As many items on the ACB Radio site are still not available, I thought I
would share this tutorial on Winamp that I found on the Winamp for the
Blind mailing list.

Kelly





Making The Most of Winamp by Jonathan Mosen

On the face of it, Winamp from Nullsoft may not seem like a terribly
accessible programme. Although the interface from the keyboard is
somewhat unorthodox, you'll find that Winamp is in fact one of the
most accessible of the fully featured MP3 players. This section
seeks to help you understand what Winamp can do, how to configure
it, and all the keyboard secrets will be revealed.

You can get a brief keyboard summary of all of the keyboard commands
mentioned in this document, and a few I won't be covering, by
pressing F1 from the Winamp main window. From there, you can press
control+tab through the multipage dialogue box until you get to the
tips and tricks section. If you left click your mouse on any of the
text of the edit box, this will give that read-only edit box focus,
which means that you can then read the summary with your screen
reader's continuous reading feature. You can also go to the top of
this edit box with the control+home combination, press
control+shift+end to select the entire edit box (control+A doesn't
seem to work) and then press control+C to copy it to the clipboard.
You may then want to paste this into a word processor or text editor
and save it for future reference.

Full help, much of it describing visual techniques but some of it
helpful, is now available on the Winamp site. Winamp is a fully
featured audio player, supporting most common file formats. If a
file format isn't supported out of the box, chances are you can get
a plug-in that will do the job.

It has a playlist editor allowing you to import individual files,
entire directories and locations from the Internet. Files can then
be randomised, or sorted by a number of criteria including song name
and file name.

A graphical equaliser allows you to make major adjustments to the
sound of the player. You can choose from presets, save your own
settings, and even specify your own settings on a song by song
basis. The ID3 editor allows you to edit MP3 tag information, which
is a handy way of recording information such as the album, the
artist, the year the song was released and more.

The plug-in architecture of Winamp means that fantastic add-ins are
being released regularly, ranging from the support of many file
formats through to pitch changers and audio compressors.

Basic Winamp Operation

When you install Winamp, you are asked if you want it to be your
default audio player. If you answer yes to this question, Winamp
will be launched from Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer when a
file that Winamp supports is encountered. The file will start
playing automatically.

You can also launch Winamp by going to the Start menu, choosing
programmes, then Winamp.

When in Winamp, the following commands can be used for playback.
Note that some of the keypad commands listed here may conflict with
your screen reader. You will need to change your screen reader's key
settings or use its bypass key if you wish to use the keypad in
Winamp.

X or Keypad 5 will play the current file. If Winamp is paused, this
command will resume playing from where you paused. If no file is
loaded into Winamp, you'll be prompted for a file name.

The V key stops playing. If you hold down the shift key, Winamp
fades out the currently playing song and then stops. If you hold
down the control key while pressing the stop key, Winamp will stop
at the end of the currently playing song.

B or keypad 6 skips to the next track. You can do this either when
Winamp is playing or when it is stopped. If you are playing a file
when you press this key, the next song in the queue will start
playing immediately. If you press the key when Winamp is stopped,
the song you have now selected will show in the window title with
the word "stopped" beside it.

Z or Keypad 4 skips back to the previous track. The same rules apply
as for next track discussed above.

Keypad 1 will jump ten songs back in the playlist.

Keypad 3 jumps ten songs forward.

Left-arrow or keypad 7 rewinds by 5 seconds.

Right-arrow or keypad 9 fastforwards by 5 seconds.

L or keypad 0 brings up the open file dialogue. Here, you can
specify the name of a file provided Winamp supports the file format.
You can also specify a playlist with a .m3u or .pls extension.

Control+L or control+keypad 0 lets you specify a file on the
Internet. You will need the full URL of the file or playlist.

Shift+L or the insert key lets you specify a directory to play. All
files in that directory with file formats that Winamp supports will
be played.

Keypad 8 or up-arrow increases the volume.

Keypad 2 or down-arrow turns the volume down. \

Configuring Winamp

Winamp is highly configurable. This section seeks to help you
understand how to navigate Winamp's Preferences.

