Customizing Windows Media Player’s Appearance

Even without putting on a skin, you can do a great many things to modify Media Player’s appearance. You can switch between a normal windowed view with menu bar and the irregularly shaped menu-less form, shown in Figure 16-2. You can display or hide the taskbar (the vertical panel at the left). In Now Playing, you can display or hide the current playlist and switch between a windowed display and a frameless full-screen display. And you can display any of Media Player’s many visualizations while your music plays. (Visualizations are animated designs that Windows Media Player can display while playing music.)

For more information about visualizations, see "Using Visualizations."

Figure 16-11 shows the controls that allow you to modify Media Player’s appearance with your mouse while Windows Media Player is running in full (not skin) mode.

Figure 16-11. Mouse controls allow you to change Windows Media Player’s appearance while the program is running in full mode.

Toggling the Menu Bar

The menu bar toggle lets you switch between a normal windowed display and an irregularly shaped display that eliminates Media Player’s menu bar and title bar. As an alternative to clicking this button, you can choose View, Full Mode Options, and then choose Show Menu Bar, Hide Menu Bar, or Auto Hide Menu Bar. If you choose Auto Hide, the menu bar is hidden until you put your mouse in the area where the menu bar would otherwise be. If you like the frameless look, you’ll probably find this the most convenient way to implement it.

Toggling Shuffle Mode

The shuffle mode toggle doesn’t affect Media Player’s appearance in any way, but because its control is nestled amongst the appearance controls, it’s appropriate to mention it here. Clicking this toggle causes Windows Media Player to play the current playlist in random order. Clicking it again turns this feature off.

For more information about playback controls, see "Playing Audio CDs." For more information about playlists, see "Working with Playlists."

You can also toggle shuffle mode by choosing Play, Shuffle or by pressing Ctrl+H.

Toggling the Graphic Equalizer and Other Settings

In Now Playing, you can turn on a ten-band graphic equalizer and adjust sliders to change the quality of sound generated by Windows Media Player. To turn the equalizer on, click the Equalizer toggle. Then click Select View and choose Graphic Equalizer from the menu that appears.

For more information about using the graphic equalizer, see "Using the Graphic Equalizer and SRS WOW Effects."

The Select View menu, on which the Graphic Equalizer command appears, offers some other useful options as well. For example, by choosing Media Information, you can display an album cover and other bits of information about the current item, courtesy of AMG, as shown in Figure 16-12. Clicking the More link in this display transports you to WindowsMedia.com, where you can download and buy similar items.

To turn on any of the Select View options using menu commands, choose View, Now Playing Tools.

Figure 16-12. Choosing Media Information from the Select View menu produces a display of your current item’s album cover and other useful information.

Toggling the Playlist Display

A playlist in Windows Media Player is a collection of related media items. For example, all the songs in a particular album could make up a playlist. So could all the songs in all albums by a particular performer, or some ad hoc collection of songs that you put together yourself. In Now Playing, Windows Media Player can display the current playlist, including titles and track times, in a panel at the right side of the window. The item in the playlist that is currently being played appears highlighted in green.

If you would rather not see the playlist, click the Playlist toggle. Or choose View, Now Playing Tools, Show Playlist.

Toggling the Taskbar

Windows Media Player’s taskbar is the panel of options that appears along the left margin of the window (Now Playing, Media Guide, and so on). It’s handy for navigation, but it takes up screen space that could be used for visualizations. You can send it away by clicking the taskbar toggle—the little arrow halfway up the taskbar’s right edge. With the taskbar gone, you can still navigate via commands on the View, Taskbar submenu.

Using Visualizations

Visualizations are designs of light and color that change with the frequency and volume of your music. Windows Media Player displays visualizations in Now Playing and in many skins. (The skin has to support visualizations, but most do.) Visualizations are grouped into collections with names such as Ambience, Bars And Waves, and Spikes. To choose one of these visualization collections, click the leftmost of the three visualization controls. This action opens a menu of collections, as shown in Figure 16-13. After choosing a collection, you can use the other two visualization controls (the left and right arrows) to move between members of the collection. Alternatively, you can pick a visualization by choosing View, Visualizations. Some visualization collections contain a randomization option that rotates among all the collection’s visualizations in random order and timing patterns.

Figure 16-13. Click the leftmost visualization control to display a menu of visualization collections.

Many, but not all, visualizations can be displayed in full-screen mode and are much more effective that way. If the current visualization allows full-screen display, the full-screentoggle appears. Click it or press Alt+Enter, and your entire monitor becomes a light show. Click again anywhere or press Alt+Enter again to return to normal display.

No visualizations appear.

If you don’t see visualizations in Now Playing, choose View, Now Playing Tools. If Show Visualization is not selected, choose this command. Note that Media Player cannot display visualizations during playback of MIDI files and might not work for CD tracks when the CD player is set for analog playback.

Using Skins

To switch from full mode to skin mode, press Ctrl+2, choose View, Skin Mode, or click the skin mode button at the bottom of Media Player. Windows Media Player applies the current skin. To choose a skin before going into skin mode, click Skin Chooser on Media Player’s feature taskbar, or choose View, Taskbar, Skin Chooser. Select the skin you want, and then click Apply Skin. Windows Media Player comes with about 20 skins, but you’re not limited to that set, by any means. Additional skins are available from many sources, and if you have some expertise with XML and JavaScript, you can create your own without great difficulty. For more information about adding skins, see "Adding Skins and Visualizations."

For an excellent tutorial on creating skins, see Microsoft Windows Media Player for Windows XP Handbook (Microsoft Press, 2001).

All skins include the most essential controls—for playing, pausing, stopping, advancing to the next track, retreating to the previous one, adjusting volume, and so on. Beyond these, skin features vary considerably. Some can show the current playlist or the graphic equalizer. Some show the current visualization and let you move to a different one. Some show the name of the current track. You’ll need to experiment to see what the different skins can do—and where each control is located.

tip

To return from skin mode to full mode, press Ctrl+1.

Most of the Windows Media Player menu commands are available in the skin-mode shortcut menu. Right-click anywhere on the skin to generate this menu. One item missing from this menu is a command to switch to a different skin. If Windows MediaPlayer is displaying its "anchor window" in the lower right corner of your screen, you can click the anchor window and then choose Select A New Skin from its shortcut menu. The anchor window looks like this:

It’s otherwise not terribly useful, because its commands (and many others) appear on the skin’s own shortcut menu. You can eliminate the anchor window by clicking it and choosing Hide Anchor Window. Alternatively, choose Tools, Options. On the Media Player tab of the Options dialog box, clear Display Anchor Window When In Skin Mode. Note that closing the Anchor Window is not the way to hide it—it closes Media Player and brings your entertainment to a sudden stop.

tip

To make a skin stay on top of all other windows, choose Tools, Options. On the Media Player tab of the Options dialog box, select Display On Top When In Skin Mode.