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Windows Media Player Skins


wyopokes2

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I have a little pet peeve of making everything on my desktop match. I usually try to keep the icons, login screen, wallpaper, gadgets, and start bar in a general thing. As a college student I am often doing some form of homework and studying and I like to listen to music while I do. I usually use my laptop to listen cause I'm too lazy to buy an iHome. I usually listen to Zune, but occasionally listen to Windows Media Player (WMP). I always come across cool skins for WMP online and a few days ago I got the desire to take a crack at making one myself. I was hesitant in the past about making one because it requires quite a bit of knowledge about writing code. After having been through a few semesters of classes and feeling more comfortable I decided to try it.

In the early stages I played around with putting the actual buttons on a logo. This was cool in a way, but I really wasn't feeling the look of it after I stared at it long enough. It was also hard to incorporate the name of the artist and song

Here

After looking around online a bit more I saw that making a sig-esque type player might work. I then converted a sig that I had made a few years back and tried to make it into something that looked more like a media player. I came up with this (mind that it lacks any features because it is just hover image. I never took a screenshot)

Take 2

I actually really liked the look of this, but again my matching problem came into effect. It clashed with my icons and gadgets. Mainly the with the gadget clocks that I make (example of Oregon lime green).

I decided to try incorporate the look of the gadget clocks into it so they would blend. Thus this was born:

Take 3

I wish I could have called it quits there, but I had a heck of time getting the edges of the circle transparent using hex color clipping. It was always too fuzzy and ended up leaving a ring of the hex color. (If anybody can help me out there I would greatly appreciate it). So for the final version I had to go away from circles and go for more of a square box. The masking doesn't appear to be as much of a problem with this type. In the "Suggestion Box" in the "Lounge" I saw people complaining that there's nothing original in the concept forum. :therock: I thought I would open up a few request of the final version posted below. Let me stress two main words from the previous sentence. Few and Below. These take quite a long time to put together and I have a pretty efficient method using the template below. As long as they take to put together, I do think they look pretty neat and are a nice change to the default skins. I am opening up requests, but for now 1 per person unless it's a complete flop and the lone requester asks for a couple. You can go to my site to dowload any of them http://cattelandesign.weebly.com/wmp-skins.html. Without further ado, here are examples:

hawaii_wmp_skin_by_wyopokes2-d376vlz.pngwyoming_wmp_skin_by_wyopokes2-d3774jk.png

iowa_state_wmp_skin_by_wyopokes2-d376vyt.pngoregon_ducks_wmp_theme_by_wyopokes2-d376wei.png

north_carolina_tarheels_wmp_by_wyopokes2-d379f7c.pngduke_wmp_skin_by_wyopokes2-d377cm7.png

 

 

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Wow really cool here man, I'm sorry I don't know how to help you out, but its a great idea. Could I get one for Duke University? Thanks man if you can't do it I would completely understand.

duke_wmp_skin_by_wyopokes2-d377cm7.png

Here's the download page. Please let me know if it works correctly. I warn you that I'm still having clipping problems, so it will look best on a light background :/

 

 

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How Do you Use These?

You should just be able to download the file, double click, and it should bring up WMP. You might have to start the song in library view and then switch to skin the skin via skin chooser.

Edit: I found out you must unzip the file before you try to use it. Otherwise it will not work properly

Another edit: I just put the .wmz files on my website which makes it a million times easier to use

 

 

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bump :rolleyes: 1 request is it?

I don't think there are a ton of WMP users running around. Even of those who don't have iTunes, like me, I think it's a minority. I use Zune.

But this is definitely well done -- nice to see the progression. The finished product looks very nice.

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