A living legend enters the comments
edit: for peeps asking for the og comment by u/bbxboy666
>I made a bunch of the skins shown here, haha! I was once known on the internets as BBX and was the Creative Director and Lead Artist of The Skins Factory from 2002 until 2018. I made the Batman skin, the Alienware skins, a bunch of these things. Building these was probably the funnest job ever, wouldn’t even call it work. Glad to see people still enjoy them! Cheers!
It was removed (I assume) because he later edited in links that would be considered self advertising
It's not just that it was made with love, but this was also just the style of the day. I used to do web development in the early 2000s (I still do, but I used to, too) and things like shiny buttons, glass & glow effects, strange shapes, etc. were all things that made corporate clients happy because it made them stand out.
It didn't last very long. People figured out fairly quickly that fancy looking UIs like this confuse a lot of people and design trends started to gravitate towards being predictable and comfortable for users, i.e. boring.
This is good for users and thus good for sales but I won't deny I sometimes miss the more exciting and challenging designs of those days. It's kind of ironic because the browser CSS support of today would make building these UIs so much easier. I certainly don't miss slicing designs into tables with images.
When I see stuff people created from the early 2000’s I get a sense of happiness and a genuine “alive” feeling. Everything nowadays is very monotone and processed. It’s like the soul of everything is being sucked away over time.
They all started out as sketches for the client, then depending upon the skin in question, were either airbrushed in Photoshop (for the early and very simple ones) or (for the later, more complex ones) modelled in Modo, rendered in passes in Cinema 4D, then assembled into nested camps in After Effects. I’d work out the sequences and then run separate 3D render passes for gloss, reflections, LED lights, decals etc so I could tweak any aspect of the look in assembly, and spit out numbered png files and reassemble those final frames along with control states and font references etc in giant layered PSD files.
They would come to us, many clients on Microsoft's recommendation. The more complex ones we'd charge anywhere between 30-40k, split between myself and the studio.
I def used some of those, I def remember using the Alienware one, which I found very sleek.
I miss that era where everyone’s computer and phone were different and an extension of someone’s taste.
Now it all look so sterile….
Wow, that is super interesting. Care to explain in short how the process of creating skin was made? Those animations, and actions when you click on things. Seems very complicated.
Partially answered above, it was an art form for sure. I’d just work out its behaviors and sequences in my head ahead of time and go at it. The core assembly was essentially very complex After Effects sequences built from nested layered comps, each of which was built from 3D rendered mask and color and effect passes, from a 3D model based on an approved concept.
Right now I do your regular UI design for apps and websites, same as most monkeys. Looking for projects ATM, kinda slow. Busting it trying to get my website up, which will include deep dives into a lot of these skins. billybart.design is the website (domain just transferred so nothing there till later this week early next. I’m on Facebook as billybart.design and on instagram u/billybartdesign, all waiting for content to pour in over the next few weeks. I still design with The Skins Factory but most of my work these days is behind the scenes for long-time corporate clients. Really want to get back into the fun stuff via the synthesizer and VST market, that’s where fun hard surface modelling and UI come together.
A moderator seems to have removed my original root comment (I'm the artist of a few of these featured skins), trying to figure out why. If you can't read it, thank you for all the love <3
This falls under into the issue of simplified logos. Everything down to the font used is boring now. Its the current phase. Who knows…in a decade we may see a revival of overly busy and charming designs.
Downloading some fantasy package from someone's random geocities webpage that turned your cursor into a dragon and left click made the wings flap and right click made it breathe fire.
I downloaded a penis cursor. It also installed a bunch of viruses on my computer, but it whenever it moved over something you could click on the penis became erect.
it's a fundamentally flawed design idea because a cursor points to things and a penis changes where it points when it gets hard
but I still love that it exists
At least that's more ergonomic. Those simplified shapes are easier to work with, and reduce the mental fatigue for those who spend 8+ hours daily with their PCs.
