Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 212 posts

Re: A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

#31

Post by _sdegutis »

weavie wrote: post #23
_diyu wrote: post #13

Wow, it even has skin support! I spent way too many hours developing skins for WinAmp and Trillian back in the late 90s as a teenager. I get why skins fell out of style, but I also kinda wish they didn't. Choosing a skin lets you personalize an app, creating a skin does so even more while also letting you express your creativity, and having skins creates a community. If I ever make an app where skinning would make se…

Absolutely. I don't get why skins fell out of style. I remember back in the day when I was working on an accounting app, even that I made skinnable. You may just be reconciling your bank account, but at least you could do it in a form that looked like it was made from marble, or wood, or whatever you wanted! It just made everything feel just a little bit less tedious... at least to me

At least when Trillian ditched skins, I think they were trying to compete with the bigger players (MSN, Google Chat) more seriously in the business world, and skinning isn't really something businesses care much about. In fact, just having this feature available can make the app seem more juvenile and less appealing than more "serious" alternatives.

Plus, you have to keep adding skin support for every new feature you add, which means the many skins that don't keep up will no longer work for the latest version of your app, which pisses off users. And when skins slow down or stop being made (people get bored, move on) it reflects poorly on the app, making it look like a ghost town.

Re: A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

#34

Post by captbaritone »

captbaritone wrote: post #7

Author here. I wrote a Twitter thread demonstrating many of its features. You can find it here: https://mobile.twitter.com/captbaritone/status/9612747140133...

People in this thread might also enjoy this Twitter bot I wrote that tweets Winamp skins: https://twitter.com/winampskins

Re: A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

#36

Post by vvanders »

bhauer wrote: post #29

Amazing. Wishful thinking: If this included something akin to Shoutcast (perhaps via WebRTC), it would give us back the peer-to-peer listening joy we had for small groups and teams back in the day. I miss the era when things were more commonly/naturally peer-to-peer and decentralized.

Shoutcast was amazing, I can easily credit it to opening up my music horizons to bands that just weren't played on the radio at the time(euro-metal/etc \m/ \m/).

To this day I find Spotify and its competitors a poor substitute, algorithms still can't match a well curated station.

Re: A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

#37

Post by _sdegutis »

mi100hael wrote: post #28
greymeister wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always used skins in Winamp/XMMS, but I'm immediately filled with nostalgia upon seeing the default skin. I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications. All of the walled gardens have intertwined design with functionality to the point where skinning doesn't really exist in the same way. I haven't used…

Honestly, skinning is probably easier today than it ever has been. With custom client-side stylesheets, there's no reason someone couldn't roll out custom skins for sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I bet there's branding and usability reasons for Facebook to avoid allowing you to skin/theme it to the extent Winamp was skinnable. Not sure I know what those are, but I just really doubt they'll ever add that feature.

Re: A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

_sdegutis wrote: post #31
weavie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I don't get why skins fell out of style. I remember back in the day when I was working on an accounting app, even that I made skinnable. You may just be reconciling your bank account, but at least you could do it in a form that looked like it was made from marble, or wood, or whatever you wanted! It just made everything feel just a little bit less tedious... at least to me

At least when Trillian ditched skins, I think they were trying to compete with the bigger players (MSN, Google Chat) more seriously in the business world, and skinning isn't really something businesses care much about. In fact, just having this feature available can make the app seem more juvenile and less appealing than more "serious" alternatives. Plus, you have to keep adding skin support for every new feature you…

> At least when Trillian ditched skins, I think they were trying to compete with the bigger players (MSN, Google Chat) more seriously in the business world, and skinning isn't really something businesses care much about.

Businesses often care a lot about it, they just call it “branding” (and it can be a big deal, even for internal tools); obviously, you need to show different examples to them than typical consumers.

Post reply on HN