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elwenRandom poll for the several Winamp skinners on my flist. (I've wondered this for a while.)
Do you know what the easter egg titlebar is? If so, what do you do with it?
a. No. What?
b. Yes. But I just copy the normal titlebar over.
c. Yes. I like to put snarky comments there.
d. Yes. I use it to provide an alternative titlebar.
e. Yes. (Other.)
It's things like this that have always made me think there should be some kind of community for anime Winamp skinners... though I guess most of them are inactive these days. =/
Looking through skins I've downloaded, I think the vast majority of people who make anime skins would answer (a) or (b). Though there were a few rare ones that were in on the secret. Personally, my answer is generally (c), sometimes (d).
...what? You want me to tell you what it is, too? Fine.
Okay, so what is the easger egg titlebar?
The easter egg titlebar is an alternative titlebar that activates when you type the following in the main window of Winamp:
N U L (esc) L (esc) S O F T
[You have to press escape after the L's because L is the shortcut key for "Load".]
The alternate titlebar is only for the maximized window. There are active and inactive versions. In titlebar.bmp, they occupy the bottom two rows -- in the baseskin, these are the bars that say "It really whips the llama's ass!"
Typing in "NULLSOFT" is a toggle that turns the easter egg on and off. (I.e. type it again to go back to the original titlebar.) Once it's on, it will stay on even if you switch skins. [My version of Winamp is being a bit flaky with that; sometimes it still shows the normal titlebar if I'm still in the skin browser, but if I click on the main window it'll load the easter egg.]
Now, if you're like me, you will immediately go through your entire library of Winamp skins to see who does and doesn't skin the easter egg. XD;
It's actually pretty enlightening. It seems like a lot of skinners don't know what it is, which is surprising -- or maybe not, if they learned by reverse-engineering the baseskin like I did, rather than from a tutorial. (And I wonder how many tutorials talk about it, either.)
[Warning: skinning technobabble ahead.]
Turns out people who don't know what the heck it is tend to do one of two things: (1) just copy the normal titlebars there (GOOD) or (2) leave it blank (BAD). Back in the day when I didn't know what it was, I would sometimes make a titlebar-ish thing, with a funny message (imitating the llama's ass quote) but which didn't flow into the rest of the main window, which was problematic because usually my skin titles don't fit into the titlebar area, so you'd see the chopped off bottom of them. Even earlier, I left it "blank", by which I meant I just let the underlying template I used show through. So you can trace exactly when I went from using the pain-in-the-ass official baseskin to the super-nice template I use now.
...okay, I just had to get all that out after struggling for 30 minutes to fit 2 lines of text into the 14 pixel space and coming up with a clever transition for inactive to active. Yes, I spend a lot of time on my easter eggs even though 99.9% of people who download my skins will never see them.
Do you know what the easter egg titlebar is? If so, what do you do with it?
a. No. What?
b. Yes. But I just copy the normal titlebar over.
c. Yes. I like to put snarky comments there.
d. Yes. I use it to provide an alternative titlebar.
e. Yes. (Other.)
It's things like this that have always made me think there should be some kind of community for anime Winamp skinners... though I guess most of them are inactive these days. =/
Looking through skins I've downloaded, I think the vast majority of people who make anime skins would answer (a) or (b). Though there were a few rare ones that were in on the secret. Personally, my answer is generally (c), sometimes (d).
...what? You want me to tell you what it is, too? Fine.
Okay, so what is the easger egg titlebar?
The easter egg titlebar is an alternative titlebar that activates when you type the following in the main window of Winamp:
N U L (esc) L (esc) S O F T
[You have to press escape after the L's because L is the shortcut key for "Load".]
The alternate titlebar is only for the maximized window. There are active and inactive versions. In titlebar.bmp, they occupy the bottom two rows -- in the baseskin, these are the bars that say "It really whips the llama's ass!"
Typing in "NULLSOFT" is a toggle that turns the easter egg on and off. (I.e. type it again to go back to the original titlebar.) Once it's on, it will stay on even if you switch skins. [My version of Winamp is being a bit flaky with that; sometimes it still shows the normal titlebar if I'm still in the skin browser, but if I click on the main window it'll load the easter egg.]
Now, if you're like me, you will immediately go through your entire library of Winamp skins to see who does and doesn't skin the easter egg. XD;
It's actually pretty enlightening. It seems like a lot of skinners don't know what it is, which is surprising -- or maybe not, if they learned by reverse-engineering the baseskin like I did, rather than from a tutorial. (And I wonder how many tutorials talk about it, either.)
[Warning: skinning technobabble ahead.]
Turns out people who don't know what the heck it is tend to do one of two things: (1) just copy the normal titlebars there (GOOD) or (2) leave it blank (BAD). Back in the day when I didn't know what it was, I would sometimes make a titlebar-ish thing, with a funny message (imitating the llama's ass quote) but which didn't flow into the rest of the main window, which was problematic because usually my skin titles don't fit into the titlebar area, so you'd see the chopped off bottom of them. Even earlier, I left it "blank", by which I meant I just let the underlying template I used show through. So you can trace exactly when I went from using the pain-in-the-ass official baseskin to the super-nice template I use now.
...okay, I just had to get all that out after struggling for 30 minutes to fit 2 lines of text into the 14 pixel space and coming up with a clever transition for inactive to active. Yes, I spend a lot of time on my easter eggs even though 99.9% of people who download my skins will never see them.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 08:20 am (UTC)I forgot where I learned about it. Probably from 1001 Winamp Skins somewhere.
In the section about titlebar.bmp, NSDN (http://www.winamp.com/development/skins-classic-main) says "The fifth and sixth bars are special. They provide the graphics for the title bar when the Winamp Easter Egg is active. (Easter Eggs are usually useless aspects of a piece of software that the software developers include as a joke or to give credit to something. It's just the programmers trying to have a little fun. do not worry about these last two bars for now.)" I couldn't find an immediately obvious place where they got past "for now" and started worrying about it. But then, they don't even tell you about the shared row of pixels in the window shade versions. D:
Yay, new skins! ^_^ I actually didn't finish any in 2006, though apparently I was already working on the skin I didn't finish until August 2007. >_>;;
no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 01:16 pm (UTC)Edit: Mind if I link this entry from my LJ?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:20 pm (UTC)I know that there are at least two communities but you're right - they are pretty dead. I think most people have simply abandoned Winamp and it seems like the classic skins won't even work with the newest version (I didn't try it but someone on my f-list told me) anyway *sigh*.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 11:58 pm (UTC)[Or is it in the nature of easter eggs that people stumble across them on their own? Or that they just sit around useless? Although this one might actually not be useless because people can include two versions of the titlebar -- I did that once, and a few people at 1001skins do it regularly.]
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 04:55 am (UTC)I guess I'll keep waffling while I do my copyright reading, and then see. ._.;;
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 06:37 am (UTC)I hope your friend figures out what went wrong with her copy and gets it fixed! ^^;;
Ahaha, I still use bitmap fonts for the main window, so I'll never have get foreign language support. ^^;; I'm just happy I get Japanese in the playlist, now, and I think I can edit ID3 tags with Japanese without Winamp turning them into question marks upon clicking "OK".
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 07:27 pm (UTC)It's sad but I haven't yet found something that works for me. If I only had file tags in Japanese and Latin that wouldn't be a problem but I'm a big fan of Greek music which makes things more... complicated. Add the occassional song with tags in Kyrillic, Hebrew or Korean and nothing works as it should :( I'd need a plugin for every single writing system and I'd have to switch it every time the encoding switches.