Many of the complaints about simplification deal not with working on your own computer, but with the world around you. Go to Disneyland or Disney World. Road entrance signs as you approach the park that used to have colorful dramatic fanfare have now been simplified. Shop store signs that had giant characters on them have been reduced to just the letters. It’s not just your computer. The world around you is being simplified and sterilized.
My only devils advocate point in favor of the simplified menus, signs and general UI design of recent times is that it presumably has much more accessibility in mind. I have been browsing through old 90s software and my initial reaction was pure disdain for what we have lost. The artistic and creative menus of older software requires a lot of mental work to figure out what your even looking at. When things got reduced to being predictable and expected I’m sure productivity increased and accessibility too. I still selfishly would prefer UI menus to be an interesting creative endeavor instead of the current trends. Part of me says it would be better if we were mildly challenged to figure out what we are looking at and where the “close” button is located.
This actually brought me back to my winamp skin making days. Before you had to code anything.slap a template into Photoshop and go at it.
So much fun.until the equalizer. I still have the last version made by the original team on an old PC full of music.
I think you can still get the original Windows Media player on Windows 11 but it's quite hidden and you can get some visualizers but nothing like that OG visualizer in the post
> Now it's like they don't even try.
VLC has a lot of skins.
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html
https://www.deviantart.com/baegus/art/Winamp-Base-Winamp2-Classic-Skin-for-VLC-415016993
It's not that there aren't skins. It's that most of us have moved on from pirated MP3s to Spotify. There is less demand for sophisticated audio players.
They who?
Pretty much all of these were made by fans, for fun, for no money.
But if you're asking why companies don't allow people to customize as freely anymore, it's because the more you can customize, the more damage you can do.
These days the ecosystem has changed, and you either have to put your energy into policing a web store, or allowing everyone to download bitcoin miners and identity stealers and hope and pray your company doesn't get dragged through negative press and lawsuits.
It seems like I'm in the minority here but I'm more a fan of the simplified, streamlined UI design philosophy in modern applications. I mean I guess they look cool but I'd rather not have half my screen taken up with a digital art exhibit every time I try to view a video. I mean some of these are pretty impractical.
Plus, you can still get custom skins if you're using VLC or something. Of course they don't try with windows media player because it's about as dated as internet explorer.
pretty much this, they look "cool" obviously but they are not practical, if an app needs 90% of the screen just for "theme" purposes it's a badly designed app
Yeah, as much as everything has gotten more boring, I think the push towards design focused on readability and ease of use rather than visual interest is one for the better.
Yeah. Your basic default applications just need to be efficient and uncluttered. You can still always find 3rd party applications if you want fancy UI stuff. But I can't ever think of a time where I opened a video to view it and thought "yknow, what this really needs is a massive png of Noodle from Gorillaz on top of it"
I am too, except for excessive use of padding. Like browsing reddit vs old reddit is a completely different experience. Old reddit is way more information dense and usable. I see 14 posts on a 14" screen before needing to scroll.
I think it's the opposite. A lot of this was done simply because we could. Once the novelty disappeared people started to go back to making interfaces made for usability.
Like it's cool at looking back at those, but would you really want to use that now?
It's because of smaller screens. All apps are designed to look OK on mobile and tablets first. (where most of the users are today)
And often the desktop version is designed to look similar to the app version. For branding reasons, and ease of use when switching between mobile the desktop.
>Now it's like they don't even try.
Putting aside the whole "people stream content, not use offline media players anymore" and "people use their phones/tablets, not desktops/laptops for consuming media" issues aside.
Even as someone who used skins on Winamp back in the day, this type of stuff got old fast and it wasn't very long before I ended up on a more "minimilist" theme.
At the end of the day, most people just want their applications to do the thing they want and stay out of their way.
2004-2005 at the very least going off of the icons on the screen, San Andreas and Firefox were both released in 2004. MSN messenger 7.5 being on screen dials it in at 2005. Also, Windows XP didn’t exist in 1999.
Skinning windows xp was great, I loved having a totally different and unique looking pc to anyone else. Everything had skins back then. Winamp, the all seeing eye, ICQ, notepads I forget all about.... Loved it. Miss it.
