Skinning Editorial
I greet you, he, who enters here.
As you might have already found, a skinning section has appeared in Hugi for the first time. What is the reason for its appearance on the pages of a diskmag dedicated to the demoscene? Hugi stopped being a pure "scene magazine" quite a long ago, it has many enough articles dedicated to computer graphics, politics, science and so on. For example, in the previous issue the Literature corner was moved into a standalone section.
In our daily life applications with changeable interface are not somewhat extraordinary: many of you probably use the audioplayer (and even videoplayer from the recent time) Winamp or one of its numerous clones, existing for almost any modern OS, which can work with multimedia. Internet Explorer has to share the place of "default browser" with Opera, NeoPlanet, Mozilla and lots of less known brothers on the Net; ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and many other messengers free the road to Trillian; WindowsXP gains popularity… Samples are numerous and deal not with Windows only! Linux, wrongly "engraved" BeOS...
So, what will this section be filled with in the future? First of all these are interviews with those who make "skins". They could be famous designers, who showed their talent many times, as well as "rising stars". Sure, there are reviews of various programs and interviews with their authors, some tutorials and manuals.
So, what interesting things could be found in this issue of the diskmag?
- Skinning in our life - a short introductionary article. It may be useful to those who have no idea about what skins are and what applications support this technology. It contains a small list of web sites, where you could get more information on the subject.
- Winamp 2.XX skinning tutorial by SacRat and Imagine, - a very detailed tutorial on Winamp 2 skin creation, which actuality hasn't come less even with the release of Winamp 3 final. While working on my last Winamp skin I understood that information which can be found on the official site and in numerous tutorials created by fans is not enough; besides, authors often forget about various tricks and contrivances skinners use. Then I decided to create this tutorial. It was written mainly for myself, but soon I understood that a work of that kind could be useful for much more people. With the help of Mary Gileva (Imagine) and Fyre, who allowed me to include his specification into the manual, I managed to create, as far as I think, the best Winamp 2 skinning tutorial. You may be proud if you find something better. But I doubt whether you can (it sounds presumptuously, but it's true: I tried). If you wish to download its complete and updated version in PDF format, visit my Deviantart homepage (URL is below) or use the direct link.
- A small review of quite a popular MP3/OGG player CoolPlayer, having in spite of its small (less than 200Kb) size quite good features. It's not so powerful as even Winamp 2, but it's not the aim: freeform skins (and there are lots of real masterpieces!), equalizer, good quality "engine", fast working speed, multitagger (for those who don't know: ability to edit tags for a group of files), WAV writer, low cost (USD 0 :wink:) and not only that…
- Interview with Nick Egorov from Gladiators Software, one of the authors of Aston - a modern shell replacer, which is a good "opponent" for Literstep, Talisman and other classical software of that kind. Being a relatively young project Aston already has quite a big "army" of fans and admirers due to its features, showing him from the better size than its rivals.
- Interview with Diwa Fernandez, also known as Poetess, whose magnificent poems, pictures and skins are in my humble opinion (and not only in my opinion) one of the best on www.deviantart.com, far from the smallest NetArt community.
- Interview with C-Specter, a young and talented winamp skinner from Germany, whose works were marked at www.deviantart.com and www.winamp.com more than once.
- Interview with Smar, a great Winamp skinner from the Netherlands.
- Interview with famous T-K brothers, whose works are known to many Winamp users.
- Few words about Jocpoc, a creator of some of my most favorite Winamp skins.
The editor of the section (at least now; maybe a more worthy person will be found in future) is me, Taras Brizitsky, more known as SacRat, a student from Russia. Working with the programs, allowing to change their appearance is not new to me. I started being interested in that quite long ago, even in times when the only known OS to me was the late Windows 95 and the only way to change its appearance was to install one of the old versions of Windows Blinds (and then reinstalling the system, finally killed by WB in a couple of days). A bit later I started making my first skin collection for Winamp and then creating skins myself (having nothing for it but a graphical editor and a hundred of skins of other authors). To the present moment I've already got a set of skinnable applications I use constantly, but I don't stop at this: people always want something better. ;) Hope, the time spent on reading the articles from this section wouldn't seem wasted for you…
Btw, I thought it could be a good idea to make a Winamp 2.X skin specially for Hugi to promote the magazine, so here it goes. This one should not only work with Winamp 2.X, but with most of its clones.
Remember that Hugi never was a "diskmag in itself"; we're always opened to public. So, if you have any ideas, whishes and so on about this (or any other) section or you want to take part in its creation: writing articles, interviews, creating background graphics, music and so on - let us know.
Taras Brizitsky a.k.a. SacRat, Skinning section editor.
http://sacrat.deviantart.com/