The State of Skinning 2006

My editorial on where skinning has been and is going

Wednesday, March 7, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: OS Customization

It's been awhile since I've done one of these but this is certainly a pivotal year in skinning.  The term "skinning" has really expanded in what it means. In the beginning, it simply meant changing the graphical elements of an application (such as Winamp) or of a character in a computer game (like Quake). 

Today, skinning is loosely used to describe customizing in general. From phones, to PDAs, to computer caess, skinning has become an all purpose term. Heck, I read on a car forum somoneone "skinning" their car interior.  But for our purposes, we're going to stick with customizing the user experience of personal computers (primarily PC and Macintosh).  This article will give a head's up on where I think, in my highly biased way, things stand and where I think they're going.

Before we begin, I should probably introduce myself since according to Google Analytics, 93% of February's unique visitors were first time visitors.  My name is Brad Wardell. I run a PC software company called Stardock which makes a set of utilities for Microsoft Windows that allows users and companies to change the way their computer looks and feels.

Much of the software we make is free. Some of it isn't. But as you can imagine, we are very into skinning and watch carefully its trends.

The Community: Who are we?

In the case of WinCustomize.com, we get over 2 million unique visitors monthly according to Google analytics. We've used other measurements in the past that gave higher results but we have a higher degree in confidence in Google's numbers. Past numbers have tended to double-count visitors so we would get counts of over 20 million visitors per month. By that measurement, we're now at over 40 million visitors. But we really are interested in unique visitors for our purposes.

When we first started using Google analytics this past July for measuring traffic, we were getting around 1.7 million visitors each month (even though July has 3 more days than February).  So traffic is definitely up (but it usually goes up in the Winter anyway so we won't be able to measure whether it's truly growing significantly until we've had a full year on Google analytics).

But what people in the community really want to know, how many people are really in our community? For instance in February, of that 2.1 million or so visitors, 1.6 million people came once and never returned. Maybe they found us through a search engine or link. The real question therefore are the number of people who came back over and over.  Say, more than 9 times in a given month. That number is 361,000 or so.

Okay, then how many different people visit WinCustomize say  on average 4 or more times each day? The true hard core? That number is around 63,000.

And it is that number that we have to be very conscious of.  When we enforce a site policy or create a new one, we try to keep the vocal regulars in mind, but we have to also try to think how the 63,000 people who visit the site several times each day but just don't post but are reading the comments and forums.

What's not commonly known is that the comments on a given skin are read a lot. The analytics data indicates that skins with a lot of comments will get a lot of repeat visitors who don't download the skin. Which implies strongly they're reading the comments.

Of the couple hundred people who regularly post in the forums and such, there's literally 62,000+ people lurking. This is probably something that's always been true on the Internet but just wasn't able to be measured.

The Community: Where is it going?

A long time ago when the first skinning sites (Customize.org and Skinz.org) came into being it was a relatively small group. I remember hanging out on those sites and you literally knew every skinner and sometimes every forum user. I'd chit chat with Doreen or craeonics or Shoggot or Mian or Toasty and any number of other people with interesting handles. And if a skin got a hundred downloads in a single day, it was a big deal. I remember thinking about a skin that got 500 downloads and saying "Wow, that's more people than were in my high school class!"

Today, thousands of skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, gadgets, widgets, etc. are made each week and submitted to various places. The most popular ones can see tens of thousands of downloads in a day or two.

The people making the skins are from all over the world. It has gotten even more diverse. In the GUI Championships, skinners from China dominated for instance. It's truly an international phenomenon.

Of course, this has some consequences. If a major chunk of the new skinners speak a non-English language as their first language, it changes the dynamics considerably in terms of written interaction of the community.

It's not that there's fewer English speaking people getting into skinning, it's just that it's gotten so much bigger. You've got the aforementioned Chinese skinners, you've got Japanese skinners (WindowBlinds, DesktopX, IconPackager, etc. are all sold in Japan at retail in Japanese -- and sell very well), as well as from Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere.

The Tools of Skinning

Windows Vista will be a difficult transition. The more we get into it, the tougher it's going to be for us and we're paid to do it. For the freeware authors and hobbyist developers, you're going to see some die off as well as new programs being made. So let's talk about this:

Big fish eats medium fish eats small fish

Every once in awhile you'll see some users argue that they wish the OS vendor (Apple or Microsoft typically) "build skinning into the OS 'natively'". They think that if the OS vendor develops it and bundles it with the OS that it will, by magic, be better.

In reality, what happens is that it kills off the specialists. Once upon a time, there were two programs called DesktopX on the PC and Konfabulator on the Mac.  Apple included Dashboard with the Mac. Then Yahoo bought Konfabulator. And despite Yahoo's massive traffic and the re-christened Yahoo Widgets being cross-platform, the "widgets" over on Yahoo typically only get a couple thousand downloads.

