Frogboy has jotted down his thoughts on how skinning has changed these last few years. Or more specifically, how the ever elusive ‘community’ has morphed into its current state.

“In the beginning, the content came from the community. The software itself was developed within the community as well. […] When Windows XP came along in 2001, things began to change. […] The number of people willing to create content dramatically decreased as a % of the user base. […] The same community that produced incredibly talented skinners increasingly became a community of consumers waiting for someone else to make things for them.”

Now Froggles isn't stupid. He founded StarDock many, many years ago and has raised it to be the giant that it is today (at least what customisation is concerned), so he obviously knows what he is doing.

But he has always held the misconception that the ‘skinning community’ is a mix of developers, skinners and users. The developers create the applications, the skinners provide the fancy eyecandy for it and the users, well, do nothing aside from bitching and complaining.

There is a symbiotic relationship indeed, but it is between devs and skinners. Users do not enter into the equation. This also lies at the root of what is wrong with WinCustomize. Its main audience consists of users with user issues and user problems and to such an extent that it looks more like a helpdesk, or indeed, a market, than a ‘skinning community’. Yeah, users make sense when you look at things from a commercial point of view, but they don't create, so (to me), they don't matter.

Back in the days of skinz.org, I used to think there was a skinning ‘community’, because I never went elsewhere. Truth is, there is no community, there are only separate communities, usually centered around a single site, but largely independent from the other communities.

“Already, there's consequences. There will be no ObjectBar 3. It's too expensive to develop and there's too little help from the community to justify the effort versus the revenue it generates. DesktopX barely is surviving and only because Stardock uses it so heavily internally.”

Ouch.

Doreen and I had a discussion about the evolution of skinning some time ago (if you can call it a discussion, since we tend to agree on things), triggered by a skinnable app on the PocketPC. It was a little app that provided a toolbar or something, but the key factor was that it was quite easy to skin. It was quite popular. Then the devs released version two, which was scriptable.

“Yay! Scriptability!”, I hear you say. This would provide excellent avenues of explorations of customisability.

Trouble is, it didn't catch on.

Doreen's theory is that the new format was simply to difficult to grasp. Yeah, it was powerful, but making a skin would take an exponential amount of time compared to the previous version. Skinning should be fun, as Scarebear would say. Slaving over hundreds of images plus having to know a scripting language and what not demands a lot from the skinners. No wonder they drop out. Hell, I don't see myself making WindowBlinds skins, because even with a visual tool to aid me in the process, there are so many factors involved, so many elements to skin, it's just not fun anymore.

Instead, I just ripped someone else's visual style and tweaked the colours to make it a lot darker.

There is an inverse correlation between the complexity of the skinning format (either the syntax or the amount of files) and the number of skinners willing to take a stab at things. This is probably why apps with novel formats like Xion are so refreshing.

Anyway, it is a thought provoking article. Be sure to also check the comments on the post at WinCustomize. || craeonics | comments (23)

Tripped across this on jarkles' blog (I know, that link won't last). Apparently, there's a new shell on the horizon: Cairo. Its history goes from a Samurize config, through Desktop X, to its current closed alpha C# implementation. Ambition is rampant, as the devs seem to suggest that a file-management replacement will be part of the package.

“Cairo is a revolutionary desktop environment for Windows. Our goal is to develop a desktop experience that increases productivity and advances current technology standards. With a focus on stability, performance, and productivity, Cairo is sure to turn a few heads.”

And the feature list adds:

“With Cairo you can transform your desktop from the dated Windows user-interface to a brand new system that will change the way you use your computer forever. Taking advantage of proven functionality, and with stability and performance in mind, the Cairo Desktop system aims to give users a productive and easy to use shell that advances current technology standards. Welcome to the Revolution.”

A lot of big words. But I'm going to reserve judgement until I can actually give this thing a spin. That is, if I can. The upcoming milestone build will be Vista only *sob*

Until then, we can only gawk at the pretty screenshots. || craeonics | comments (9)

So you've got your windows skinned, your wallpaper hand-picked and your icons all matching up. What's left to customise? The little pointer you move around all day ofcourse. Oft forgotten, Windows already provides ways to change your cursors, but CursorFX, formerly CursorXP, formerly CursorEx, takes things a step further.

“Stardock is pleased to announce the official release of CursorFX. CursorFX is a free program that allows users to customize their mouse cursors in ways far beyond what Windows is capable of doing on its own.

The default Windows mouse cursor technology is the same today as it was in 1993 when Windows NT 3.1 was released. It lacks functionality and visual effects that are easily possible with any remotely modern PC.

