Will Vista increase demand for skinning?
Your thoughts?
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 by Frogboy | Discussion: OS Customization
I've shown friends my beta of Windows Vista and they love the clean look, the glass UI, the dark Start bar.
But I wonder how they'll feel about it say a month after they've been using it. As I've begun to mess around with the betas more and more, the sexiness starts to wear off and my desire to personalize my experience for my own preferences returns.
What looks like glass at first starts to just be a bitmap that's at 20% opacity with a blur effect on it. Sure, I can change the opacity or the color but essentially, from a customization point of view, Windows Vista is actually a step back from Windows XP in some ways in my opinion. Even XP users could hack uxtheme.dll and apply hacked msstyles to their system. This time, the story isn't quite the same. Now, at best, you'll have someone hacking bitmaps to replace the border and button PNGs/BMPs with another and even then, what do you do about things like Office 2007 which are literally hard-coded.
My prediction is that skinning, which has been steadily growing in popularity to the point of being mainstream (which has not been completely good news for skin sites -- as skinning becomes mainstream, cottage sites become less needed), will take a new turn with the demand increasing even further.
I think WindowBlinds and other Stardock programs will likely see real competitors because the demand for customization will grow much higher.
And I haven't even touched on Microsoft's gadgets which are definitely going to need third party help to be viable IMO. As it stands now, the Microsoft gadget platform is in desperate need of third party attention to expand what developers can do easily so that worthwhile content can be made. DesktopX 4 will likely step up to the plate when it's released but I think you'll see a whole cottage industry for that.
But what do you think? Do you think Vista will be good for skinning or do you think the cool, clean look of Vista will be enough?
 |
|
Page 2 of 2 | |
|
|---|
Reply #22 Friday, July 14, 2006 2:09 PM
The skin looks awesome.
I have a AMD X2 4400+ with 4 gigs of RAm
6800 GS 256 MB
I have tried every resolution imaginable and I can't get WindowBlinds to work to a level that I would say, "properly". It loads, grinds the system to a halt, won't display the graphics properly, everything is slowed to a crawl and I just have to turn it off before I go nuts. What am I doing wrong?
Reply #23 Friday, July 14, 2006 2:26 PM
Reply #24 Friday, July 14, 2006 2:52 PM
| will be trying it out shortly. |
Nope....no good!! DX installs okay, and it'll load objects and widgets, but not themes. Have tried various ways and even uninstalling, reinstalling, but DX keeps crashing each time a theme file is clicked on. Oh well, it'll have to wait...haven't had enough sleep over the last 48 hours to feel inclined, motivated enough to try fix it now.
Reply #25 Friday, July 14, 2006 2:56 PM
I should also say I have a 24" LCD running at 1920 x 1200. I tried turning the resolution down thinking the skins may be designed for specific res, and it helps a little. What the heck am I doing wrong?
Reply #26 Friday, July 14, 2006 3:39 PM
In answer to your question on whether or not the release of Vista will generate more skinning interest all depends on the ability to make use of Vista's 3d desktop. As it stands I think the Aero theme is really just "OK" and nothing more. Its clean but really nothing special in my opinion. I don't run the Aero ports on my XP machine, mainly because they lack what really makes true Vista Aero good: refraction. The only reason the transparency works on Vista is because the light "refracts" so your background is blurred. Straight transparency without refraction is very distracting and makes it difficult to tell which window is on top, even with a decent opacity level.
If Stardock can offer a way to allow skinners to incorparate things like refraction and reflection then the answer is YES, you can increase the skinning demand by creating very unique interfaces.
Reply #27 Friday, July 14, 2006 6:46 PM
| That's just it. I am running XP Media Center |
ATI driver? Google for "windowblinds media center" (without quotes). First hit.
Reply #28 Saturday, July 15, 2006 10:13 PM
I believe yes. But we may have to rethink "skinning". The new .Net3.0, with its separation of design and behavior logic, is by its very design meant to be not only customizable, but more accessible to both designers and coders.
XAML, the XML based language that the new .Net3.0 apps use to define their GUI, is mind-bogglingly powerful, yet simple enough to read and know what is being described. That is, if designers feel the need to write XAML by hand at all when they can just use Expression Interactive Designer to make it WYSIWYG for them.
I've been making a list display in DesktopX recently. I can modify on the standard forms list control only a few things, font, line height, background, foreground, selected colors. A XAML list control has no limits to what could be "customized". The list elements could be buttons...animated buttons, sets of other organized controls, animated text...you name it.
What I'm saying is, Vista is a skinner's paradise when it comes to designing application GUIs and hopefully support (for XAML) will come for the gadgets and such.
