Sean Fretwell - Winamp Skin

Computer Stuff - Winamp Skin

This was my first attempt at a skin for the Winamp media player. Made with Paint Shop Pro 7 in 2004. 19 separate bitmaps images are made that control the look of the whole thing. Buttons have to made in on/off/hover states, icons have to placed accurately so that they correspond with the 'hotspots' in the guts of the Winamp engine and resizable windows have to be made with precision so that they expand seamlessly.

Winamp no longer exists unfortunately but if you still have a version and would like to try it out for real, you can download the .wsz file (31kb) here. (if your browser automatically renames the extension to .zip, just change it back to .wsz). Save the file to the 'Skins' folder in Winamp (usually found in C/Program Files/Winamp). To load the skin, click the top left of the main window and drop down to 'skins'.

I submitted the skin to Winamp in 2004 and they published it on their download site. Sadly no longer available but when I last looked, it had been downloaded over 30,000 times!

The following images may be disturbing to those without any nerdy inclinations: here are those 19 bitmaps in their raw state. Quite a pixelfest to say the least, but the joy of seeing it work makes it more than worth it. There are many tutorials around for making skins for Winamp, if you would like to have a go, start at Winamp's own site.