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If you were an early Internet kid you'll recall a little app called WinAmp that was, in short, the best MP3 player ever made ever. The little program looked like skeuomorphic stereo receiver with a full range of equalizer sliders and included an important MP3 that explained WinAmp's primary mission: whipping the llama's ass.
A programmer named Jordan Eldredge has created an homage to WinAmp in JavaScript. The widget allows you to create a standalone music player on any web page and it can be styled with themes straight out of WinAmp history. You can try it out here and download the code here.
"The original inspiration was a realization that Winamp skins were implemented in a very similar way to CSS sprites," said Eldredge. "I spent many hours as a teenager playing with Winamp skins. In fact, it was the first constructive creative work I did on a computer."
The emulator uses the Web Audio API to simulate almost everything WinAmp could do in its original incarnation.
Story at TechCrunch
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 12 2018, @02:43AM (13 children)
For the time frame of its development it really was an astoundingly good mp3 player. Did everything it needed to do.
Even after later attempts to monetize it, there was not match that could match it.
Everybody started coming out with those full screen music players, as if people had nothing to do on their
computers except play music. (Unfortunately the linux world has followed suit, and finding a decent music app is
a chore.)
Not content to simply play music, they all want to hang in video, streaming, serving, lyrics fetching, cover art, and, wiki articles.
There are some true abominations in the world of music applications.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by buswolley on Monday February 12 2018, @02:52AM (6 children)
I don't see much today that is better than Winamp. It was responsive. It did its job. It had a sexy look, and if you didn't like it, you could skin it. There were some cool visualizations (remember milkdrop2; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shg4kjdOoYk [youtube.com] ). Then there was shoutcast.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @03:47AM
Shoutcast is still around, fyi. Still has a decent selection of music too. (Although not as much as it used to.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @06:00AM
Same but better today projectM [github.com]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday February 12 2018, @07:13AM
I used winamp's visualisation studio to make some abstract wallpapers back in the day. A 1600x1200 display on a 486 slowed the framerate right down, then I took a printscreen when it looked good.
I still use one of them as desktop wallpaper on one machine.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday February 12 2018, @10:25AM (2 children)
Best linux music player I had was one of the earlier versions of Amorok, 2-point-something I think.
Then it upgraded itself to a later version and it started trying to connect to servers and download shit. If you accidentally enabled options like cover download you couldn't turn them off again. The controls went to shit, easy to use sliders became some sort of vague rotary control where you made random circle motions with the mouse hoping you didn't cross one of the other controls while trying to turn the fucking volume up or down. The local database of your music it maintained was dumped in favour of some online bullshit, which meant that searching and listing went from milliseconds to tens of seconds. If the internet was disconnected or blocked it ran so slow you would swear it was sulking.
I have never seen a program more effectively get its balls cut off than what happened to Amorok. You would think that Poettering and the Gnome team collaborated on it.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @11:41AM (1 child)
Amarok and it's 1.x the good major version. I stopped using it after the 2.
They took away all the good stuff and replaced it with buggy, useless crap. It became total POS.
Clementine is a fork of Amarok 1.4
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday February 12 2018, @11:47AM
Yeah, you're right. So long ago that I forgot, but 2 was the shitty version not the good one. I should check out clementine. thanks.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @03:27AM
as if people had nothing to do on their computers except play music
Going back a lot of years, KMandla was an enthusiast of old hardware (laptops only).
He would pick up stuff from the secondhand shop and see how much more service he could get out of it.
A major element of that was identifying command line Linux apps.
What he found, he put in his blog. [wordpress.com]
That blog came to a conclusion and there was a hiatus.
...then he started another blog on the same topic. [wordpress.com]
I remember him telling about the machine he had retired as his main box then mounted vertically and used as a media box.
(The mounting wasn't especially well done and the machine later took a devastating tumble.
A temblor in Tokyo, as I recall.)
So, at the kind of prices and the system load he was working with, yeah, it makes perfect sense.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @03:52AM (3 children)
Qmmp [ylsoftware.com]. You're welcome.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 12 2018, @11:31AM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 12 2018, @11:43AM (1 child)
See, I'm a luddite there. I specifically do not want bells and whistles in my mp3 player. If I'm gui-ing it, I want a small gui player that plays my tunes and nothing else. If I'm cli-ing, there's mpg123.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @08:43PM
I use mpd and mpvc (which does the same thing for mpv) to remotely control my media center box. Press a hotkey, ncmpcpp slides out, plus I have the play/pause, next, previous hotkeys. Another hotkey will show my videos and ask me which screen and audio out to use. It's very convenient for my setup, although I would probably just use moc if I didn't have the media box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @02:25PM
"Monetize" means to literally "use as money" not to "make money from."