[HN Gopher] Rendering "modern" Winamp skins in the browser
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Rendering "modern" Winamp skins in the browser
Author : mariuz
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-11-22 16:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jordaneldredge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jordaneldredge.com)
| aalimov_ wrote:
| Winamp skins era brings back so much nostalgia.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I miss the visualizers.
| treve wrote:
| Love this project and I've been following 'winamp skins bot' on
| mastodon and Twitter previously for a while. Fun blast to the
| past: https://indieweb.social/@winampskins@botsin.space
|
| Potentially a small correction, I think the 'new' skins were
| introduced with Winamp 3 not 5. 5 was released because 3 was
| disliked, and incorporated both features from 2 and 3 (2+3 = 5)
| pfoof wrote:
| Exactly how I remember it - I had only Winamp 3 and installed
| all those funky modern skins.
| captbaritone wrote:
| Good point. I'll update the post.
| irskep wrote:
| I'd love to see this hooked up to Navidrome, Jellyfin, or one of
| the other home server music solutions. Such a vibe.
| BishopIndigo wrote:
| Apropo of nothing, for all of Spotify's UX changes, I feel like
| skins and visualization of the music are missing from their
| desktop/web client. For desktop they've taken away the full-
| window playlist view in favor of a sidebar-only playlist. That's
| one thing I miss about being able to use Winamp or Windows Media
| Player to play music on a desktop :'(
| safety1st wrote:
| How is it that the Winamp 2.x visualizations from like 1999 are
| more badass than any music player I can think of today? I had
| no idea Webamp existed until today and now I'm thinking through
| how to make it my full-time music player.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Milkdrop visualizations are still available afaik separately
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Personally I liked very much the more standard car-DIN-form
| factor visual plugins. They could also be stacked with
| separate equalizer or playlist controls.
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/XY3baSW3ZRtwZcSf7
| WD-42 wrote:
| Wish we had more skinnable applications these days. UI has become
| so flat and boring. It's like the industry became allergic to
| fun.
| threekindwords wrote:
| my brain was jazzed checking out these modernized versions of
| winamp skins. i really love that skin with the dude's green
| head having the playlist within... bring back memories. all
| these skeuomorphs are so wild and wonderful, oh so far away
| from the boring flatness of modern UI.
|
| we lost something unique in the pursuit of true usability and
| reliability. however, i don't disagree with where we've ended
| up, i think it's a better interface for any human to pick up
| and use, but yes, i agree, in comparison it is... boring. but
| is boring really better?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't think current UIs are better even if you leave aside
| the boredom factor. Flat, monochrome designs are terrible for
| usability as well as looks.
| gyomu wrote:
| The industry is mature and trying to squeeze out every cent it
| can from as many customers as possible now.
|
| Boring flat UIs are more amenable to being endlessly tweaked
| and AB tested by product managers with no vision other than
| "make metric go up". UIs are thoroughly tested to ensure people
| will engage with the product as long as possible, in the ways
| that are most beneficial to the product owners.
|
| It's the difference between hanging out in your friend's
| backyard, and hanging out in Disneyland.
|
| As a user, it sucks. Only way out is to actively pursue and use
| software made by small, human developers rather megacorps.
| There is still fun, quirky software out there but it doesn't
| have $100M marketing budgets so it's on you to find it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I disagree, stuff today is un-boring _mostly in a bad way_ : Is
| this a link or a button? Is that a checkbox or an option box?
| Where'd my scrollbar go? Is this two-state control already on
| or off? Is this row of text labels a bunch of tabs, or a bunch
| of new panels? What zones are right-clickable, and does right-
| click even work? Will this website hijack key combos used by my
| browser? Does this app even _have_ key combos, and why can 't I
| discover them by looking for an underlined letter? Is there a
| cheatsheet somewhere? ...
|
| In contrast, a lot of classic 1990-2010 stuff was stable and
| boring because it had reached a point of working well and the
| visual indicators were consistent.
|
| Now it's more like "pandering to the lowest common denominator
| of a touchscreen interface, and doing it badly", or
| "sacrificing good UX in the name of looking different".
