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)
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.
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.
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...
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)
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.
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 :'(
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".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
Good point. I’ll update the post.
Exactly how I remember it - I had only Winamp 3 and installed all those funky modern skins.
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.
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.
SoundJam? Or windows media player?
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...
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.
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)
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.
Winamp 3 definitely had a more modern skin system compared to the sliced BMP files in 2.x skins.
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 :'(
Winamp skins era brings back so much nostalgia.
I miss the visualizers.
I'd love to see this hooked up to Navidrome, Jellyfin, or one of the other home server music solutions. Such a vibe.
Wish we had more skinnable applications these days. UI has become so flat and boring. It’s like the industry became allergic to fun.
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".
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?
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.
You might enjoy or find-use-for: https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
People have made versions for XP, 7, etc. as well.
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.
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.
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?
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.