NextStart and CoolPlayer

NextStart is very useful. It's flexiblity can be a bit overwhelming at first with all the options but everything is confurable within the GUI, including user settings and skinning settings. It's the most functional popup menu application I've ever used. The newest version has a reorganized configuration setup that's more organized than previous versions, organizing user configuration settings from skin settings.

You can have it display vertical menus, horizontal menus, have menus activate when you click an area on your desktop, bump a screen edge or corner, click a hotspot button, or even assign menu activation to clicking a specified application. Menus are pretty easy to create

Sounds good I'll try it today.

I personaly like coolplayer a lot, the sound is good, only the function is a little bit limited, dont have cool interfaces and stuff. Also there aren't much skins for it, but making a skin is simple.
Personaly I like coolplayer better then winamp v3 (witch is verry hard to skin/code.... believe me )
But wmp, and MMJB are the best.

NextStart is a great tool, and it is well documented and pretty simple to use. I rely on it so much that if I can't find a WB skin of either the same name OR a WB skin that will somewhat match a NextStart skin, I won't use the WB skin.

I know this limits the skins I use for WB (and there are some great ones), but I rely on NextStart so much that I won't use a WB skin if it means not having a matching or good looking NextStart skin.

I prefer CoolPlay to WinAmp. WinAmp has typical MicroSoft intrusions and I won't use it. This downside of this is that there are several nice Sysmetrix skins that support WinAmp. I wish Sysmetrix supported Cool Player.

What do you mean by "typical MicroSoft intrusions" ? It's owned by AOL

You're right. I meant typical AOL intrusions, something Microsoft is also guilty of.