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How utterly uninspiring and boring compared to the designs of talented Winamp skinners of yore. Look, I get it. Corporate design today "needs" to be safe, consi

How utterly uninspiring and boring compared to the designs of talented Winamp skinners of yore. Look, I get it. Corporate design today "needs" to be safe, consistent, and accessible to a broad audience. The Winamp skinning era represented something fundamentally different from today's design philosophy. It was about personal expression, creativity, and making your tools reflect your personality rather than conforming to a universal aesthetic. When users could fundamentally alter their software's appearance, they became co-creators rather than passive consumers. That's a very different relationship with technology than what we have now, and I hate it. https://skins.webamp.org https://skins.webamp.org

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago
As a winamp skin designer in my youth, I don't see these two things as really comparable.
- greenavocado 1y ago
  The sterile design language and impossibility of customizing your own software styles in an accessible way kills me
  - caseyy 1y ago
    Hah, that's a good point. When I think of it, the first Android skins, like HTC Sense (~3.0), were quite customizable. Every widget had a few stylistic variants, and I think you could even change the look of many components in the OS. Windows was very customizable until around Vista, too. I suppose people don't buy products for their theming features anymore.
  - usrusr 1y ago
    But winamp theming rested not only on the code allowing arbitrary bitmaps, it also rested on a user interface requiring zero discoverability. At some point people just knew where to click. In hindsight it appears almost surprising that there wasn't a fashion of black on black winamp skins (or maybe I just missed it)
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
There’s some great Winamp skins, but for me the peak of expressive, creative UI were OS X themes, XP-era msstyle themes, and Vista/7 msstyle themes tied for first place with classic Mac OS Kaleidoscope schemes closely following. Some of those OS X/XP/7 themes were gorgeous but also very practically usable. Many still hold up well today, and I’d use them over the majority of themes available for Linux desktops if given the option.
- bsimpson 1y ago
  I remember being so excited when Apple teased themeable System 8. I think I even found leaked betas of the themes and installed them on my dad's Mac. http://old.reddit.com/r/90sdesign/comments/1bzb2yp/the_gizmo_theme_from_apples_illfated_mac_os/ http://old.reddit.com/r/90sdesign/comments/1bzb2yp/the_gizmo...
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Some of those Appearance Manager themes were great too, even if they weren’t as numerous as Kaleidoscope schemes were. I downloaded plenty from ResExcellence back in the day!
kelseydh 1y ago
Miss this creative freedom in software so much, it's time to go back.
monkeyelite 1y ago
> Corporate design today "needs" to be safe, consistent, and accessible to a broad audience. I actually wish we emphasized these values more. The psychology of human computer interaction is still ripe for improvement, but instead we are turning figma art into code.
Larrikin 1y ago
I remember the winamp skins I considered awful that were just a jpeg image of a girl in a bikini or a cartoon character. What lazy design I also remember trying to make my own after seeing good ones and bad ones. It was tedious and it's shocking that there were actually any good ones ever with how awful it was to create a skin. It was all flat and even more difficult to discern that a The Sims skin. Material design has setup people so well that you are bored with how good we have it. I would not mind some more creativity in the space, but be aware of how far we have come.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago

As a winamp skin designer in my youth, I don't see these two things as really comparable.

greenavocado 1y ago
The sterile design language and impossibility of customizing your own software styles in an accessible way kills me
- caseyy 1y ago
  Hah, that's a good point. When I think of it, the first Android skins, like HTC Sense (~3.0), were quite customizable. Every widget had a few stylistic variants, and I think you could even change the look of many components in the OS. Windows was very customizable until around Vista, too. I suppose people don't buy products for their theming features anymore.
- usrusr 1y ago
  But winamp theming rested not only on the code allowing arbitrary bitmaps, it also rested on a user interface requiring zero discoverability. At some point people just knew where to click. In hindsight it appears almost surprising that there wasn't a fashion of black on black winamp skins (or maybe I just missed it)

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

There’s some great Winamp skins, but for me the peak of expressive, creative UI were OS X themes, XP-era msstyle themes, and Vista/7 msstyle themes tied for first place with classic Mac OS Kaleidoscope schemes closely following. Some of those OS X/XP/7 themes were gorgeous but also very practically usable. Many still hold up well today, and I’d use them over the majority of themes available for Linux desktops if given the option.

bsimpson 1y ago
I remember being so excited when Apple teased themeable System 8. I think I even found leaked betas of the themes and installed them on my dad's Mac. http://old.reddit.com/r/90sdesign/comments/1bzb2yp/the_gizmo_theme_from_apples_illfated_mac_os/ http://old.reddit.com/r/90sdesign/comments/1bzb2yp/the_gizmo...
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Some of those Appearance Manager themes were great too, even if they weren’t as numerous as Kaleidoscope schemes were. I downloaded plenty from ResExcellence back in the day!

kelseydh 1y ago

Miss this creative freedom in software so much, it's time to go back.

monkeyelite 1y ago

> Corporate design today "needs" to be safe, consistent, and accessible to a broad audience. I actually wish we emphasized these values more. The psychology of human computer interaction is still ripe for improvement, but instead we are turning figma art into code.

Larrikin 1y ago

I remember the winamp skins I considered awful that were just a jpeg image of a girl in a bikini or a cartoon character. What lazy design I also remember trying to make my own after seeing good ones and bad ones. It was tedious and it's shocking that there were actually any good ones ever with how awful it was to create a skin. It was all flat and even more difficult to discern that a The Sims skin. Material design has setup people so well that you are bored with how good we have it. I would not mind some more creativity in the space, but be aware of how far we have come.