iTunes: not using Windows GUI elements?

from WinCustomize Forums
I['m hoping some of you WinSkin wizards can answer this one for me...

A lot of people are having trouble with iTunes for Windows eating resources, especially when re-sizing the window or dragging it around. Now, I can;t seem to get one teeny little element of iTunes to change appearance no matter what I try, so I'm assuming it is not using the native elements in Wndows that allow us to skin. Apple probably wanted to control the precise and exact appearance of the app.

SO what could be slowing it down? I hypothesized the following: Maybe video drivers, or maybe the graphics that make up the iTunes GUI are huge-o-gi-normous. LIke when someone makes a skin with huge, full-color bitmaps and doesn't optimized them, the skin runs slow...I'm thinking maybe iTunes is doing this on certain systems.

Anyone want to take a crack at this and see if they can come up with a theory? Or maybe someone out there would like to decompile the EXE and find the GUI elements and tell me if they're huge?
5,232 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
it depends on if it is something that is hard coded in the application. If they have complied the graphics into the source then it is not skinable I would think...
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh BTW, iTunes loads a server service for iPOD even if you tell it not to, or at least it did here.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yep, it installed an iPodService on me also. I just went into services and disabled it (no iPod, no service ).

As for the performance, it seems to be more or less okay for me (on my high end machine at home, it's pretty responsive, but on my work box it's kind of flaky). It certainly isn't skinnable, it isn't using (as far as I can tell) any of the standard windows graphic elements.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
might want to check the *priority* here it has the Priority Boost Enabled, which means it is spending a lot of time dinking the CPU and adding unused datapipe room I would assume. When not in use it has 9 Data threads opened up, four ports is using 2,248 KiloBytes activly and has 25,126 KiloBytes mapped as private and a total of 193,908 KiloBytes total memory in use. Sitting idle it is using between .00 and 1.00 % CPU load.

Playing an MP3

CPU load 5.00 % - 27.99 %
total mem 218,208 KiloBytes
Handles 1,132
GDI objects 38
User Objects 7
Threads 11

mmm, have to check Winamp and MediaPlayer to see if there is a difference...

But I think it is probably a combination of what hardware is installed...

the GDI thing would play into the graphics hardware I would think as would the amount of installed RAM and such with CPU load and such...
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
iTunes should have licensed DirectSkin http://www.directskin.com




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Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Apple? *wanting* something to be skinnable? Ha, I say to thee. And again, Ha.

I *wish* iTunes was skinnable.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I would imagine it's simply Apples' lack of experience doing a skinning engine/skinned app in Windows, and knowing how to optimize it the best. It /is/ much quicker than the Quicktime player - so, give 'em time! Or, incentive to write more Win apps, and they'll get better!

(But on the bright side - if you look at iTunes.exe in Resource Hacker, you see Apple was kind enough to supply us with icons all the way up to 128x128! Well, at least for iTunes itself - the others only go up to 48, sadly.)
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