[HN Gopher] Webamp: Winamp 2 in the browser
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Webamp: Winamp 2 in the browser
 
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score  : 172 points
Date   : 2021-04-14 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
 
web link (webamp.org)
w3m dump (webamp.org)
 
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Very nice! This would be a great lightweight alternative to
| ampache when the goal is to share a handful of songs and have a
| great UI.
 
| xahrepap wrote:
| One of my first practical pieces of software I wrote was for
| Winamp. I noticed at the time Winamp didn't support using the
| Media Keys unless it was focused. So I whipped up a simple
| application that listens to the media keys, then forwards the
| message to the Winamp process directly.
| 
| I haven't used a media player since Winamp that I like as much as
| I liked Winamp. I really miss it.
 
| 0xFACEFEED wrote:
| Wow. I was expecting the UI to feel dated/retro, but it still
| looks really good. And the window snapping behavior is still as
| satisfying as it always was. Timeless?
 
  | kossTKR wrote:
  | Yes, i was quite surprised too. I can't figure out if i
  | actually like it more or if it's just nostalgia. It's like
  | modern interfaces are way to flat and everything are is just
  | floating in empty space with too much whitespace and not enough
  | texture and depth.
  | 
  | Is something very wrong with modern interfaces? Quite
  | interesting..
 
    | BackBlast wrote:
    | Modern interfaces revolve around mobile and touch interfaces.
    | The narrow/small buttons don't work consistently enough in
    | this context and presents many usability and accessibility
    | issues.
    | 
    | I look at it and remember those days, and the system was
    | quite usable with a high resolution mouse to be the primary
    | interface. While I can use it on mobile, I would hate to try
    | to do so under any kind of degraded condition. Cold fingers,
    | inclement weather, driving in a card/bus/train.
 
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Now you can really whip the llama's ass...on the web
 
| mjaniczek wrote:
| Very cool! I am particularly intrigued by the "full-colour"
| bitmap font approach you took. (I'm trying to get a Fallout 2
| font into my F2-inspired browser game, and so far I've managed to
| get PNG-in-SVG-in-OT working in everything except Chrome.
| Infuriating.)
| 
| I want to ask, did you notice any performance hits when wrapping
| each character in its own  with background-image? Do you
| think that would scale for a page with up to ~2 screens of text
| at one time?
 
  | captbaritone wrote:
  | I'm a bit lucky here in that the number of characters on the
  | screen at any given time is bounded, so at max we have maybe 50
  | spans, which should not be a big deal.
  | 
  | I'm not sure how it would scale. In general, if you employ
  | windowing all UI rendering issues are bounded by the number of
  | items visible at a time which can let you get away with a lot
  | of craziness, but if the number of items on the screen is as
  | much as the number of characters on the screen... that could
  | end up being a bit much.
  | 
  | I know a lot of things like that end up using shaders to render
  | text, but that is a lot of added complexity.
 
| Jonnax wrote:
| Anyone know what happened to Winamp?
| 
| They got bought by a company who said they were working on
| another version, and then nothing.
 
  | theandrewbailey wrote:
  | An updated version got "leaked" about two years ago, then they
  | decided to release that for real. https://winamp.com/
 
| FpUser wrote:
| Very nice. Also looking at Milkdrop visualizer and CPU
| utilization on 4K full screen it seems that they did based on
| WebGL. Great work.
 
  | whyfy wrote:
  | https://github.com/jberg/butterchurn This is the visualizer
  | that they're using.
 
    | rektide wrote:
    | someone (podiki) submitted butternchurn to hn[1].
    | 
    | this is 50% of the winamp2 experience. glad to see it again.
    | 
    | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26813265
 
  | captbaritone wrote:
  | We recently took on a project to use Wasm to speed it up a bit.
  | Blog post here: https://jordaneldredge.com/blog/speeding-up-
  | winamps-music-vi...
 
  | podiki wrote:
  | Yes, Milkdrop! Never seen anything nearly as good since then;
  | lost many an hour staring at Milkdrop listening to music....so
  | good.
 
