors with online services.

From the Common Issues section of the Troubleshooters Sticky...

Script/Runtime Errors with Online Services / SC Wire
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=239551
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=239264
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=241716
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....75#post1958175
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308260/en-us/

Online Services could not load. Please post an angry message on the forums
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=244611

@ billyvnilly

my brother is a computer science grad and he still rolls his eyes at me when i tell him winamp is better then WMP.

Maybe he has been indoctrinated by Microsoft. Perish the thought, however you might want to get some of his friends and love ones together and do a intervention.

[mitrich]

I followed the advice to move Winamp and shoutcast into the Trusted Zone. I also went over my settings regarding scripting.

At first, there was no imporvement on either of my computers. So, I decided to un-install Winamp, and then search for every trace of Winamp on my hard drive, expunge every trace I could find and start over.

On one computer, while this took a bit of time, it worked perfectly, thank you very much. On the second computer, it did not work at all. I checked all of my Security settings between the two computers. I found no differences at all. So, here, I am stymied.

This does not really make a lot of difference to me. I only have this problem when I try to access Shoutcast through Winamp, which I do not need to do, and frankly find to be a less satisfactory experience than going to Shoutcast's web site, where I have never had a problem.

I am testing out another strange problem:

I launched Winamp from a fresh boot, and only two of my eight radio station bookmarks worked. This was prior to my attempt at a total removal and re-install of Winamp. So, I am now testing this again with several reboots.So far, so good. If this would be an insoluble flaw, I must say, for me, it would be fatal to Winamp.But, hey, it's only a player, did someone say?

[mitrich]

O.K., folks, I solved the scripting in the second computer, and, this solution will probably help me with other scritping errors.

Each time I tried to use the Shoutcast Radio page, I would get the error, a different line number, but exactly the same URL shown. So, I took the URL and put it into the Trusted Zone. That seems to have done the trick. I re-botted twice to see if it would persist, and, so far so good.

[amano]

For future reference:

May I ask, what was this url?

A winamp.com one?

[mitrich]

http://www.winamp.com/bin/om/sc/

That is what I saw in the script error box. When I went to enter it, I believe, I can not be sure now, that what I saw already there in the Trusted Zone was the same line missing the "i" in "bin".

Thanks for yout interest.

::RSM

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, I can't exactly help out with the scripting errors, but you're right - Winamp's interface IS complicated compared to, say, WMP or any of REAL's players... But that's the thing about Winamp: It's geared towards people who know what they're doing around a computer and want an app that can do pretty much anything they need it to... You can't put all that functionality into a UI that's any simpler than Winamp's...

I've pretty much gone on to recommending WMP to my not-so-computer-savvy friends (mainly the women, heheh...), simply because that way I won't be bombarded with questions about "How do I do this, how do I do that, blah blah blah...". So yeah, it's true, WMP is easier to use... but it's nowhere near as flexible and customizable as Winamp, whether we're talking about looks, layout or functionality...

[mitrich]

I absolutl agree with everything you said, except if I was to recommedn anything, it would be RealPlayer, simply for Real's total command possibilities of file types, at which they are the champs right out of the box, so to speak.

Thanks for your comment.

::RSM

[lordgibbness]

In the end it comes down to who you are

programmers and enthusiasts - foobar2000

tekkies - Winamp

everyone else - Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, iTunes, MusicMatch (and any other bad media player)

[bemymonkey]

Originally posted by lordgibbness
In the end it comes down to who you are

programmers and enthusiasts - foobar2000

tekkies - Winamp

everyone else - Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, iTunes, MusicMatch (and any other bad media player)

Actually... I think you'll find "Enthusiasts" belongs with Winamp ...

[Omega X]

I personally can't stand foobar. Seems too mundane to me. Winamp has the flexibility that foobar has and looks good doing it.

[mitrich]

O.K., here is evidence of my ignorance, what is foobar2000???

::RSM

[amano]

It's another player by a former Winamp programmer, Peter Pawlowski. It is rather a purist player, but very compliant to different standards and with good decoders. It is very configurable but lacks the skinning possibilities that Winamp offers. It is the pet player of the hydrogenaudio community. Just google for it.