I am going to assume that you some basic
skills in creating files and folders.
STEP 1 Create Your Skin Folder
First your going to create a folder that will
contain all the files and folders associated
with your skin. You have to have a place for
your the files that you are going to create
and your making a Winamp 3 skin so the fire up
your windows explorer and go find your Winamp3/skins folder.
Create a folder in your skins directory, Name it
whatever you want. Whatever you name it, is what
will show in the skins menu when you open up winamp.
It is going to be your skin.
STEP 2 Your First XML File.
O.k. now you've got your skin folder. We need to put something in it.
The Skin.xml
First let me explain a little how the xml heirarchy works.
Think of the xml files that your going to create as a
chain or links on a webpage. The first xml file called
the skin.xml points to the files that you create, in addition
to the default files that make the skin run in Winamp 3.
And in turn some of the xml files that you create later
will point or link to other xml files. In some cases it
is manatory that certain files link together.
This is the case with the element and normal files.
But we will talk about that later.
For now what we need to be concerned about is making sure
that we have the right files being pointed to in the skin xml.
Lets make that file.
The best and easiest way of making the skin.xml is to copy
and paste the info from the default skin xml. I use a
text editor that allows me to have multiple files open at the same time.
It's easier to make the connection between files if you
can see how they are linking together.
Open up the default skin.xml and paste all the information
into a new text file.
Lets look at what we have.
[?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?]
[WinampAbstractionLayer version="0.7"]
[skininfo]
[version]0.01[/version]
[name]My skin[/name]
[comment]what for?[/comment]
[author]It's Me, Who else[/author]
[email]me@coolskins.com[/email]
[homepage]coolskins.com[/homepage]
[screenshot][/screenshot]
[/skininfo]
[include file="xml/studio.xml"/]
[include file="xml/player.xml"/]
[include file="xml/eq.xml"/]
[include file="xml/thinger.xml"/]
[include file="xml/minibrowser.xml"/]
[include file="xml/components.xml"/]
[include file="xml/scripts.xml"/]
[/WinampAbstractionLayer]
In the code above you will see some tags that are standard tags.
For the purpose of this tutorial we are going to skip the first
and second and ending tag. All you need to know is that they have
to be in there. If you want an explanation of them. There is info
on several sites listed in the sticky threads on the Winamp.com forums.
The first section of tags is are self explanatory. This changes
with a bit with each new version of Winamp changes a bit.
But it means the same. Skin info. What you put in here is
displayed in the skin switcher of Winamp 3.
The tags we are concerned with are these.
[include file="xml/studio.xml"/]
[include file="xml/player.xml"/]
[include file="xml/eq.xml"/]
[include file="xml/thinger.xml"/]
[include file="xml/minibrowser.xml"/]
[include file="xml/components.xml"/]
[include file="xml/scripts.xml"/]
Each of these tags point to another .xml file. We are creating
a new skin from scratch so we need to change most of these tags.
The main thing here is to realize that this is where Winamp 3
gets all of it's inital information. We need to change all
of the tags except 1 in this section of tags. All of the
tags except [include file="xml/player.xml"/] needs to be changed.
The reason we need to change these is that they point/link
to specific files in the skin.
Important stuff here
[include file="xml/studio.xml"/]
Gets changed to: [include file="../default/xml/studio.xml"/]
What this does is direct the Winamp to the default xml file.
You need to add ..default/ to the beginning of all the tags,
with the exception of this one [include file="xml/player.xml"/]
Which we will be creating next.
So if you've understood all this. You should have changed your
tags and now your file info looks like this.
[?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?]
[WinampAbstractionLayer version="0.7"]
[skininfo]
[version]0.01[/version]
[name]My skin[/name]
[comment]what for?[/comment]
[author]It's Me, Who else[/author]
[email]me@coolskins.com[/email]
[homepage]coolskins.com[/homepage]
[screenshot][/screenshot]
[/skininfo]
[include file="../default/xml/studio.xml"/]
[include file="xml/player.xml"/]
[include file="../default/xml/eq.xml"/]
[include file="../default/xml/thinger.xml"/]
[include file="../default/xml/minibrowser.xml"/]
[include file="../default/xml/components.xml"/]
[include file="../default/xml/scripts.xml"/]
[/WinampAbstractionLayer]
Your done: Save this file as skin.xml in the folder that
you created and your on your way. We have told the skin
engine to use all the default xml files except player.xml.
If you understood nothing. Use the text box below to copy and paste
the code into your skin.xml.
A short pointer lesson. Breaking down a single tag.
[include file="..default/xml/thinger.xml"/]
include file=
Just what it reads. Tells the skin engine to include the following file in the tag.
..default/xml/thinger.xml"
Tells the skin engine that the file it wants to include
is in the default skin folder. In a folder called xml.
And the file name is thinger.xml
Thats about it for this section. If you understand this
then the next part is a breeze. If you don't understand this
then it will all come together in the next section.
Next page ->
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