| keyringlight wrote:
| Even when things weren't consistent, they were 'readable' and
| you could understand what a control was offering.
|
| I wonder if our current state is a consequence of the
| 'iteration' of skeuomorphism, where a few decades ago
| computer UI controls were representations of what people
| would have been familiar with before - physical buttons on
| machines or concepts like files in folders, more recently the
| feedback loop is abstract controls being the input for the
| next iteration. How many objects in the world that you use in
| a week give a good template to inspire designers?
| blt wrote:
| Not necessarily, look up "mystery meat navigation". The
| affliction that produced our current UI woes has existed
| almost as long as the WWW itself.
| smitelli wrote:
| I recently had occasion to go back and use the Microsoft
| Office 97 suite in a VM (because... reasons). It occurred to
| me that this entire generation of computer users has probably
| never encountered anything that works like the multiple-
| document interface that was so prevalent in the 90s. It just
| sorta "went away" and I haven't seen anything quite like it
| in some time.
|
| Whether MDI was _good_ or not, eh, probably not. But I never
| would 've expected that (of all things) to trigger nostalgia
| for me.
| Terr_ wrote:
| You might enjoy or find-use-for:
| https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
|
| People have made versions for XP, 7, etc. as well.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Philosophically, MDI is probably not a great way to do most
| things. It makes more sense to have the Window mamager
| manage windows, but unfortunately, we moved away from MDI
| without really coming up with a solution for providing the
| advantages of an MDI through flexible WM solution.
|
| Mac OS 9 did this well, but that was because it was
| effectively single tasking in terms of the user experience.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| For Hi-Fi systems, MDI was skeuomorphism too. Actual
| sound systems had separate boxes that did graphical
| equaliser function, amplifier function, tape function, CD
| player function, etc.
|
| When portable CD players were still chunky companies
| would give them a bit more funk, buttons that followed
| the curves of the device and such. Similarly, before MP3
| players went tiny there was some extra space for a bit
| more design that some Winamp skins would mimic.
| pfoof wrote:
| I remember my two favorite skins: working iPod 4G and iPod Nano
| 1st gen. With functional scrollwheel and menus.
|
| Was it really since Winamp 5? IIRC, I installed them on Winamp 3.
|
| Edit: I just fell into a nostalgia spiral reading Winamp forums.
| It still has posts from 2000.
| smitelli wrote:
| Winamp 3 definitely had a more modern skin system compared to
| the sliced BMP files in 2.x skins.
| infotainment wrote:
| Winamp 3 was a total rewrite of Winamp using a completely
| bespoke fully skinnable GUI system. All Winamp 3 skins were
| what would eventually be called "modern" skins.
|
| However, Winamp 3 also had performance issues, and ultimately
| the negative reaction to it led Nullsoft to kill _most_ of
| Winamp 3. The GUI code (and associated APIs mentioned in this
| blog post) were hacked into the older Winamp 2.x codebase and
| given the "modern skin" name. (The name "Winamp 5" was
| supposed to be a play on 2 (codebase) + 3 (modern skins) = 5)
| captbaritone wrote:
| There were also "other" reasons to skip version number 4:
| https://jordaneldredge.com/notes/winamp-4-skin/
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| That's how I remember it as well. I think I ran Winamp 3 in
| Wine a year or two ago and whatever I was running definitely
| supported modern skins. Perhaps these Winamp 5 skins are a
| different beast.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wonder how many of these skins are ported from other apps. I'm
| pretty sure the big green face shipped with SoundJam, and the one
| after it is definitely from Audion. (see
| https://blog.panic.com/facing-forward/)
|
| I still miss controlling my music through a little rocket-bike I
| drew. That was fun.
| Inviz wrote:
| SoundJam? Or windows media player?
| nosrepa wrote:
| I distinctly remember it being from WMP.
