What is it?

WAWI is a plugin which gives you remote control of Winamp from any  web browser on the network. It lets you have full control over immediate playback, lets you edit the playlist and add songs from your music collection, all without touching the computer actually running winamp or installing anything on the client computer.

But... why?

Just a few examples I've heard of...

• Office Jukebox - instead of letting one person control what you're listening to, let everyone have a say.
• Controlling Winamp from something other than a computer - it's not just your normal computers that can use it... control your music from your PDA, phone (well, some of them), whatever. Handier to carry around...
• Keep all your music in one place - combined with a streamer such as ShoutCast, keep all your music on one computer and listen to it from anywhere else on the network. Useful if you're not allowed / can't get your music onto a computer at work or something...
• Pure laziness - Can't be bothered to get out of bed and go across the room to the computer playing the music? Use a nearer one! (This is what I mainly use it for...)
• Let other people have a look at your music collection - give them guest access to your winamp, let them have a poke around. Quick, hide anything incriminating...
• Control your music from around the house - if you pipe music all over the house, control it from wherever you've got a computer. Various people have used it as an addition to other home automation systems.

So what's to stop people hijacking my Winamp?

Users can only do what you let them do. If you trust everyone on your network you can let anyone do anything. If not, you can set up users so only logged in people can fiddle. Each user can be assigned different access rights such as...

• Server Control - control the setup of WAWI
• Play Control - control the immediate playback of Winamp
• Add Files - stick stuff onto the playlist
• Removes Files - remove stuff from the playlist
• Download - download music files in your collection (this can be turned on and off globally too)
• Browse - look through your music collection on the computer

...And it keeps a log of who did what too, so you can always educate people with a big stick if they keep fiddling with it.

So... what does it look like?

A little bit like this. Remember there isn't a winamp running it, so the buttons that would usually do something don't...

You're not a graphic designer, are you...

No! I program stuff; the graphics are the bare minimum to make it functional. If you want to make some prettier buttons and things, I'd be happy to replace them!

Can I make it look different?

To a point. WAWI has a built-in stylesheet to make it look like it does, but you can use your own by making a stylesheet file called "wawi.css" in the Plugins directory. With this you can change fonts, text sizes, colours, add a background picture, all sorts of stuff.

I'm slowly but steadily working on a new version which will use page templates so you can make the pages look like you want them to.

Funky. How do I get it then?

By downloading it from up there on the left. Have fun!

Which versions of Winamp does it work with?

The plugin was developed against Winamp 2.9 something. I currently use it with 5, although if you use a Modern skin the option to delete tracks from the playlist doesn't work.