  | chrisseaton wrote:
  | Seems like you need to be on Chrome to see that.
 
    | podiki wrote:
    | I see it on Firefox just fine
 
    | _joel wrote:
    | Works fine here on Firefox
 
    | heredoc wrote:
    | nope, works well with firefox 78.9.0esr from debian stable
 
      | chrisseaton wrote:
      | Must just be incompatible with the default configuration of
      | Safari then.
 
        | captbaritone wrote:
        | Safari does not currently support WebGL2, which is the
        | blocker. They support it behind and flag, and it seems to
        | work there, but until they enable it by default,
        | Butterchurn will not work on Safari.
 
| udev wrote:
| That equalizer curve for the Rock preset is burnt into my memory,
| its shape, and color, and positions of sliders.
| 
| Say what you want about the skeuomorphic design, but it really
| felt great to slide the volume a bit higher when at your favorite
| part of the song. It really felt like a piece of hardware in your
| hands.
 
  | jay_kyburz wrote:
  | I really miss having an equalizer actually. I just realized to
  | day I haven't seen one for years!
 
  | systemvoltage wrote:
  | Mark this: Skeumorphic design is coming back, hopefully not in
  | the form of Neumorphic design [1], but it is going to make a
  | comeback. Unfortunately, designers will latch onto the worse of
  | both - there is already a huge interest in neumorphic design
  | which is basically flat material UI x skeumorphism, but the
  | combination is worse than the individual parts.
  | 
  | Just today, I was reading comments praising Coinbase UI. It is
  | just cliches piled on top of cliches by designers. Everything
  | that happened between 2010-2020 made UI worse in many ways.
  | 
  | Winamp UI was whimsical, functional and successful.
  | 
  | [1] https://www.justinmind.com/blog/neumorphism-ui/
 
    | jay_kyburz wrote:
    | Somebody will start adding colour, then a little texture here
    | and there, then some nice satisfying sound effects and we'll
    | be back where we should be!
    | 
    | Hrm, I wonder if you can activate a phones rumbler from the
    | UI for tactile feedback.
 
      | akiselev wrote:
      | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
      | US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...
      | 
      | Safari iOS does not support it sadly.
 
    | peder wrote:
    | This type of design would work well with "shape-changing"
    | displays: https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/03/21/apple-
    | patents-sha...
 
    | NoSorryCannot wrote:
    | I don't really see what's wrong with it.
    | 
    | It's not far off from 90s UIs but with more circular elements
    | and less gray. Those UIs are viewed as very functional in
    | retrospective.
    | 
    | However, I thought then and still think now that it's a bit
    | ugly.
 
      | systemvoltage wrote:
      | Lack of borders.
 
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Such happy memories. I am using QMMP on my RPi4 these days and
| using CherryMusic to also offer the same giant directory of music
| to my other devices over HTTP, whilst running a classic
| WindowMaker desktop for lightness and speed. It's the pinnacle of
| computing in my opinion! xfe, xfimage, pluma, geany, qmms. Happy
| speedy computing!
| 
| I loved the old Winamp where you could set it to be always on
| top, and then simply Alt-Shift-Tab on Windows and know that it'd
| focus Winamp, then use B, C, V whatever.
| 
| I used to use xmms on Linux for a while I think but I couldn't
| seem to find anything like what I remember in the repos.
| 
| Anyway, interesting project and like the milkdrop implementation!
| I seem to remember Goom as some plugin?
 
| crumpled wrote:
| I know some low budget radio stations use winamp to output their
| playlists, mostly because of the shoutcast plugin. It's crazy,
| but it kinda works.
 