| gonesilent wrote:
| I reviewed 1000s of skins and plugins at nullsoft before aol so
| many of them tie to a time in my life. Feels odd seeing them
| sometimes. Nullsoft tv was the most fun back in the day. Long
| before twitch and justin.tv even YouTube who now uses the parts
| of the old on2 encoder.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Nullsoft TV was wild. I didn't even read any changelog or
| announcement, to me it was just there one day and it blew my
| mind. Like some other tech, it was maybe just to early, and not
| marketed properly.
| imiric wrote:
| Does anyone remember Sonique? It had freeform skins years before
| Winamp 3, and I remember being fascinated by them. The player
| itself wasn't that great, and it always paled in popularity
| compared to Winamp, but those skins made it stand out like
| nothing else at the time (late 90s).
|
| I do miss that era of computing, beyond just nostalgia. The web
| was still in its infancy, and the dot-com bubble was booming.
| There was a huge momentum of experimentation in tech, as trends
| haven't yet been strictly defined. We had all kinds of quirky
| software and hardware. MS Bob/BonziBuddy/Clippy, Tamagotchis, MP3
| (CD) players, P2P software, PDAs, beepers, early cellphones, etc.
| When smartphones came along all of this got consolidated into a
| single device, for better or worse, and the experimentation
| happened digitally in the form of apps. That was fun for a few
| years, but the experience wasn't the same. Now there's a growing
| sentiment of dissatisfaction towards these devices, and we're
| finding that technology is only driving us further apart. Anyway,
| old man yells at cloud...
| canjobear wrote:
| I used Sonique for a while because when I downloaded Winamp the
| demo said "it really whips the llama's ass!" and I was afraid
| my parents would take away my internet access if they heard
| such a scandalous thing.
|
| It did have cool skins.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| They already foresaw Llama was coming, decdes ago!
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Yes! I loved Sonique (and listening to Sonique[1] through it).
| It was my media player of choice. Personally, I liked its skins
| more than Winamp.
|
| What a time! Technology felt exciting and so I was (and still
| am, honestly) an avid fan of Megaman Battle Network. Wild how
| that series predicted much of tech today.
|
| --
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0CuO2ZpqkBM
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| Yes I was also team Sonique at that time, the skins were cooler
| and animated, with 3 sizes IIRC. I moved to winamp when it died
| I can't remember why, was bought maybe?
| kepano wrote:
| OMG! I have been hoping Jordan would work on this. It's the first
| time I have been able to re-experience a skin made in 2004 called
| Impulse. I can't even remember when I last used it.
|
| Loading it from the URL on the page linked below, it mostly
| works! Impressed that most of the animations came across.
|
| stephango.com/impulse
| captbaritone wrote:
| Full link with the skin preloaded for anyone curious:
| https://webamp.org/modern/?skin=https://kepano.s3.amazonaws....
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > In the end, I had to admit that my approach was stalled out and
| his approach, while different than my own, had forward momentum.
| I opted to just try to get out of his way and "let him cook".
|
| I commend that dude for doing that. Too many cool github projects
| just slowly die in a half-baked state because the author moved
| on, but also doesn't accept PRs because they're either completely
| unresponsive or just don't want a different style/approach in
| "their baby".
|
| So just fork it!
|
| Well that's what everybody does then, with the result that there
| are now 34 forks with different features, Bugfixes, often to the
| same couple issues, because of course none of the people tried to
| talk to each other before hitting the fork button. So you come in
| and try to fix this by creating another fork and merging as much
| stuff from the other forks as possible. Now there are 35 forks...
| donatj wrote:
| I know I made a bunch of terrible barely functioning Winamp skins
| as a kid. I could not remember for the life of me if I had ever
| submitted any of them to Winamp.com
|
| This inspired me to do a little research. Sure enough, this
| unusable piece of garbage is made entirely from my like 16 year
| old baby face from 20+ years ago. Why I thought _that_ was the
| one to submit is beyond me.
|
| https://skins.webamp.org/skin/7c0eec4cef92c0c801f4218cee83ca...
| captbaritone wrote:
| Hey! I run the museum, and these stories of people finding
| things they created and thought had not survived, are so fun to
| read. Also, your skin is... incredible.
| Bluestein wrote:
| PS. Kudos also to their _install system_ , which rocked! (rocks?)
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