That support may not be needed though. The Vista sidebar and gadgets do seem lackluster. They should; Stardock, et al, have been making them for years. But with design and logic separated, and free (for the time being) tools for making them, I would not be surprised to see many skinners begin to develop their own, specialized applications.
RSS gadgets, for example, always seem underpowered, a bit of a pain to configure, and in general more effort than they are worth (to me). But if a skinner decided to sit down and use XAML / C# to make the best damn RSS reader out there, it could still be as stylish and unobtrusive as the sleekest gadget. And it could, theoretically, be easily skinnable by anyone who wanted to create their own XAML.
We could see a return to the days of BeatNik for your clock, Rainlender for your calendar, SysMetrix for your meters type specialization. Where powerful, self contained, specialized, skinnable apps flourish.
Reply #29 Sunday, July 16, 2006 11:11 AM
| Nope....no good!! DX installs okay, and it'll load objects and widgets, but not themes. Have tried various ways and even uninstalling, reinstalling, but DX keeps crashing each time a theme file is clicked on. Oh well, it'll have to wait...haven't had enough sleep over the last 48 hours to feel inclined, motivated enough to try fix it now. |
Oh, I haven't tried applying themes. I was only playing around with objects, widgets and gadgets.
Reply #30 Sunday, July 16, 2006 9:52 PM
| Oh, I haven't tried applying themes. I was only playing around with objects, widgets and gadgets. |
Well for the time being, DX themes cannot be applied in Vista, according to a windows report I got at next startup....bugger, should've thought to kept it to copy & paste here.
Anyway, it listed a number of compatability issues (files names that made no sense to me) and suggested I check back at a later date for solutions, which I shall do, posting the results here as I'll still be none the wiser for all that code and tech speak which goes completely over the top of my head. The thing is, I have XP pro as my main OS and can live without customising Vista (only for a short while
), so I'll just be patient and wait for the programmers here to get 'em working happily together.Reply #31 Sunday, July 23, 2006 5:30 PM
Reply #32 Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:28 PM
| Customer buys a notebook. Checks off the skin option of lets say Royle Vista or something, it adds on the cost of WB and I install it for them with the OS install. My question to anyone who knows, are these skins just free? Do the skinners just do it because they're cool or what? If that is the case they all get an A+ in my COOL BOOK. KillerNotebooks View KillerNotebooks's Profile Email KillerNotebooks Find Posts By KillerNotebooks |
Are you talking about installing the Windowblinds program or just some skins? Either way you need permission to do that. Permission from Stardock for the Windowblinds program (Zubaz gave the link in his comment above) and if you intend to "Package" a skin other than the default ones that come with the Windowblinds program...you definately need permission from the person who made the skin. All the skins here at wincustomize are free for personal use, but are copyrighted to the author of the skin. Most of us skin for fun, however, some do it professionally as well.
As for skinning...if it's skinnable, I will probably do it. Why? Because I like to personalize my workspace and that includes my laptop and pc.
Reply #33 Wednesday, July 26, 2006 12:06 AM
| I installed WB today and I am seriously looking at the Vista type skins. I would like to offer these on my notebooks I sell as an option. I am envisioning it like this. Customer buys a notebook. Checks off the skin option of lets say Royle Vista or something, it adds on the cost of WB and I install it for them with the OS install. My question to anyone who knows, are these skins just free? Do the skinners just do it because they're cool or what? If that is the case they all get an A+ in my COOL BOOK. |
KillerNoteBooks ... as with any packaged software pre-installed with a system sale you'd need an individual license for each install [reg-serial, etc included with package].
The skins available here are almost all 'free to use' as boopish mentions, however a few are for purchase only and cannot be distributed likewise unless there's an individual purchase for each use [or unless an arrangement is made with the skin owner]. Otherwise, if you intend to promote or feature a 'free' skin as part of your commercial enterprise it would definitely be only politic to seek permission from the skin author first.
Perhaps even a royalty payment would be appropriate.
The skins provided on Wincustomize.com [and elsewhere] are uploaded/distributed under the proviso they are for 'Personal Use'. Commercial re-distribution is outside that, whether freely done or with remuneration...
Reply #34 Wednesday, July 26, 2006 4:39 PM
Reply #35 Thursday, July 27, 2006 9:08 PM
Aero is a very clean looking skin, but that "new car smell" ,you could say, will wear off and then we will be back where we were when XP came out. As i said Skinning will be here until we find some way to not use computers anymore.
Reply #36 Friday, July 28, 2006 4:30 PM
skinning and hacking and modding will always have a place in the mainstream. Human nature is mostly the cause for this since we all want what WE want, not what bill gate's trusted advisiors say we want
c7
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!
|
|
Page 2 of 2 | |
|
|---|
Reply #21 Friday, July 14, 2006 12:35 PM
Yeah, I read that someplace just before....will be trying it out shortly.