How To Make Skins

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Contents		Overview
		Programs you need
		How to make them
		The viscolor.txt

Since I added the skin's page to my site, many people are asking me, how to make their own skins. I was tired to reply to all this mail, so here is the "How to make your own skin" page.

I tried to explain thing assuming no serious prevous knowledge. Explaining things like, what are the bitmaps, how to load them, how to copy files or how to zip them, is far beyond the scope of this page. If you don't know these basic things, you need general computer help, and consider buying a book or whatever you like.

What is a skin ...

A skin is a set of picture files in .bmp format, that WinAmp loads and puts them in certain places on it's window. Even the default look is a skin, and you can find it in the "Base" folder. If you change the content of these picture files, except for the names and the size, WinAmp will load and display your own picture.

Contents of a skin folder:

Each skin consits of 10 .bmp files, and one viscolor.txt file. This file contains the colors of the visualization area and we will discus it later.

ATTENSION: You can't set transparesy to any of these files. If you design a great backgound, and then put the rest images on it, they will cover exaxtly the light grey areas, of the above pictures. This problem can be easyly solved as we 'll see bellow.

The .bmp files

main.bmp
The background of WinAmp. Beware that only the places that remain uncovered by the other bitmaps are visible.

titlebar.bmp
Contains the titlebar images for Normal, WindowShade mode, and ... I have never seen the third. First is the active mode and second the non active.
On the left, are the images for the menu, minimize and close button (rows 1,2,3). The fourth row has the windowshade mode button and the fifth the posision bar as it is shown in the windowshade mode.
On the right... It is obvius.

cbuttons.bmp
The playback buttons. In the first row are the not pressed images and in the second row the pressed ones.

playpaus.bmp
The small lights on the left of time, above the visualization area.

monoster.bmp
Hilighted and normal state.

numbers.bmp
From this image WinAmp extracts the time digits, for remaining and elapsed time.

posbar.bmp
The position bar image. The background, and the two states of the slider. Normal and pressed.

shufrep.bmp
The replay, shufle, equilizer and playlist buttons. Each one is in four states

1. Diselected normal
2. Diselected pressed
3. Selected normal
4. Selected pressed

text.bmp
From this image WinAmp extracts the letters that uses to display the song name.

volume.bmp
The first 29 images are the backgroung images of the Volume slider, from lower to higher level, and the last is the the slider itself. Not pressed and pressed state. The same images are used from the Balance slider.

The rest pages are not ready yet. If you are eager to make your skin, get a painting program, like PaintShopPro from tucows.com, or the best, Abobe's PhotoShop, make a copy of the Base folder, and start altering the images. That's how I made my firts skin, although it is not good to be in these pages.