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The last step you need to do before unleashing your Skin on the world is to convert
it to the WSZ format. How do I do that, you ask? Just follow the following steps:
1) With the Zip compression tool of your choice, zip YOUR skin folder (not the Winamp "Skins" folder)into a .ZIP file.
2) Rename the new file's extension from .ZIP to .WSZ.
3) Test it by removing your skin folder, then placing your .WSZ into the Winamp "Skins" folder.
4) Run Winamp, then press Alt-S to access the Skin browser. If you see your skin, then everything worked correctly.
5) That's it! Pat yourself on the back, then take the next step and submit it to Winamp.com.
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A Winamp skin is composed of 45 files. Most of the files that create a
skin are .BMPs (a very common image file type) and a few text files.
When skin support was originally implemented, an artist would have to
create those skins and place them into a subdirectory of the Winamp
Skins folder (Usually located in C:\Program Files\Winamp\Skins folder).
This all started becoming a mess due to the fact that not all of the
skin developers were creating subfolders when compressing their skins
into a ZIP file for distribution. When an end-user uncompresses the
files to the Winamp Skins folder, it would at times overwrite other
skins. As a solution, we implemented the functionality into Winamp to
read the .ZIP files directly. What would happen is an end-user would
simply place the .ZIP file into their Winamp Skins folder and when using
the Skin Browser in Winamp (ALT+S) the skin magically appeared and
loaded if selected.
This did clean up the mess, however, a new problem then surfaced. The
.ZIP file format is a very widely used compression type and Winamp
was just one of the many dozens of programs available to utilize it.
We wanted users to be able to double click the Skin ZIP file and have
Winamp automatically install and load the skin. How do we do that without
associating Winamp as the default program for handling skins? Rename the
file extension.
We simply took all those compressed skins ending with the .ZIP and
renamed them to end with .WSZ (Winamp Skin Zip). This allowed us to stay
with the standard Winamp .ZIP files and not have to convert the thousands
of skins available for download on the Internet. Any skins that are submitted
to our site, ending with .ZIP or .WSZ, are automatically renamed to end
with a .WSZ before published.
Why do all this you ask? The answer is simple. We wanted to make it so that
Winamp would automatically load the skin when a user clicked on a link to
download a skin from Internet Explorer as well as Netscape Navigator.
We also wanted to make it so that if a user actually had downloaded the
.WSZ file, all they would have to do is double click it to install it.
Exactly what happens at this point? Well, when a person installs a .WSZ file what happens
is Winamp just copies the file to the Winamp Skins folder so that it can be handled correctly.
You can also manually move the .WSZ file into your skin directory and Winamp will recognize it just as well.
-steve
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