Now is boring.
I always found the meaning behind it very positive, it was made to help prevent people getting into accidents on the way home.
I like to think it saved lives.
Back when you could connected a 360 to your computer and play your library on your TV with visualizations. You could even play your music while playing a game. It was the future.
A buddy who got a 360 early on showed me and I was in absolute awe. So of course I had to run an ethernet cable from the bedroom to my living room just so I could do that.
It took me ages to work out that I can't store my cd's on my xbox one and thought I was just being stupid.
Just turned a decent media centre back into a games machine.
You still can be you know, the feature is working even in window 11, just gotta download it on, I have it on my laptop with [Alienware Invader skin](https://wmpskinsarchive.neocities.org/) on mine
This is the one that does it for me. Stalking the Half-Life 2 website. Waiting for new tech demos. Magical hype moments.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20040630050233fw\_/http://www.half-life.com/media.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20040630050233fw_/http://www.half-life.com/media.html)
> What is STEAM?
>
> Steam is Valve's new way of getting games into your hands ASAP. Games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are all being made available through Steam.
>
> Steam games are automatically kept up-to-date with the latest content and revisions. Steam also includes an instant-message client which even works while you're in-game.
>
> Check out the full feature list, and install Steam today!
Downloading games over the internet?! I wonder if this will ever take off?
Most people don't know this but there was a stream feature of winamp and a server browser, people were streaming all sorts of stuff from movies and tv shows to porn. My favorite was a 24/7 stream of Penn and Tellers Bullshit!
I still use Winamp as of... [like right now \(check the date bottom right\)](https://i.imgur.com/Ub5RujR.png).
The reason is not nostalgia or anything, the reason is I haven't found in 2 decades anything better and more convenient to play your local library and be able to sort it etc. I tried other modern players they all had one missing feature or another. So why fix something that isn't broken?
Yea winamp is still relevant to many people. I eventually made the switch to Foobar2000 though. It takes a lot more effort to get Foobar to look and behave the way you want it to, but that's the beauty of it.. there are no limits to how much you can customize it.
Winamp is still the best, but hasn't been updated in years obviously.
There's a community effort to keep the program updated called [Wacup](https://getwacup.com/) if you didn't know already.
I remember spending a lot of time switching between themes and finding out that while they may have looked cool to 9 year old me, they weren't as functional as the default theme.
User interfaces have regressed to embarrassing levels lately.
These days, if a dev tried to animate something like that it would probably use 100% cpu and start stuttering
Oh it really badly has. Almost everything these days is made in electron, that is known to be laggy, have issues, memory leaks and more. Barely anybody makes anything in a different language besides games.
It’s actually Tinlicker X Robert Miles - Children, the original is just from Robert Miles but the version played in this video is from Tinlickers remix
>allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a skin file (WMZ or WMD) with crafted header information that is not properly handled during decompression, aka "Windows Media Player Code Execution Vulnerability Decompressing Skins."
So all on windows with their shitty decompression?
i actually still have this, its still possible to get this on windows 10 and 11 as its still built into the media player, even the skins. (you can download them here [Windows Media Player Skins Archive (neocities.org)](https://wmpskinsarchive.neocities.org/))
Shout out to Age of Mythology!
I never put much time into AOE. But AOM I spent thousands of hours playing as a kid. Then I'm a traitor because I used Winamp and the Last.fm plugin scrobbler
That song is 'Children' by Robert Miles.
A bit off-topic but it was in the UK top ten when the [Dunblane massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre) happened (weirdo with a gun walked into a primary school and killed 16 children, aged 5 and 6, plus their teacher).
During the top 10 countdown on the popular BBC TV show "Top of the Pops" the song's title was omitted out of respect for those lost. The Dunblane massacre was also the event that ultimately lead to the UK's tight gun laws. There hasn't been a school shooting in the UK since.
[удалено]
That's awesome! What a legacy.
All these skins started with **winamp**. You guys remember winamp? It used to be the shit when it came to mp3 player.