CursorFX updates the Windows mouse cursor engine to support fluid animations, alpha blending, effects, real-time shadowing, user-action mouse states, mouse cursor resizing on the fly, color changing, trails, and much more.

CursorFX is a replacement to CursorXP which only ran on Windows XP. CursorFX runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista and includes dozens of new features and tweaks over CursorXP.”

CursorFX comes in two flavours, the basic, free one and a $20 plus version that, amongst others, adds on-click events, trail effects and dynamic shadows. And with all that said, I suddenly have this urge to go create me some cursors. I've been staring at the bloody default ones for ages now. || craeonics | comments (9)

Alessandro of alphaSoft dropped me a line about his new minimalist run command app, alphaCML. It's not really skinnable, but hey. More interesting though is the AppPaths tool that comes along with it.

“alphaCML is a simple command line that sits quietly on your desktop: you can type commands into it to open applications or files. You can customize the position and the color of the text (prompt and command) and of the background. Files are opened with their default associated application. alphaCML can open applications also with "shortcuts". It uses the system default shortcuts, and it supports, via AppPaths, custom ones.”

Windows stores the paths to certain apps (‘AppPaths’) in the registry and assigns aliases to them. This enables you to just enter the alias to launch the app (without having to enter the full path). AppPaths seems to be a more user friendly way of entering these aliases, without having to resort to registry editing. || craeonics | comments (1)

Jumps in version numbers usually indicate additions of big new features. StarDock has just bumped their flagship app, the premiere (and only remaining?) window skinner, WindowBlinds to version six. So what exactly warrants the jump?

The answer is: ‘blurred glass’ on XP and ‘full support’ (skinwise) for Vista.

“WindowBlinds 6 adds the ability to have "blurred glass" window borders on Windows XP which allows artists to make skins that could make Windows XP look virtually identical to Windows Vista.”

Given my stance on OS emulation, the merit in this to me comes mostly for the technical achievement it entails. As far as I know, being aware of how windows are layered, or any sophistication thereof, is one of the innovations of Vista and absent in XP. Meaning that the devs probably had to work their way around quite a few obstacles to get this working on XP.

“WindowBlinds 6 also adds full support for customizing Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system. Everything from Internet Explorer 7 skinning, Sidebar skinning to explorer backgrounds, WindowBlinds 6 skins virtually every element of Windows Vista while making full use of the hardware acceleration features on Windows Vista for maximum performance.

The new version also adds a host of other features including advanced animation support in skins, user-creatable skin sub-styles, a new, easy to use configuration program, user customization options of fonts and colors in skins and much more.”

WindowBlinds comes as a trial version or you can shelf out either $19.95 for the solo app or $49.95 for the entire ObjectDesktop set of tools of which this is only one. || craeonics | comments

This is rather odd. If you were just looking at Rainlendar's site, you wouldn't notice there's a new version of this skinnable calendar. Fortunately, Rainy posted news on the new version elsewhere.

The changelog is pretty long. Rainy summarises it as:

“A new version of the customizable desktop calendar has been released. New features include the much requested full support for Google Calendar.”

Rainlendar comes in two flavours these days. The free version is still free. The pro version costs €15 and adds support for Outlook and Google Calendar.

Hmm, I also see ‘Lua scripting’ mentioned in the feature list. I wonder when that happened and what is scriptable with it. || craeonics | comments (3)

Red alerted me to a new build of the skinnable audio player Mp3CoolPlay-Xtreme. This release is mostly about bug fixes.

“Here is a list of changes for version 4.1:

• Fixed a bug which caused resume-on-start not to work with songs playing trough external decoder plugins.

• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused Mp3CoolPlay-X to crash while having much decoder plugins loaded at the same time.

• Added ID3v2 writing support. Also updated the whole ID3 tag engine, now it should be more stable, faster and with better support for newer version tags.

• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the position slider to be visible while playing Shoutcast/Icecast streams.

• Removed some unnecessary code and calls.”

This app looks remarkably like WinAmp.

There's like a ton of audio players on the market, but it's just like with text editors: everyone has their favourite and there's always room for more. || craeonics | comments (2)

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)

The sryan one dug up two new skinnable apps by KSoft on the Aqua-Soft boards, Icy Radio and RunMe. Icy Radio is an ‘internet radio player application’, meaning that with this you can search ShoutCast for suitable radio stations and then listen to them.

