The improvements I most notice are in the interface changes and they're worth applauding. Although I have reservations about skinning interfaces as opposed to using OS controls, if you're going to go down the path of skinning Winamp does it very well. Gone are the flashy moving parts and radical shapes of version three. Also gone are the tiny ambiguous controls of both previous releases. Nice.

The first thing you notice is that everything is a little bit larger than in version two. This allows for a couple of things. First off, skin designers can fit everything in while properly labeling everything. Both previous versions of the program suffered from ambiguous buttons and tiny clickable areas. In Winamp5, most of the controls are clearly labeled. Just look at the bottom of the playlist window. You no longer have to determine what the plus, minus, and SEL buttons mean. They actually tell you what you need to know. Second, it means everything is more legible at high resolutions. My laptop runs at 1400x1050 at only 14" and now I can actually read almost everything in the interface.

The second thing that jumps right out at you is the adoption of a simple windows-style top menu. Although strangely it doesn't seem to use the standard ALT-F command etc. to open the menus, it looks and acts almost exactly like a Windows menu. It's intuitive and helpful for editing preferences, loading files, and doing what you need to do.

Also of note, most actions have intuitive and strong reactions. Elements that should have hover effects have them. All buttons have fairly subtle on-click effects that increase the feeling that you've done something.

The colour options is another interesting new skinning feature. A single skin can have many different colour choices. The default skin can be coloured anything from 'Amethyst' to 'Varsity'. It's a nice feature when you like the features of the skin, but not its original colour scheme.

Of course, there are a handful of negative things too. Some of the pixel fonts are still miniscule, the whole thing seems a little more clunky than two but way more solid than three, the tray menus for your equalizer and video is strange (what's wrong with separate windows), it's still doesn't use default OS controls, and AOL still tries to get you to install stuff. However, bravo to Nullsoft for a big improvement and sound judgment¹. And, thanks for the present guys.

¹ I honestly didn't notice that pun until after this was posted.