Windows 7 / Getting Started

---

Changing Skins

Then there's the option of changing the Now Playing windows' "skin." A skin is a customized interface for the mini player, and there are several available. To switch to Skin mode in the Now Playing window, press the Alt button to display the hidden pop-up menu (similar to the hidden menu bar in the main player window), and then select View, Skin.

To give you an idea of how different skins can change the way WMP looks and feels. Changing skins is a great way to put your personal stamp on your media player.

To change skins, follow these steps:

1. From within the Now Playing window, press the Alt button and select View, Skin Chooser.
2. When the Skin Chooser window appears, select a skin from the left-side list. The skin you choose will be previewed in the right-side window.
3. Click the Apply Skin button. WMP now switches to Skin mode with the new skin applied.

Windows Media Player includes a fair selection of skins built-in, but there are a lot more skins available online. Just go to the Skin Chooser window and click the More Skins button, and WMP launches Internet Explorer and connects to the Skins page on the Windows Media website. Pick a new skin and follow the onscreen instructions to download it to your system.

Note Previous versions of WMP offered an additional display mode, the Mini player that docked to the Windows Taskbar.The Mini player is not offered as a feature in WMP 12.

Viewing Visualizations

When you're playing music in WMP's Now Playing window, you have a choice of what you see in the window. By default, the window displays album art for the currently playing song. But you can also display visualizations, splashes of color and shapes that move to the beat of the music.

Note In previous versions of WMP you could view visualizations in the full player window; this is not an option in WMP 12.

WMP includes a slew of visualizations you can watch while you're listening to music. The visualizations are grouped into collections based on specific themes. You can pick a specific visualization to watch, and even (for some visualizations) configure individual visualization properties.

To select a visualization, right-click anywhere in the Now Playing window and select Visualizations. You can now choose a collection (Alchemy, Bars and Waves, or Battery) and then select an individual visualization from within that collection. To switch back to the album art display, select Album Art from the Visualizations menu.

As you might suspect, additional visualizations are available from the Internet. Just right-click the Now Playing window and select Visualizations, Download Visualizations. This opens a web browser window and takes you to the Windows Media website, where you can browse for and download new visualizations.