To enter the preferences, press control+P. Winamp will present you
with a treeview. As in any treeview, you use the right-arrow key to
expand a branch of the tree, the left-arrow to close a branch, and
the down-arrow to navigate through items in the tree. Once you've
selected a section, you can use the tab and shift+tab keys to
navigate through the various elements.

When you get to the section for selecting and configuring plug-ins,
it is important to understand that after you have selected the
plug-in with the arrow keys, there is often a configure button which
allows you to fine-tune the settings for that particular plug-in.
Normally, you need to press the tab key to find the configure
button. Pressing the space bar will bring up the configuration
dialogue box for that plug-in.

The Playlist Editor

The Playlist Editor is one of Winamp's less accessible features, but
there is more that you can do with the keyboard than many people
think. The major difficulty is that with most screen readers, using
the arrow keys in Winamp 2.x will not give you reliable information
about the song that you've selected. This problem has been overcome
for users of Windoweyes and JFW, thanks to some clever set and
script file writing. These sets and scripts are available in ACB
Radio's download section. If you're going to work with the Playlist
Editor, these sets and scripts are a must! Anyway, let's take a look
at what you can do with the keyboard. Firstly, you will want to get
into the Playlist Editor. If the Playlist Editor window isn't open
yet, you will need to open it by pressing alt+E. Incidentally, once
windows such as the Playlist Editor are open, you can cycle through
all open windows with the control+tab combination. The Winamp menu,
which you can access with the alt key and choosing Winamp, will also
show a checkmark beside those windows that are open.

The R key toggles the repeat function. I have always had difficulty
determining the status of the repeat function from the Playlist
Editor window itself, but you can also toggle the repeat function
from the main Winamp Menu, which can be accessed from the main
Winamp window with the ALT key, and then choosing playback options.
Here, your screen reader should have no trouble telling you whether
repeat is checked or not.

The S key toggles whether shuffle is on or off. The same applies
here as for the repeat function.

L or keypad 0 adds a file to the playlist.

Control+L or control+keypad 0 adds an Internet location to the
playlist.

Shift+L or the insert key adds a directory to the playlist.

Control+N clears the playlist and lets you start from scratch.

Control+O lets you open a playlist you might previously have saved
to disk.

Control+S saves the playlist you've been working on. You have a
number of formats from which you can choose once you open the save
dialogue. Alt+3 views the track information for the selected track
or tracks.

Control+E lets you edit the names of the selected track or tracks.
Control+A selects the entire playlist.

Control+I inverts the selection, in other words what was selected
becomes unselected and vice versa.

The delete key removes selected files from the playlist.

Control+delete crops the playlist.

Control+shift+delete clears the playlist.

Alt+down-arrow moves selected files down.

Alt+up-arrow moves selected files up.

The down and up-arrow keys move the cursor down and up respectively.

The ENTER key plays the selected file.

The home and end keys jump to the start and end of the playlist
respectively.

Page up and page down move up and down by a fifth of a page.

Alt+delete removes all non-existent files from a playlist.

Control+shift+1 sorts the playlist by title.

Control+shift+2 sorts the playlist by file name.

Control+shift+3 sorts the playlist by file path and name.

Control+R reverses the order of the playlist.

Control+shift+R randomises the playlist.

Also, all playback controls are available as they are in the main
window.

Graphical Equaliser

Although I have not heard of anyone being able to set up their
screen reader to tell them the percentage of each band of the
equaliser in Winamp 2.x, you can make changes via the keyboard and
listen to the results to see how you like it. Also, control+s brings
up a list of over 20 presets that you can choose from.

First though, you'll need to open the graphical equaliser if it
isn't open already. You can do this with the alt+G combination.

The 1 and 0 keys increase their respective band of the ten band
equaliser. 1 is the lowest band IE base, 0 is the highest band, IE
treble. The row underneath decreases each band, from the q to the P
keys. So 1 and Q turns the lowest band up and down respectively, 0
and P turns the highest band up and down respectively.

Similarly, the tilde and tab keys turn the pre-amp up and down
respectively.

The N key toggles the equaliser on and off, so if it doesn't sound
like what you are doing with the number and qwerty rows is having
any effect, try pressing the N key to turn the equaliser on.

S opens the presets menu.

The A key toggles auto-loading of the equaliser.


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