Usage and Other Information

Nullsoft has never formally implemented transparency for it’s legacy classic skins.
Up to now I have seen many attempts from other Winamp fans (plugin developers) that tried to simulate transparency effects for classic skins, but none of them worked properly on my Windows XP machine, and it’s been long since I wished for a working transparency plugin for classic skins.

By now I am sure you are wandering why I am so obsesed with classic skins while modern skins are way better. Well there are a couple of reasons for this.

The first I would say is due to my machines specifications (hehe), modern skins require a lot of memory load and my machine can not handle properly other machine opereations with just 512Mb of RAM .

The second reason is more important for me than the first one which teh ability to set Winamp windows in windowshade mode, (which is setting windows in a 14 pixel height). For me this is a life saver as I can have all windows windowshaded, ontop of all other windows, and expanded when i like.

Only thing missing from the above senario is the transparency, where does transparency fit in all these?
Well as I saied above Winamp windows are windowshaded, ontop and placed both on the top and bottom of my working area. This creates an issue when i want to read something form a window titlebar or from a statusbar which is the case most times. I have to move Winamp windows up and down just to read a piece of information which is not that ergonomic.

So here I need the transparency feature, just like modern skins have, to make back information readable.
Thats how i was inspired to write this plugin.

How to use the plugin ?
Below I will explain how to use the plugin if you have never used transparency in modern skins.

The plugin adds a menu item “Window Settings” for every skinned window where the user can select the transparency percentage for the window and a way to activate auto opaque (when window gets focus or when mouse hovers the window).

The plugin also adds a configuration tab under Classic Skins in Preferences dialog, where the user can select if windows should be treated as linked or not, linked transparency level and some global fade effects.

Note
If windows are linked the menu selection changes apply to all windows, while if windows are not linked then menu selection applies to the individual window only.

Pages: 1 2 3 4