“It's an Internet Radio player application. With Icy Radio You can:

• search radio stations

• add stations to favourites

• listen radio stations in MP3 format

• listen radio stations in AAC format

• record sound to MP3 (32 - 256kbps). Just try find Rec button

• choose from 2 skins: Mac or Vista

• Read ICYRadio log (date, time, song information)

• Choose folder for Your recorded MP3

New in v0.3

• Fast spectrum analyzer

• Added tray icon with context menu (play, stop etc)

• Added new options for notifier and tray

• Now You can minimize ICY Radio to tray (added minimize buttons for skins)

• New columns with sorting (bitrate, listeners, ststion name)

• More genres added for searching

• Mac skin redisign

• Fixed some old bugs”

RunMe is a multi-level application launcher which docks to the side of the screen.

“RunMe is a launcher in NLauncher's or Aston's launcher's style. It supports special effects, animation and skins with transparency.

New in v0.8.5:

• Fixed runned window focus bug

• Fixed all windows blocking (when active only RunMe)

• Fixed captions in item properties

• Fixed activation on Alt+Tab etc.”

The threads on Aqua-Soft seem to be more up-to-date than the KSoft site, so it's best to check there for the latest versions. || craeonics | comments

Some dudette in pyjamas informed me of the upcoming testing day this sunday (the 25th) for the new build of the SharpE shell. The idea is that people download the app, test it and report what they think or find in the IRC channel.

“You've been waiting for new, shiny playthings and we have been toiling behind the scenes to make that happen. Finally we have a Developer Preview for you! Want some Testing Day action? Here's the scoop:

Sunday, March 25 from 1200-2400 GMT (or UTC for you kinky devils out there)

irc.freenode.net

#SharpE

[…] Come on out! We're excited to see what you think and you get to walk away from it with TD1, which looks pretty nice, we think. (that's an updated Vista screenshot, by the way).

On Testing Day we will have a wiki page up dedicated to the day, with a download link included. The purpose of Testing Day is to get as many people into the channel as possible at one time, testing the release. It will be a bug-finding free-for all, as well as an impromptu discussion and educational session. Stay as long as you like, it will be a marvelous frenzy of activity.

We'd like to see how many people we're looking at, so if you're going to attend, please make a comment on this post. Hope to see you there!”

I just found out this week that I have an exam next week, so count me out. But if you have an interest in shells and would like to help mangle this one, hop on over and give 'em a hand the 25th. || craeonics | comments (11)

And straight out of Lighttek's oven, by means of customize, a new release of their skinnable shell enhancer cq. ‘desktop replacement’, Talisman Desktop 2.99.

“The basic sphere of application of "Talisman" is the creation of custom-made interfaces for home and office computers. But the program can be used also as:

• Presentation interface for Exhibitions, Shows, Advertisement.

• Protected interfaces for Game Clubs, Information Kiosks, Museums, Libraries, Hotels, Schools, Universities and other organizations.

• HTPC (Home Theater PC) and Media Center interfaces.

• CarPC interfaces.

• Tablet PC interfaces.

The main new features of Talisman 2.99:

• Windows Vista support.

• New "Theme Manager 3.0 beta", including: Theme Manager, Theme Installer, Theme Builder, Shape Builder, Object Collector.

• New TSHAPE 3.0 format for alpha-blended Shape objects.

• New internal commands.

• Antialiased arrows in AClock object.

• New "Create new object" dialog window for dragging file procedure.

• Many other new functions and commands.”

Talisman is shareware ($25) and comes as a 7.6 meg, 30-day trial download. || craeonics | comments

Rainy has released a new beta build of his skinnable calendar application, Rainlendar. It seems to consist mainly of bug fixes.

“[2.1 Build 35] - 18 Mar 2007

• Status and due date were missing in Outlook's tasks. Fixed.

• Changed the snooze and dismiss buttons to icons so that it's not necessary to translate them.

• Added title to all windows.

• Images and buttons can have tooltips.

• EventListHeaderSeparation was handled incorrectly in the old ini-files. Fixed.

• Offline files for network calendars got broken in b34. Fixed.

• The backup path can be changed with a command line argument.

• Reading categories from the skin is now optional (Options->Advanced->Show categories from the skin)

• Fixed scrollbar positioning when items are removed from the lists.

• New option: Options->Advanced->Keep alarm always on top

• Tooltip show delay is now configurable (Options->Advanced->Tooltip show delay).

• Added support for single and right click actions to the tray icon. Note that right clicks will disable the context menu.

• The traytip is shown always inside the screen area.

• Fixed window positioning problem with negative coordinates and the On Desktop feature enabled.”