  | squarefoot wrote:
  | They might find idjc really helpful.
  | 
  | http://idjc.sourceforge.net/index.html
 
    | crumpled wrote:
    | I've checked it out and run it on various things. It might be
    | a better choice, but pretty much only because it's current
    | and maintained.
    | 
    | The use case is a little different. IDJC has a lot of
    | features for live DJs who are doing stuff. If you just want
    | to run a playlist, winamp is actually a little more usable,
    | and the shoutcast plugin also streams your audio input
    | device. Our live DJs just press pause and do their thing with
    | records and CDs, then they kick the playlist back on when
    | they finish. For remote broadcasting, we just use BUTT. IMO,
    | both BUTT and Winamp are easier than IDJC for most volunteer
    | DJs
    | 
    | I'm a tech volunteer for our local LP-FM station.
 
| xivusr wrote:
| Works great! Now if only I could find the Yaxay3 skin :-(
 
| marcodiego wrote:
| Is it possible to make it run out of the browser like an electron
| app?
| 
| Sorry for suggesting electron but it could be the ultimate multi-
| platform winamp clone.
 
  | brian_herman wrote:
  | No but you can try this it works great on my machine!
  | https://getwacup.com/
 
  | tomc1985 wrote:
  | Ewwwwww
 
  | ugh123 wrote:
  | There's a related project that forks and wraps it as an
  | electron app.
  | 
  | The source code shows it's pretty much just a react app, but
  | slick!
 
  | Phrodo_00 wrote:
  | You can use Audacious https://audacious-media-player.org
 
  | captbaritone wrote:
  | As a novelty, we actually already tried that:
  | https://desktop.webamp.org/
  | 
  | Note: Nobody thinks this is actually a good idea, but it's
  | kidna fun.
 
    | cheschire wrote:
    | Chromium Edge reports this download as unsafe with the
    | message:
    | 
    | This app might harm your device Microsoft Defender
    | SmartScreen reported that this app is not commonly
    | downloaded; you should only open files you trust.
    | 
    | Name: webamp-desktop-web-setup-0.3.0.exe Publisher: Unknown
 
      | captbaritone wrote:
      | Probably good advice
 
        | cheschire wrote:
        | It's fine, that's what Windows Sandbox is for!
 
  | tomc1985 wrote:
  | Unless this includes Winamp's modularity and plugin
  | architecture then it would not be a Winamp clone
 
  | evan_ wrote:
  | Have you tried re:AMP? https://re-amp.ru/
 
  | jakearmitage wrote:
  | You can use XMMS, it supports old Winamp skins.
 
  | squarefoot wrote:
  | > Sorry for suggesting electron but it could be the ultimate
  | multi-platform winamp clone.
  | 
  | That however would defeat best Winamp's feature: being light
  | and fast, which is the number one reason why I kept using the
  | classic one ignoring all following versions until my last day
  | on Windows. Today I use qmmp under Linux, which is close enough
  | (has been ported to Windows too).
  | 
  | https://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/
 
    | fractalf wrote:
    | Thanks for the tip, will try this out as it seems to have
    | waveform support (a must for me).
    | 
    | I've been using Nulloy for a while, also pretty nice and
    | minimal https://github.com/nulloy/nulloy/
 
  | crumpled wrote:
  | You could just download and install Winamp, couldn't you? I
  | know for a fact that it runs in Wine.
 
    | dec0dedab0de wrote:
    | winamp 2 had at least one exploit that I got burned by a few
    | times. Which is why I finally upgraded to 3, back whenever
    | that was.
 
      | pixl97 wrote:
      | Yep, MP3's contain a lot potential places to launch
      | exploits from. No reason to use a vulnerable player.
 
  | ultimoo wrote:
  | I'm not a desktop or a ui engineer by trade so I don't
  | understand the contention with Electron. I know slack uses it
  | and _seems_ to work fine but I have heard similar phrasing
  | around "sorry for suggesting electron" and I'm curious to learn
  | more about the cons of electron.
 
    | flatiron wrote:
    | Pros: you run your web app as a local app without
    | reprogramming your app.
    | 
    | Cons: you are literally running a web app in a browser and
    | not a native app.
 
    | theandrewbailey wrote:
    | Many Electron apps are sluggish and use more resources than
    | necessary for the problem they're trying to solve.
    | 
    | For example, IRC was doing most of the things Slack (desktop
    | client in Electron) does, but 20+ years ago when computers
    | were a thousandth (or less) as powerful. IRC clients were
    | snappy to load and interact with, didn't use a gigabyte of
    | RAM, and didn't eat a CPU core.
    | 
    | From https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/:
    | 
    | > Your desktop todo app is probably written in Electron and
    | thus has a userland driver for the Xbox 360 controller in it,
    | can render 3D graphics and play audio and take photos with
    | your web camera.
 
      | anthk wrote:
      | Also, before Slack there was Jabber and MSN/AIM, and with
      | Kopete you could do the same you can do today in slack but
      | by using 1/10 of resources.
 
    | marcodiego wrote:
    | Simple: you're running an entire web browser and all its
    | requirements like network support, image decoding and other
    | support features to interpret a javascript program for the
    | task of playing an mp3 that should be way lighter than
    | running a browser.
 
      | Phrodo_00 wrote:
      | Also, there's a lot of overhead compared to running a new
      | tab in a browser. It's basically an entire browser for a
      | single tab.
 
    | dec0dedab0de wrote:
    | The reason a lot of people groan when we hear Electron is
    | that it requires modern-ish hardware to do the same exact
    | things that worked fine on hardware from 25 years ago.
    | 
    | The reason a bunch of people use it anyway is because they
    | have to be cross platform, and target the web.
 
      | denysvitali wrote:
      | And because UI toolkits are generally not that good.
      | Especially the cross platform ones
 
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I'm sure some (most) of it is just nostalgia, but Winamp, to me,
| represents the pinnacle of internet culture.
| 
| A free, infinitely-customizable piece of software, playing a
| simple and open-ish format (open for everyone who wanted to use
| it by figuring out how to use liblame), sharing files of dubious
| origins, ...
| 
| I guess basically I liked the internet better when it was just a
| bunch of shady pirates running amok.
| 
| Except, I'll keep my fiber internet.
 
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads:
| 
|  _WebAmp: WinAmp 2 in Your Browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17583997 - July 2018 (41
| comments)
| 
|  _A Reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and JavaScript_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16333550 - Feb 2018 (208
| comments)
 
| [deleted]
 
| captbaritone wrote:
| Hey! Project author here! Happy to answer any questions.
| 
| This project is open source and the code, and instructions to use
| it on your site, can be found here:
| https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp
| 
| Webamp's ability to render classic Winamp skins led to a
| collaboration with the Internet Archive where we preserved ~70k
| (and counting) classic Winamp skins.
| 
| I also built the Winamp Skin Museum (https://skins.webamp.org/)
| where you can infinite scroll through those 70k skins and try
| them out in your browser with one click.
| 
| Most recently I've been experimenting with improving the
| visualizer's performance with an in-browser Eel-Wasm compiler.
| Blog post here: https://jordaneldredge.com/blog/speeding-up-
| winamps-music-vi...
| 
| The project has given me lots of enjoyment over the years, and
| I'm glad to see that others are enjoying it as well.
 
  | blue_cadet_3 wrote:
  | This is great! I see there's Winampify but I can't figure out
  | how I would connect my Spotify account to it. Any ideas?
 
    | captbaritone wrote:
    | Try opening one of the folders.
 
      | blue_cadet_3 wrote:
      | Oh nice! haha I kept trying different buttons on the player
      | and settings, never thought to just click a folder. Thanks
      | for this!
 
  | airstrike wrote:
  | Have you considered spinning off the visualizer as a separate
  | project? I'd love to it running on its own, on top of any audio
  | I may have playing on the background
 
| amelius wrote:
| I never understood the llama-whipping.
 
  | michaelhoffman wrote:
  | https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/11/a-brief-history-of-the-wi...
 
| Black101 wrote:
| It would be nice if you could play a youtube playlist in this
| interface... probably the best media player ever ;)
 
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(page generated 2021-04-14 23:00 UTC)