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> Ideally I want to support loading user-generated themes.

I really hope this just means "alternative colour palettes". Otherwise they're about to make one of the hardest UI programming tasks I can imagine exponentially harder.

I've never understood the passion for themeability. It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal.

As much nostalgia as I have for the heyday of Winamp skins, most of them were awful and had terrible usability. It was a garish novelty akin to "Pimp My Ride"



It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal.

Lots of people expect and do this all the time. I want this cooked like this, no this, this replaced with that etc. Hell, some restaurants just put out all the food they have on a big table and say "go ahead and put together your own meal with whatever you want, we don't care", and that is many peoples favourite restaurant experience.


Are you disagreeing with my views on theming or just my poor choice of metaphor? ;-)


I personally agree with you, but I know that I'm not necessarily in the majority. Much like many people seem to prefer buffet restaurants to restaurants with a fixed menu.


Parent obviously meant you'd be in the kitchen, cooking. Not barking orders.


On the other hand the Reaper DAW has colour and theme layouts and also has a very performant UI just like Winamp.

I guess you just need to be as good as Justin Frankel ;)


Naturally, Justin developed his own UI framework. Parts of it are open source: https://www.cockos.com/wdl/


Completely agree. I'd even go so far as to say that beyond pure accessibility and compat concerns (color blind modes or high contrast erc) even that is going too far with customization.




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