The man stresses that this is a beta build, so expect some things not working. Beta also means that you give Rainy some feedback if you find something. || craeonics | comments

After three years of drought, the new FF was finally released on these shores a couple of weeks ago. So that's where I've been hiding instead of taking care of Tek.

Back on topic though, just about the only window skinner on the market, so in more ways than one ahead of the competition: WindowBlinds 5.5, which was released last week.

“WindowBlinds 5.5 is a major update in that it is the first program to allow users to change the look and feel of Windows Vista. Thanks to a new technology called "SmartSkinning", WindowBlinds allows skins created for Windows XP to be used to skin Windows Vista. WindowBlinds 5.5 then transforms the skin, on-the-fly, to conform to the new user interface conventions of Windows Vista to give it a distinctly Windows Vista look and feel. Users of .msstyles files on Windows XP can use SkinStudio to convert their favorite .msstyles to WindowBlinds 5.5 to run natively on Windows Vista.

For Windows Vista users, WindowBlinds 5.5 makes use of the new hardware accelerated Desktop Window Manager (DWM) to ensure the highest level of performance. WindowBlinds 5.5 also skins the client controls of "non theme aware" programs on both Windows XP and Windows Vista so that users get a consistent look and feel across all their applications.”

Yeah, but what about us mere mortal XP users? I see the old adage ‘stagnancy yields regression’ is invoked here. But not surprisingly, for the only competitor WindowBlinds has these days is Windows' native theme system. So if there's a new OS out, StarDock can do little but progress.

Hence the following:

“Stardock has also begun work on WindowBlinds 6 which will provide a host of native features to Windows Vista such as custom blur effects, Sidebar skinning, glass toolbar skinning, and some new features that Stardock is keeping under wraps.”

Also check out froggles' news post on customize, which offers something quite different from the usual commercial blabber. || craeonics | comments (5)

Two new apps that have something to do with tabs and are more or less skinnable. Nubs basically didges the taskbar and lets you position your tasks on all sides of the screen as tabs. On the internal front, QT TabBar adds a skinnable tab bar to Explorer.

“Nubs is an application for Windows similar to Sticky Windows (Mac OSX) developed by Andrew Powell, of Shellscape Software. Nubs is designed to maximize window management and organization with stylish and themeable tabs. It only takes a few seconds to learn, and is painless to use.

Nubs isn't just for fancy, tabbed Windows. Nubs does what the Windows taskbar can't — Nubs makes use of your entire screen. Multiple monitors? Not a problem for Nubs!”

I hope I got the operating principles right. Description's a bit vague and since this thing requires (surprise) the .NET framework, I can't test it mysef.

QT TabBar is a bit clearer. It just adds a toolbar with (skinnable) tabs.

“QT TabBar allows you to operates files and folders like tab browser folder grouping, histories, and etc.”

Then again, it too requires the .NET framework, so what do I know?

Credits for these finds go to sryo and vkeios. || craeonics | comments (9)

There have been a couple of developments in the realms of k23 productions. The most notable being the latest release of Cheekiemunkie/Full Phat's Snarl, a ‘fancy notification system for Windows’.

“Snarl is a notification system inspired by Growl for Macintosh that lets applications display nice alpha-blended messages on the screen. […]

The current version of Snarl under development includes seamless UTF8 unicode support for programming languages which support it natively. For other languages (Visual Basic 6 for example) which do not natively support Unicode, the api has been extended to provide support for these environments.

Additionally, Snarl now supports extensions - small code modules that run within Snarl's process space - which can be used to extend functionality of existing applications without requiring modifications to the application itself.

Extensions are already available for the following applications:

• MSN Messenger (notifies when people sign in)

• Microsoft Outlook (notifies when new mail is received)

• The Windows System Tray (translates the contents of balloon tips)”

Another development is that Snarl runs on top of the Melon toolkit, a ‘modular suite of libraries designed to take the effort out of developing content-rich, highly complex applications.’. When you install Snarl it first installs Melon (without asking where to put it, @#$%!!). Melon's info page has been up forever, but this is the first time I've actually seen it in action.

And now I finally know what that cryptic warning symbol, that's been plastered all over the site for some time now, stands for. It was a teaser for the upcoming (in the far and distant future) psychOS, a ‘a graphical desktop environment for Windows’. More on that when a build is out.

Kudos to spyder for the heads up. || craeonics | comments

So apparently bits and pieces of Mac Gadger's default skin have some relation with bits and pieces pogrelz' 3RVX default skin, going as far as having the same timestamp. Fishy, ain't it?