It really whipped the llama's ass
winamp was always far better than WMP. i miss winamp.
It's still around..
I'm using it right now, why do you miss it?
Wdym remember?! I still use v5.666 regularly. Runs just fine on win 10.
*Legacy* This hurts even me as dev
A living legend enters the comments edit: for peeps asking for the og comment by u/bbxboy666 >I made a bunch of the skins shown here, haha! I was once known on the internets as BBX and was the Creative Director and Lead Artist of The Skins Factory from 2002 until 2018. I made the Batman skin, the Alienware skins, a bunch of these things. Building these was probably the funnest job ever, wouldn’t even call it work. Glad to see people still enjoy them! Cheers! It was removed (I assume) because he later edited in links that would be considered self advertising
Ah yes the days when people care and you could really tell things were made with love now its just shat out on a production line like slop for a pig
It's not just that it was made with love, but this was also just the style of the day. I used to do web development in the early 2000s (I still do, but I used to, too) and things like shiny buttons, glass & glow effects, strange shapes, etc. were all things that made corporate clients happy because it made them stand out. It didn't last very long. People figured out fairly quickly that fancy looking UIs like this confuse a lot of people and design trends started to gravitate towards being predictable and comfortable for users, i.e. boring. This is good for users and thus good for sales but I won't deny I sometimes miss the more exciting and challenging designs of those days. It's kind of ironic because the browser CSS support of today would make building these UIs so much easier. I certainly don't miss slicing designs into tables with images.
When I see stuff people created from the early 2000’s I get a sense of happiness and a genuine “alive” feeling. Everything nowadays is very monotone and processed. It’s like the soul of everything is being sucked away over time.
With AI, that feeling will just get stronger.
Thank you for your work! I remember having the Halo skin. Great stuff.
Well I thank you for your work, I remember the name and how much time I spent playing with these listening to Evanescence over and over.
For me, it was Hoobastank lol *🎶I've been crawling in the dark, looking for the answers🎶*
Amazing, Can I ask how you made them? were they made in 3D software?
They all started out as sketches for the client, then depending upon the skin in question, were either airbrushed in Photoshop (for the early and very simple ones) or (for the later, more complex ones) modelled in Modo, rendered in passes in Cinema 4D, then assembled into nested camps in After Effects. I’d work out the sequences and then run separate 3D render passes for gloss, reflections, LED lights, decals etc so I could tweak any aspect of the look in assembly, and spit out numbered png files and reassemble those final frames along with control states and font references etc in giant layered PSD files.
My man legit right here
You sir, are a legend. Amazing work!
all that work to get the product to be something you’re happy with. love your work dude, what an era.
Did clients such as Alienware approach your studio to have these created then? What would that set them back?
They would come to us, many clients on Microsoft's recommendation. The more complex ones we'd charge anywhere between 30-40k, split between myself and the studio.
Also very curious. Please don’t tell us it’s flash 🤬
I def used some of those, I def remember using the Alienware one, which I found very sleek. I miss that era where everyone’s computer and phone were different and an extension of someone’s taste. Now it all look so sterile….
Oh man, small world 😓
Thank you!
Thank you for your service sir
Come back 🥺
If any studio or company wants to pay me for the time, gladly!
You brought me a lot of joy in college - thanks bro
Wow, that is super interesting. Care to explain in short how the process of creating skin was made? Those animations, and actions when you click on things. Seems very complicated.
Partially answered above, it was an art form for sure. I’d just work out its behaviors and sequences in my head ahead of time and go at it. The core assembly was essentially very complex After Effects sequences built from nested layered comps, each of which was built from 3D rendered mask and color and effect passes, from a 3D model based on an approved concept.
the Alienware one caught my eye. clean layout and nice animations!
no way!!!! i remember the bbx skins!! what a legend, damn reddit sometimes still amazes me! 🤘🤘🤘 take your award my man
My high school self thanks you for your service.
I love you for making these so much. They were such a cool little piece of my childhood.
damn, your work was an intrinsic part of my childhood. Thank you so much for making these!!
