All about Winamp 3

What is Winamp3? Why Winamp3? Winamp3 is more than an excuse to have "mp3" built right into our product name. Winamp3 is our attempt to create a brand new methodology of complete customizability of the media playback experience via a system of component programming (which adds new functionality to the program) and a brand-new skinning system (to present the features of the program to you.) Collectively, this new technology platform is called Wasabi.

Our component system gives developers unprecedented access to the program by encouraging them to build directly upon our coding platform (named Wasabi) and add brand-new functionality to the entire system. We provide an SDK (downloaded separately) packed with working C++ code taken directly from our own components and Winamp3 itself so developers can immediately start creating great new components on top of our code.

New functionality is packaged in the form of "components". They are similar in idea to general-purpose plugins, except Wasabi components can actually leverage each others' features instead of only using the main Winamp services. Components can add a new window into the system, or just provide a new type of service to the system (like decoding a different type of media file, or displaying a brand-new type of visualization). Winamp3 comes packaged with some standard components, such as the playlist editor and skin switcher.

Also, we have completely revamped the skinning system. In fact, we have revamped the entire idea of a skinning system. Winamp3 goes way beyond the idea of skins that are merely free-form. Our skins are both free-form and fully scriptable. Skinners (and now, scripters) can invoke nearly any UI behavior they desire in their skin, from changing a bitmap or vis mode to dynamically blending and rendering brand new interfaces on the fly.

Another important reason for Winamp3 is portability. Wasabi currently runs on the win32 platform (Win95/98/NT/ME/2k/XP/etc). We are progressing nicely on a Linux version as well, and we have plans for more operating systems/environments to receive support in the future. This means that components built on Wasabi will be easily recompilable for other OSes and architectures, and skins won't need to be modified at all to be totally portable.

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