I for the first time accept participation in this competition.. I do not want to participate in these disputes. I only wanted to tell MANY THANKS: 1 - to my teachers - Mormegil and Treetog, 2 - to judges which have estimated my work, 3 - to ALL PEOPLE written good words in comments for ALL authors, and to ALL GOOD PEOPLE!!! Let's SMILE!

Questions to the Frogboy: 1 - When the following competitions will begin? 2 - What the skins will participate?

Kudos! for recognizing danilloOC's Sektor. This was one a the skins that motivated me to shell out $$ for OD (the other was DuoPixels Ying-Yang)

ok skin back in the contest now pls.......... never asked for it to be removed in the first place only a figure of speech.....

Muniom: It's back in.

Well done to all the winners! Just a few thoughts for those whinging WinAmp folk. Do you need to know how to play a piano to appreciate good piano music? Do you need to have a degree in engineering to know a well-constructed building? Do you need to be a gourmet chef to have an opinion on the quality of food? The technical skills of the individual judges are irrelevant. This contest is about opinions, and nothing more. You can spend 100 days making a terrible skin, but does that entitle you to recognition over the person who spent 1 day making a superb skin? Also, don't criticize the work skinners of other applications do until you have the maturity to know that your own particular artform isn't the only difficult or time-consuming one in existence. Thanks for listening folks, and who knows, maybe if they hold this contest again we can just have one category with one massive prize: Best Skin.

A good hope for less complaints will be to have all the creators voting for the skins except for those created by their teams...on a second thought ...maybe a bad idea. VaG-ela, poly xyma tous ta eipes, hehe alla me ta dikia sou...mallon.

I'm not keen on diving into this 130 messages in, but as someone who voted for EMP2 for first place in Most Usable, I'm pleased to have voted for it. I felt EMP2 brought everything together with a cohesive presentation, a consistent sense of style, clear access to sub-features (though the use of the "menu" items in the main UI and RMB menu), and consistent usability/accessibility/readability under different color schemes. It very much gave me a sense of being at home with using it (even in its different modes) as opposed to some skins where I felt I had to "fight" the UI. Since I'm doing this, one other quick comment on d3A vs The Last Order. While I think The Last Order is top notch and I liked its use of color a bit more overall, when the time came for judging I felt d3A edged it in being more appropriate for an OS in terms of style. Everything with The Last Order was on edge and while better "pictures" perhaps than d3A, I think d3A had the edge in terms of being part of a pseudo-OS desktop. fwiw Kris

Agreed EMP2 is most usable by everyone, it is so intuitive for anyone that has used a mp3 type hardware device and to users of a computer menu. No weird overly obtrusive shapes to get in the way of its prime function of a player. Then it has lots of power user goodies as well - so out of only 8 entries in this section it is a worthy winner. It will remain my default winamp skin for a long long time - a perfect blend of full featured functionality and visual appeal. To rhe whingers learn from this skin in these 2 categories - did it occur to you maybe you should have entered in another category?

There's one thing I must ask though: how did a classic skin wind up in the top 5 of "best power user", yet none into "most usable"? That's just plain weird.

Ausvet (or any other judges as well), which "power-user features" of EMP did you like? It'll be interesting to know which specifically appealed to you.

After I'd read all the comments, I can't see no winamp coders or skinners crying anywhere, but what I see is constructive complaining over some very poor judgement and in that I can totally agree! Let take fx. what Frogboy wrote monday, May 24, in headline for "Best Power-User Winamp skin" Which Winamp skin do you think, as a user, you would want to use as a power user? The Winamp skin that is totally full of really cool features that makes using it a real joy. He don't use Winamp!!! I know he's just a messenger, but that's just the same as having a farmer to tell you to drive Toyota (because he had one a few years ago)! It's very cool to drive and it's full of cool features that makes using it a real joy!!!! I also think that it's poor judgement to take Winamp of the competition because of these small problems. Winamp should have been seperated in classic/modern from the begining and the rules of voting and what counts in the judgement should have been specified, so NO ONE was in doubt! By your side Plague, Beesley, rpeterclark, Rontz, CarlosP, VAG-METASKINS, QuadHeliX and some more... And last! I think TruckMaster deserve an answer from you Frogboy!

