A Skinnable MP3 Player

Here is a skinnable MP3 player written in Visual Basic based on the Microsoft Windows Media Player. Media Player handles the chores of playing MP3 files and makes this functionality available as an add in component to your VB program. This program also illustrates how to create Skins or Irregular Forms that can take the shape of any bitmap image.

Download Source Code

This MP3 player was developed by James Balducci. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach him at p00p@optonline.net or visit www.everythingbrown.com.

A Skin is an Irregularly shaped form - a form that has a shape that does not resemble the standard rectangular shape. There are many ways to create irregular forms. Here, the skin is created by scanning a bitmap image a pixel at a time. As the image is scanned the locations of pixels not matching the background color, assumed to be the top left most pixel, are recorded.

Using these locations a Region is created. A Region is the area within a form where the operating system permits drawing. Anything outside the region is not displayed. For more details on regions, visit my Active Skin page. Other irregular form techniques are discussed on my Irregular Forms page.

The Windows Media Player provides a wealth of functionality you can easily tap into. It allows you to play most audio and video media types (by removing the filter criteria on the common dialog control in this app you can play most audio files). You can start, stop, pause the playing, and even scroll through songs, adjust output volume, filter clips by title and author and much more.

Media Player lends its functionality easily to VB applications by referencing the MSDXM.OCX as an add in component in your VB project. Once referenced, you can view its methods and properties in the Object Browser and read more about them in MSDN.

Download the source and run it. Navigate to a folder containing your .MP3 files. Select the desired song and click the play button.