So your wondering what is going on in the world of Skin Consortium, Winamp and ClassicPro?
Here are some highlights...
Skin Consortium
Registered members
We now have over 10,000 registered forum members. The forums have been very quiet for roughly 2 years. So your guess is as good as ours why all these users register but never take part in the forum. We have the occasional spammer but they are normally swiftly blocked.
Featured skins
We're looking to increase the frequency of news on the site and need your help. If you've created a ClassicPro skin in the past
or any other modern skin recently (+- 2 years) and would like it featured on the main page send me a PM so that we can do a mini review on it
Winamp
For the last 2 years, development for Winamp (for Windows) have become really stale. The focus for the developers seems to be focused only on the new Android Winamp app. This isn't necessary a bad thing since Nullsoft had to do something to stay with the times and these days there's lots of money to be made on the mobile market. They also introduced some nice features for the mobile app like album washer that will hopefully flow through to the desktop version soon.
It's not all bad news for our desktop users though. Nullsoft have released a new, completely rewritten, version for Mac called "Winamp for Mac Sync".
Although you might be thinking that this doesn't help our Windows users that much there might be something special someday soon.
This is just speculation but we might see Winamp for Mac written in such a way that it will be easy to port to Windows and Linux. That might be why the Windows development is standing still at the moment.
They also need some sort of application for Windows 8 touch screen devices. Hopefully we'll see how everything pans out soon.
Who knows - We might see a complete new Winamp 6 somewhere in the future that hopefully still supports all your favorite skins
ClassicPro
Plugin downloads
The ClassicPro plugin have now been downloaded almost
3.5 million times on our site, Winamp.com and Softpedia.com.
Skins downloads
ClassicPro skins have racked up more than a whopping
13.5 million downloads on Winamp.com alone since the first release in 2008!
Here are some stats for all the ClassicPro skinners on Winamp.com:
Future plans
ClassicPro version 2 is almost ready for a preview release. The new version brings a brand new layout engine that allows the interface to be more useful on very small sizes and fullscreen sizes.
The multi-taskers that like to snap their windows side by side in Windows 7+ will also be glad to hear that this is finally implemented for cPro2 skins.
The File Info Viewer also have a new layout that allows it to better utilize the horizontal landscape. The font size can also be changed by the user and there's more information available to toggle on/off too.
Those who like to use Winamp fullscreen will also like that, like normal Windows frames, the skin will now drop its left/right and bottom sides when it's in fullscreen mode.
The Browser and BrowserPro tabs are now removed and a new Reader tab was added. This Reader combines the most of the features of the other two.
All the Reader providers for the auto navigate list was also updated and now includes Facebook, Twitter, AlbumArtExchange, MetroLyrics and much more.
For the skinners, the new engine will offer them easier color theme compatible skins. Some of the previous hacks for creating simple effects like a shadow are also incorporated now.
Less time will now also be spend on creating separate component buttons. For example, the video drawer and video tab both will now use the same status bar + buttons.
The ClassicPro.xml file now have more options for custom font styles.
But remember that this new layout isn't suppose to replace cPro1 skins
. The idea was to offer a more modern layout that might be more user friendly than the "Classic Winamp"-like layout.
We haven't forgotten about cPro1 skins though. The cPro1 engine have also received some fine tunes and bugs were fixed.
The BrowserPro tab also have the new list of providers from the Reader tab in cPro2.
For those people who have made use of the ALT + click Open button to load all the current folder files will also be glad to see that all the files with the same extension as the current playing file is now loaded (not just *.mp3 all the time).
You can now also play the previous or next file in the current folder by just holding the ALT button and clicking on prev/next button. Very useful if your watching a series episode and want to play the next episode.
This preview release should see the light of day later this month
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