I'll say it again, if any Winamp skinner wants to remove their skins from the competition, be my guest. The judges decisions are final. We've had TWO judges already respond on this. And while I am not a current Winamp user, I am familiar with it and quite familiar with Wasabi and the underlying technology involved and hence am fully aware of its capabilities. Similarly, I don't use MacOS X as my main OS but I am quite familiar with its capabilities and what they mean.

Frogboy I'm back Sorry to bother you my dear "messenger" and administrator afterall, but I think you or any other responsible owns an explanation to me. Why my 3 Skins (H2O liquid, WooHoo-FER and GrayZ) are removed? Did I asked from you or anyone else to remove them? And if they are removed from my posts in here just say it that this section is not democratic or you can't handle some facts and points from users that YOU invited to participate in YOUR competition. Thanks in advance. VAG

PS: i explain to you at the forums why is the reason I want them back, please read it. thanks.

VAG: See other thread, you made it clear you didn't want to participate in the contest. Participation in the contest is voluntary. If that is not the case, we can put them back. Incidentally, moderators can remove any entries for any reason.

Your entries are live.

Thanks, I also replied over there, see and if you want to discuss anything e-mail me, I would be glad to help for a better tomorrow.

Yawn.... ZZZzzzzz.. Can we let this rest now?

I just had to comment on the sheer ignorance displayed in the following statement... Below was posted by Muniom Designs: ______________________________________________ Designing and coding a winamp5 skin is a long drawn out process, to make a good skin requires MUCH more knowledge and effort than to create a bloody icon package, hence why we had half the entries of the other catagories. _____________________________________________ You must think icons grow on trees, and are merely plucked off and stuffed into an icon package. I'm no artist, but from what I've read over the years, is that creating a good set of icons is one of the toughest graphical chores to do. You also have the number of entries wrong. Creating icon packages is so time/effort consuming that it's catagory has almost twice a FEW entries as Winamp. IconPackager [28] Winamp [46] Kind of shoots your theory right out of the water.

Davebo, I think Muniom was talking about Winamp Modern skins, those require alot time and effort to be completed, of course Classic skins too, but it's not compared those 2 kind of skins. As about Icons, I agree that they need alot of time to make a great set, also WB skins, the number of those submitions added so far represents the mood artists had before GUIO and now...... I think.

davebo, yea i admit there are lots of icons to make in and icon package and the process is also long and somewhat tiring. but in my experience, the skins i have made for winamp3/5 have all been under a week for gfx and a number of months for the coding alone, coding which most outside people take for granted. Resurgence alone took about 2 months for myself and hammerhead to code, and we were busting our guts working as hard and fast as possible. ignorance or experience?

Pretty arrogant for someone who hasn't made a WindowBlinds visual style or an icon package to claim that Winamp 5 skins are harder to make. Maybe they are or maybe they're not. But it sure seems to me that a lot of effort is involved in all of them. Putting down the others seems petty and uncalled for. It's definitely not the way to gain sympathy for Winamp skinners.

frogboy: a while ago you said you didn'T see much constructive critics in here. no offense but, if you really don'T, you have to be blind. there were constructive critics since the first events. brother rabbit, you're pissing me off, again. you seem really to have NO idea about skinning at all. try to make a skin working without a coder/CODING and tell me when you're successfull. and... don'T mock up until you've entered ONE SINGLE skin! to the guys complaining about our complainments: you're not better than we are,you're even worse as you don'T have a real reason.we do! about the qualification of the judges: from the winamp-side, i think the most qualified people would have been the mods of the forum,the knnow what they're talking about and what to look at. i don'T think any of the other judges are really qulified enough.. frogboy, you should read better: vag said he won'T participate in FUTURE guios. no word about THIS competition. i would never dare to say it's easier to make a wb-theme than making a winampskin.sure you can easily put together a cheap wbskin as well as a cheap wa skin, but what's making the effort is quality. munium designs, you said you're pissed because some cheap skins were rated better than d-relic and resurgence. i think the case of ar7 is clear, but emp2? anyway, i'm glad vag said metaskins won'T participate in the future. perhaps i'll do myself when the things cleared up a bit and things are more clear but not when things stay like they are.

Wow, I can't believe I read the whole thing! *burp* P.S. Congrats to the winners of these categories (yes, even the WinAmp folks). These were all beautiful and well deserving skins.