Said 3RVX, a skinnable volume controller, saw its version 1.0.4 release earlier this month. Unfortunately, the news post with changes rolled off the front page of its site before I could speak about it here. Truth be told, I had ample time to do so.

Whilst creating new skins for 3RVX, poggles' fires were sparked anew and after a day of coding, a new skinnable calculator rolled out of the labs of Malensek Enterprises.

“Yep. It's just a boring old calculator. A calculator that's fully skinnable with 32-bit PNGs. I have the OS X skin nearly pixel-perfect, though I still need to work on the font. Every image supports alpha transparency, so all kinds of cool skins will be possible with this app.

Most importantly, it supports… calculating! Awesome, eh? After about a day of coding, this thing is almost ready for release. I just need to work on the skins some more, map the keyboard buttons to the buttons in the program, and so a few other small fixes and it should be done for now.

If you'd be interested in skinning it, send me an email and I'll give you a beta version to try out. Skins aren't too hard to make, it's a pretty simple XML format. Really, the only hard part is drawing all those buttons. :p”

I suspect both apps require the freaking .NET framework. If you're cool with that and want to give the man a hand, give him a shout. || craeonics | comments (7)

As posted on customize, Mac Gadger is an app intended to emulate a number of Mac interface elements, namely volume and disk controls. It also uses the magic words ‘layered skin support’ and ‘32-bit PNG’.

“MAC Gadger is an application that emulates the look and feel of the Mac OS X volume bezel and CD/DVD Tray. It also provides a tray icon from which you can Change the Settings and When you Click on that it will show Volume Control that displays the current volume level and you can set the Volume from there in an OS X style controller.

Whats new in v2.0:

• You can now add this to Object Dock , Object Bar and other Applications (Look for 'MAcVol.exe' in installation folder').

• Skinnable with 32-bit PNGs , Layerred Skin Support Alpha , Transparency , Drop Shadows.

• Notification with Current System Volume display Load/Un-Load CD/DVD Door notification

• Hotkey support to Increase and Decrease and Mute volume, as well as Load/Unload CD/DVD Doors

• Supports Multiple Drives to Eject and Load

• New UI , with new Positioning System

• You can now Select your Custom Mixer

• User's Skin based Icon

• and lots of Bugs Patched and decrese the Usage of Memory”

Sounds like a lot of power for a mere volume controller. Then again, that's probably why it's a four meg download. || craeonics | comments (5)

Avant Window Navigator is a ‘fully customisable dock-like window navigator for Gnome’, or in other words, an icon based task bar. The author stresses that it may look like the OS X dock, but it does not try to imitate it. The main difference is probably that the OS X dock is a cross between an app launcher and a task bar, while this just does the latter.

“Avant Window Navgator (Awn) is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of the screen (in all its composited-goodness) tracking open windows.”

I'd label this app as ‘themeable’, seeing that the customisation boils down to seting the colours for the various elements and defining an optional backdrop pattern. || craeonics | comments

It seems to have mysteriously vanished from modern Mac keyboards (or I am overlooking things), but the old ones used to have a power down key. As a matter of fact, all PC keyboards I've bought had one.

Hence, I flick this key and Windows will shut down. I do no need to do anything like hit ‘Start’, ‘Shut down’ and another ‘Shut down’. Hell, I use a different shell, so I don't even have a Start button.

What's this all about? *gehrunnerjunge, a minimalistic(ally) skinnable shutdown tool.

“*gehrunnerjunge is a simple shutdown application that provides some customize options. It looks like the classic shutdown dialog, but doesn't require the fucking login dialog. It just has some basic features and will get more if my mood is right.”

You can find more screenshots at DevArt.

Skinnability is really minimal. Just a background image and some colour settings for the menu. Titlebar and buttons are dependent on the visual style you use. || craeonics | comments

If you have Vista, you may have noticed that the tray balloons look the same like they did in XP. Curious enough, this wasn't the case in the betas, where they had a glassy effect. AndreasV, author of AveDesk, was peeved enough to write a little app to change this, Glass Toast.

“What's working?

• intercept notification balloons and replace them with a glass toast (longhorn 4xxx style)

• notifications give the same response as real balloons (eg. "click here balloons" initiates the same acation with glass toasts)

• made stuff a bit prettier.

What's stupid?

• all offset values are hardcoded. All others are derived from bitmap sizes.

• stupid DWM blurring: mask.bmp is used for masking out the blur on parts that should be 100% transparent; white = invisible; black=visible in the mask.bmp

• occasionally some problems (seems not all applications use the correct flags)”

And you might have guessed it, this app will only work on Vista. || craeonics | comments (3)