Another (hopefully trivial) suggestion: Text shadow (font_xshadowcolor, font_xshadowoffset) for, let's say, main/mini title and time display? It's difficult to make text on a metal/silver background gel nicely if you can't make it look "etched" using a simple text shadow.
I'll look into it.
One obvious option would be to adopt the top-rated existing skin on the support site as the default, with the author's permission, of course. The new-skins contest two years ago caused too much aggravation, and a special users' vote on existing skins would presumably more or less reflect the support-site ratings anyway.
The current top rated skin seems to be "iXMPlay", but I don't think it'd be a good idea to have XMPlay's default skin being based on another player. The older skins don't have all the new features (eg. queue list), so aren't really an option, although I reckon an updated "Section" could be good. Anyway, I just mentioned it incase anyone had some good skin ideas/designs simmering

<edit> Downloaded newest stuff-version, seems to work fine now.. Not sure if something was updated or if I just had been doing done something wrong. ;I Probably both, so cheers, Ian!
</edit> I don't think I made any changes to that stuff, but I'll take it anyway

The new slanted slider works well, apart from a slight graphical glitch when near beginning or end of the song.
On left end, the normal background shows up on the left end of the slider and on right end the new knob_bitmap shows up under the right end of the slider. Attached image should explain what I'm after better.

To better understand the problem, could you please upload the panel and mask bitmaps?
something like "
color_currenttrack= FFFFFF" a skin option to give the currently playing track a different color from the rest of the playlist

Ok, a "color_listcurrent" skinconfig option has been added...
www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe