Skinning a Music player.


Written by: Ron Meijer


Programs needed:
Graphic program.
Text program. (Personaly I use Editplus, available here: http://www.editplus.com/download.html )

In this text I will explain you the basics of skinning Windows media player (wmp).

We will begin with Windows media player.
In your wmp folder (witch should be: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\) you find the map skins.
When you open this map you should see Some files with the wmp icon on it. These are your skin files.
For example we will take the skin 'Headspace'.
Click right mouse button on this skin> open with > choose program.
Now you should get a little popup window where you can pick a program. Press the button browse and go to your winzip map.
(this one is probably locatet here: C:\Program Files\WinZip)
Click on your WINZIP32.exe icon and open it.
Now you should get your winzip screen with all kind of files in it. (most should be .bmp.)
Go to extract, and extract it in this folder: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Skins\headspace.
Now if everything went ok, you should have your map headspace, and it should be filled with all kind of files.

Ok, now we have the map, we are going to leave this alone for a while.
It now is the best time to make your skin. (this can be done in Adobe Photoshop, or paintshop pro.)
While you are making your skin, make sure the BACKGROUND of the skin is in this collour: #00FF00
This is what we will call 'magic pink'. It makes things transparent in .bmp files.
When your skin is ready, make sure you keep the file it's made in. (like the .psd file in photoshop.)
Save your your skin as a .bmp file in your C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Skins\headspace folder, under the name: "background".

This was the first part. Stay tuned for PART 2, then we will get to the code work!!