How did you feel about WinAmp?
mama didn't raise no llama
But it really whips the llama ass
Have my babies
Loved these in the early 2000's, thanks man!
woah! If you do not mind me asking, what you do now?
Right now I do your regular UI design for apps and websites, same as most monkeys. Looking for projects ATM, kinda slow. Busting it trying to get my website up, which will include deep dives into a lot of these skins. billybart.design is the website (domain just transferred so nothing there till later this week early next. I’m on Facebook as billybart.design and on instagram u/billybartdesign, all waiting for content to pour in over the next few weeks. I still design with The Skins Factory but most of my work these days is behind the scenes for long-time corporate clients. Really want to get back into the fun stuff via the synthesizer and VST market, that’s where fun hard surface modelling and UI come together.
You did amazing work!
Some remembers \^\^
posting in legendary thread
No way! I loved your skins growing up!
Thankyou
Thank you, from my teenage years
Thank you!
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A moderator seems to have removed my original root comment (I'm the artist of a few of these featured skins), trying to figure out why. If you can't read it, thank you for all the love <3
Now it's like they don't even try.
This falls under into the issue of simplified logos. Everything down to the font used is boring now. Its the current phase. Who knows…in a decade we may see a revival of overly busy and charming designs.
BRING BACK SILLY CURSORS
Downloading some fantasy package from someone's random geocities webpage that turned your cursor into a dragon and left click made the wings flap and right click made it breathe fire.
And added 3 toolbars to your browser
Omg.. the toolbars, the horror... I had all but forgotten
[NSFW](https://imgur.com/a/9CEegll)
Very NSFW.
MOOORE TOOLBARS
Don't forget Bonzi Buddy! 🎵Dai-sy Dai-sy...
PTSD unlocked.
I want skeleton hand cursor!!
I need my dragon scimitar cursor
I downloaded a penis cursor. It also installed a bunch of viruses on my computer, but it whenever it moved over something you could click on the penis became erect.
it's a fundamentally flawed design idea because a cursor points to things and a penis changes where it points when it gets hard but I still love that it exists
they never went away. you can install one right now if you like
> Look what they took from us 😭 > That's literally still there, you just have to turn it on > THEY STOLE EVERYTHING GOOD 😭😭😭
https://i.redd.it/l2dddfc2shqa1.jpg
please no, I don't want to deal with my grandparents cursor and search bar viruses again
At least that's more ergonomic. Those simplified shapes are easier to work with, and reduce the mental fatigue for those who spend 8+ hours daily with their PCs.
Many of the complaints about simplification deal not with working on your own computer, but with the world around you. Go to Disneyland or Disney World. Road entrance signs as you approach the park that used to have colorful dramatic fanfare have now been simplified. Shop store signs that had giant characters on them have been reduced to just the letters. It’s not just your computer. The world around you is being simplified and sterilized.
My only devils advocate point in favor of the simplified menus, signs and general UI design of recent times is that it presumably has much more accessibility in mind. I have been browsing through old 90s software and my initial reaction was pure disdain for what we have lost. The artistic and creative menus of older software requires a lot of mental work to figure out what your even looking at. When things got reduced to being predictable and expected I’m sure productivity increased and accessibility too. I still selfishly would prefer UI menus to be an interesting creative endeavor instead of the current trends. Part of me says it would be better if we were mildly challenged to figure out what we are looking at and where the “close” button is located.
and whatever happened to vizualisers? I miss them.
You can get Winamp, it's being developed again, there are skin libraries online, and it also has awesome visualizers.
it really does whip the llama's ass
This actually brought me back to my winamp skin making days. Before you had to code anything.slap a template into Photoshop and go at it. So much fun.until the equalizer. I still have the last version made by the original team on an old PC full of music.
I think you can still get the original Windows Media player on Windows 11 but it's quite hidden and you can get some visualizers but nothing like that OG visualizer in the post
https://github.com/milkdrop2077/MilkDrop3 milkdrop is still a thing.
