Making Skins:

    A lot of people get really excited when they find
out that they can change the look of Winamp through
skinning.  The problem is they get turned off once they
hit a roadblock, be it what to do next, hit a problem
submitting to Winamp.com, or indeed, just figuring out
how to get started.  So here we have a set of simple
steps that holds your hand from initial idea to
finished masterpiece.  Good luck!


Required Tools

   Before creating a complete skin, you will need the
following tools.  There are some suggestions below, but
we don't necessarily endorse or require you to use any
of them.  We leave you to choose one that you're most
comfortable with.

Bitmap Editor:
    How else will you "paint" your skins?  Must be able
    to recognize the .BMP format.
    eg. MS Paint, JASC Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop
Text Editor:
    For use in configuring the fonts and colors of the
    Mini-browser and Playlist editor.  Also used if you
    do any transparency.
    eg. MS Notepad, MS Word, Corel Wordperfect
Icon Editor:
    You will need an Icon editor if you are hardcore
    and want to edit the cursors and pointers
    associated with your skin.
    eg. NeoSoft Icon Editor, Icon Edit Pro, Impact
        Microangelo
Zip Compression Tool:
    Absolutely necessary to publish your skin.
    Winamp.com will not accept an unzipped skin.
    eg. PKWare PKZip, Galt 123Zip, WinZip 



The Skinning Pipeline

   All skinners go through the following steps in one
way or another.  Follow along and you too can take your
place amongst the skinning elite.

A) Paint the Main Window         main.txt
B) Paint the Equalizer Window    eq.txt
C) Paint the Playlist Window     playlist.txt
D) Paint the Minibrowser Window  mb.txt
E) Paint the WVS Window          wvs.txt
F) Create Custom Cursors         cursors.txt
G) Edit the Configuration Files  config.txt
H) Compress to .WSZ format       zip.txt
I) Submit to Winamp.com          submit.txt
