I seem to have a blind spot for certain apps. StarDock apps fall into that category because of the many previews, subscriber only releases and what not. But Xion too had almost slipped from my view for the third time. Almost.

It would have been a terrible shame if it had, because Xion, a skinnable media player, may be deceptively simple, feature-wise, but it has a good thing going. A real good thing going. Something we haven't seen in quite a while.

An innovative skin system.

“Xion features a new standard in skin support. Baffled by script syntax? Pulling your hair out over slicing up skin elements? Crying over spilt milk?

Xion's approach to skinning will remove all scripting and slicing requirements that other skin systems have placed on users. Xion will directly read a .PSD file and using layer names, instantly create your skin.”

That's right, no config files required. You create your skin in Photoshop, give the layers predefined names, and Xion will eat your .psd and use it as its skin. I haven't seen such (theoretical) ease of creation since ColorPad.

Ofcourse, you'll need Photoshop, or something that can export to Photoshop files, in order to create these skins.

More details on this specific build:

“A new build of Xion has been released!

With 200+ fixes it is well worth the download! There have been many improvements, fixes and changes to make this release well worth the wait.

I've converted from using the FmodEx engine, over to the BASS engine which opens up a large array of new file formats including AAC, MP4, M4A, MPC and APE to name a few.

This release brings with it many new features for the skin engine which give skinners even more power to create amazing skins.”

It also has MusePack support these days, so that rocks even more (I rip all my cd's to that format). Anyway, also check out Red's more elaborate post on Customize or just go grab Xion and see for yourself. || craeonics | comments (5)