> Now it's like they don't even try. VLC has a lot of skins. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.html https://www.deviantart.com/baegus/art/Winamp-Base-Winamp2-Classic-Skin-for-VLC-415016993
It's not that there aren't skins. It's that most of us have moved on from pirated MP3s to Spotify. There is less demand for sophisticated audio players.
I agree
They who? Pretty much all of these were made by fans, for fun, for no money. But if you're asking why companies don't allow people to customize as freely anymore, it's because the more you can customize, the more damage you can do. These days the ecosystem has changed, and you either have to put your energy into policing a web store, or allowing everyone to download bitcoin miners and identity stealers and hope and pray your company doesn't get dragged through negative press and lawsuits.
It seems like I'm in the minority here but I'm more a fan of the simplified, streamlined UI design philosophy in modern applications. I mean I guess they look cool but I'd rather not have half my screen taken up with a digital art exhibit every time I try to view a video. I mean some of these are pretty impractical. Plus, you can still get custom skins if you're using VLC or something. Of course they don't try with windows media player because it's about as dated as internet explorer.
pretty much this, they look "cool" obviously but they are not practical, if an app needs 90% of the screen just for "theme" purposes it's a badly designed app
Yeah, as much as everything has gotten more boring, I think the push towards design focused on readability and ease of use rather than visual interest is one for the better.
Yeah. Your basic default applications just need to be efficient and uncluttered. You can still always find 3rd party applications if you want fancy UI stuff. But I can't ever think of a time where I opened a video to view it and thought "yknow, what this really needs is a massive png of Noodle from Gorillaz on top of it"
Lol, that one made me laugh the most. "Where are the buttons? Why is 95% of this UI dedicated to just a picture of Noodle?"
I am too, except for excessive use of padding. Like browsing reddit vs old reddit is a completely different experience. Old reddit is way more information dense and usable. I see 14 posts on a 14" screen before needing to scroll.
Everyone decided that Apple had the only design language that mattered, and then this is what happened. We lost anything that was fun.
I think it's the opposite. A lot of this was done simply because we could. Once the novelty disappeared people started to go back to making interfaces made for usability. Like it's cool at looking back at those, but would you really want to use that now?
It's because of smaller screens. All apps are designed to look OK on mobile and tablets first. (where most of the users are today) And often the desktop version is designed to look similar to the app version. For branding reasons, and ease of use when switching between mobile the desktop.
>Now it's like they don't even try. Putting aside the whole "people stream content, not use offline media players anymore" and "people use their phones/tablets, not desktops/laptops for consuming media" issues aside. Even as someone who used skins on Winamp back in the day, this type of stuff got old fast and it wasn't very long before I ended up on a more "minimilist" theme. At the end of the day, most people just want their applications to do the thing they want and stay out of their way.
2005 was dope
Damn I was thinking 99
2004-2005 at the very least going off of the icons on the screen, San Andreas and Firefox were both released in 2004. MSN messenger 7.5 being on screen dials it in at 2005. Also, Windows XP didn’t exist in 1999.
Skinning windows xp was great, I loved having a totally different and unique looking pc to anyone else. Everything had skins back then. Winamp, the all seeing eye, ICQ, notepads I forget all about.... Loved it. Miss it. Now is boring.
Definitely not 99, that's at least Windows XP (released 2001).
R.I.P Robert Miles.
Man this song hits so hard. I just recently had my kids listen to it, and cried when I found out he died. :(
Very fitting, he died in Ibiza, forever DJ'ing
The meaning behind the song is sad as well
I always found the meaning behind it very positive, it was made to help prevent people getting into accidents on the way home. I like to think it saved lives.
He died? Noooo way
*Robert Miles died in Ibiza, Spain, on 9 May 2017 at the age of 47 after a short battle with stage 4 metastatic cancer.* R.I.P. 😢 and fuck cancer!
That's so young. Thanks for letting me know. Fuck cancer
RIP Robert Miles. Had this absolute anthem playing on the way home from work today.
I've heard this sampled many times over the years and never looked into where it was from. RIP
I’ve been trying to figure out what song this is since I was literally a child. Glad I finally figured it out, RIP R. Miles
Oh damn. I didn't know he passed away. I'm not really a fan of EDM, but I always enjoyed his music because of how serene it was.
[удалено]
Back when you could connected a 360 to your computer and play your library on your TV with visualizations. You could even play your music while playing a game. It was the future.
Oh man I forgot about that! I loved pumping some metal and playing halo when I was a kid.
A buddy who got a 360 early on showed me and I was in absolute awe. So of course I had to run an ethernet cable from the bedroom to my living room just so I could do that.
You could also just plug an iPod into it and do the same
The freedom we once had. Now we rent everything and it all sucks.
We? Matey, you don’t know the first thing about freedom
I downloaded a car once. Once.
You wouldn't
Hell yeah, I remember playing blink 182 or sublime on my walkman with headphones while I played tony hawk pro skater on ps1
I remember you could copy CD to your Xbox. The hours I spent playing Gears Of War to Nine Inch Nails as a teen.
It took me ages to work out that I can't store my cd's on my xbox one and thought I was just being stupid. Just turned a decent media centre back into a games machine.
For me the song did that more than the skins. Although the skins were pretty damn cool RIP Robert Miles
reminds me of the days when you picked up the newspaper and the headline was "9/11 HASN'T HAPPENED YET"
Ah the days when newschannels didn't have that breaking news red bar across the bottom ALL DAY LONG
Youre welcome!
Thx for this. I could cry how Happy i was in that age.
It’s shocking to think about the difference between our happiness then and now
You still can be you know, the feature is working even in window 11, just gotta download it on, I have it on my laptop with [Alienware Invader skin](https://wmpskinsarchive.neocities.org/) on mine
I was just telling someone how customization isn't fun anymore. Skins used to be such a hygiene factor for software. I miss it.
A friend of mine made a Vanilla Coke skin for Winamp, simply because she liked the drink so much. Computers need more bumper sticker options again.
WINAMP! IT REALLY WHIPS THE LLAMAS ASS!
Half life 2 with a counter for the release
This is the one that does it for me. Stalking the Half-Life 2 website. Waiting for new tech demos. Magical hype moments. [https://web.archive.org/web/20040630050233fw\_/http://www.half-life.com/media.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20040630050233fw_/http://www.half-life.com/media.html)
> What is STEAM? > > Steam is Valve's new way of getting games into your hands ASAP. Games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are all being made available through Steam. > > Steam games are automatically kept up-to-date with the latest content and revisions. Steam also includes an instant-message client which even works while you're in-game. > > Check out the full feature list, and install Steam today! Downloading games over the internet?! I wonder if this will ever take off?
Ahh, the 2000s. When UI designers had just discovered curved gradients and everything was weirdly organic shapes for no reason.
More inner bevel and drop shadow! Everywhere! Always! [*MORE!*](https://youtu.be/uNy_MLr8mXA?feature=shared&t=15)
That noodle one looked fun. Reminded me of the early 2000s when their website was an interactive point and click version of kong studios.
don't forget the shockwave flash game where you drove the buggy from 19-2000
"WinAmp! WinAmp! It really kicks the llamas ass!"
Wasn't it "whip the llama's ass"?
Yes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF-nRS\_CWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF-nRS_CWM)
yes. this is the original song by wesley willis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JntDcqOxMsM
WinAmp >>>> Windows Media Player
Up to V3.2 IIRC, from that point on foobar2k all the way.
WinAmp gang rise up!
WinAmp skins and visualizations were the bomb back in the day.
Most people don't know this but there was a stream feature of winamp and a server browser, people were streaming all sorts of stuff from movies and tv shows to porn. My favorite was a 24/7 stream of Penn and Tellers Bullshit!
I still use Winamp as of... [like right now \(check the date bottom right\)](https://i.imgur.com/Ub5RujR.png). The reason is not nostalgia or anything, the reason is I haven't found in 2 decades anything better and more convenient to play your local library and be able to sort it etc. I tried other modern players they all had one missing feature or another. So why fix something that isn't broken?
Yea winamp is still relevant to many people. I eventually made the switch to Foobar2000 though. It takes a lot more effort to get Foobar to look and behave the way you want it to, but that's the beauty of it.. there are no limits to how much you can customize it.
Winamp is still the best, but hasn't been updated in years obviously. There's a community effort to keep the program updated called [Wacup](https://getwacup.com/) if you didn't know already.
WinAmp [announced](https://about.winamp.com/press/article/winamp-open-source-code) that they are going open source.
Winamp is back and released a new version today
"Winamp exclusive content"? "My fanzone"? 😤🤚 not my winamp NFTs? what did they do to my boy
hey hey who remembers sonique?!
Nice try Microsoft, I'll still be using Winamp
It whips the llamas ass
memory unlocked 
I remember spending a lot of time switching between themes and finding out that while they may have looked cool to 9 year old me, they weren't as functional as the default theme.
Shoutout to Age of Mythology.
Can't wait for Retold.
Same!!
People talk about AOE II being the best but IMO Age of Mythology is the GOAT
We once had a choice in our player skins… amazing times, 90’s baby until I die!
The good ol days!!!
Damn, I miss all that lol
User interfaces have regressed to embarrassing levels lately. These days, if a dev tried to animate something like that it would probably use 100% cpu and start stuttering
Oh it really badly has. Almost everything these days is made in electron, that is known to be laggy, have issues, memory leaks and more. Barely anybody makes anything in a different language besides games.
And when they make games, they use Unity. Which is known to be laggy, have issues, memory leaks, and more. Can't win anymore.
Music sauce? For the nostalgia...
Robert Miles - Children
It’s actually Tinlicker X Robert Miles - Children, the original is just from Robert Miles but the version played in this video is from Tinlickers remix
[Robert Miles - Children](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvyCbevQbtI)
I might be even older, cause I remember Sonique having all sort of crazy skins before WMP, while Winamp was the more well-behaved brother
Nostalgia
Take me back!
There is a total of : 0 reason why this should'nt be a thing today .
https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/product_id-1032/Microsoft-Windows-Media-Player.html CTRL-F "skin".
>allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a skin file (WMZ or WMD) with crafted header information that is not properly handled during decompression, aka "Windows Media Player Code Execution Vulnerability Decompressing Skins." So all on windows with their shitty decompression?
Those were the worry free days
Damn dude im past gen i think
r/nostalgia
I was like “they better show that green guy!!!” Was not disappointed
back in the day, nice to reminisce, never thought I’d miss that dialup tone, Winamp but I preferred Sonique due to the races skins!!
Man, you just unlocked some forgotten memories🥹
Where is quake 3 skin?
We really were spoiled back then, skins like this would cost many $$ these days..
I didn't even know you could do that back in the day...WTF. I missed out :(
i actually still have this, its still possible to get this on windows 10 and 11 as its still built into the media player, even the skins. (you can download them here [Windows Media Player Skins Archive (neocities.org)](https://wmpskinsarchive.neocities.org/))
Shout out to Age of Mythology! I never put much time into AOE. But AOM I spent thousands of hours playing as a kid. Then I'm a traitor because I used Winamp and the Last.fm plugin scrobbler
Back when people cared about UIs and such.
It felt like we were living in the future in 05
Sigh. Windows xp was best windows.
the time where things had character. now everything looks the same and boring
Coolest thing they had was media player and they messed it up
That song is 'Children' by Robert Miles. A bit off-topic but it was in the UK top ten when the [Dunblane massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre) happened (weirdo with a gun walked into a primary school and killed 16 children, aged 5 and 6, plus their teacher). During the top 10 countdown on the popular BBC TV show "Top of the Pops" the song's title was omitted out of respect for those lost. The Dunblane massacre was also the event that ultimately lead to the UK's tight gun laws. There hasn't been a school shooting in the UK since.