Meanwhile, on Windows, Microsoft has included the Sidebar. Will Microsoft support the Sidebar any better than Apple has supported (or not) Dashboard? It's hard to say.  But the effect in both cases has been devastating to the world of gadgets and widgets.  Over at Yahoo, only 7 new widgets were released between February 21 and March 2. That's less than one per day. Not that the makers of DesktopX (Stardock) can crow. Only 15 widgets were made in that same period for it and 6 of them were weather widgets and they get even fewer downloads.

But then again, Konfabulator and DesktopX pretty much wiped out the mini-skinnable application universe. Before their were widgets, there were tons of little applications that were skinnable. Rainmeter and Rainlendar have survived along with a few others. But in general, the specialist skinnable applets died as widgets became popular

Side note: Rainmeter is actually thriving -- it got 11 new skins for it in the same period mentioned above and they don't exactly have Yahoo's clout (kudos to Rainy!).

Meanwhile, I'd tell you how well Microsoft's Gadgets are doing on MicrosoftGadgets.com but their gallery doesn't display things like dates with the submission but Apple's getting around 50 widgets a week of..various quality (but don't display the # of downloads).

I guess one thing I feel safe in saying that there's only one thing worse for people who like skinning than the OS vendor including it as part of the OS and that is the OS vendor also providing the site to get more content. Oye.

  • Dashboard Widgets (Apple) (about as sterile as it gets -- no ratings, comments, download numbers, or anything. Take your stuff and go)
  • Microsoft's Gadget Gallery (Microsoft Live) (I'm in hell, but at least the actual individual items let users comment and rate them once you manage to sift through the site)
  • Yahoo Widget Gallery (Yahoo) (The Konfabulator design lives on - still the best looking gallery with lots of easy to use features on the net. Arlo Rose is still the best web designer in the world IMO)
  • DesktopX Widget Gallery (Stardock) (not as pretty as Konfabulator's IMO but you make the call).

The lesson learned, don't hope the OS vendor includes it. Or you may end up one of those people still looking for Active Desktop content (and if they do include it, hope they don't try to be the place to get more stuff).

So where do things stand with the applications?

The GUI Changer Status

On the GUI Skinning site, Windows XP still has two basic ways to skin it. 

Option #1 remains that you can use a program that hacks Microsoft's built in skinning engine to allow users to use unsigned msstyles which has the advantage of generally having equal compatibility to what Windows XP's skin gets assuming the skin is well made but the disadvantage that you've had to hack your system files and hope Microsoft doesn't update the OS and break what you've done.

I'm personally still a grump about the uxtheme patchers because the most vocal advocates were so full of..crap about what they were doing using terms like "native" and trying to get people to ignore the fact that they were basically patching out digital signing protection and then use patched luna.msstyles files that were renamed. It was only one step above redistributing user.exe files back in the Windows 3.1 days IMO. But it works decently as long as you're not a casual user.  It was the ones trying to make money doing this that (again IMO) gave capitalism a bad name -- it's like paying someone to make a CD crack for your favorite game and having them imply they also made the game.

Option #2 is that you can get a program that has its own skinning engine to change the look of Windows. Pre-XP, there were several of these but Windows XP killed off all but one -- WindowBlinds which, at the risk of letting my bias shows, is absolutely superior to patching uxtheme at this point in terms of memory use, performance, and quality. It's main downside remains that poorly designed skins (and WindowBlinds skins will let the skinner hang themselves) can cause problems.

In my opinion, it really took until WindowBlinds 5 to put away the uxtheme patchers. There's still the zealots who aren't aware that you can use .msstyles with WindowBlinds by converting them via SkinStudio and hence say "I don't like WindowBlinds skins". But overall, I feel safe in saying that the GUI skinning wars on XP are pretty much settled.

On Windows Vista, things are a bit more in flux.  On Vista, if you are willing to patch several files, you can then resource hack the binary .msstyles file to change things since the Start button.  So far, the results are nothing like they were on XP. You're talking just replacing individual graphic items.

WindowBlinds on Vista is working but it will probably take awhile to nail down all the issues since Vista itself currently has issues. I suspect a lot of people are waiting for SP1 on Vista and for the video drivers to get updated. I'm going to write about my own Vista experiences soon. The short story is that some of my machines have Vista but my main "gotta get work absolutely done on" machines remain XP.  I suspect this will change in the coming weeks as issues in Vista and in third party software get resolved.

But that doesn't mean someone else won't come up with something. Remember, before Windows XP, there were several independent GUI skinning programs. Now that the uxtheme/msstyles thing on Vista really isn't practical, it might open the door for others to try to develop their own GUI skinning programs again. Who knows.

And if I haven't mentioned it before, UAC is incredibly annoying.

The Shells

Shells are programs that can replace the entire desktop interface. The shell Windows comes with is called "Explorer". There have traditionally been three major ones out there -- Litestep, Talisman, and Aston. I realize there are others out there but these are the three biggies as far as I know.

As far as I know, Aston doesn't support Windows Vista yet (at least according to their page). The last Talisman update was in October and doesn't officially support Windows Vista either according to their page. But that doesn't mean they won't work on Vista in the future. Vista is still new.

The last, Litestep, seems to have stopped development. I'm not sure what it's status is.  For awhile, replacing Explorer with a new shell was a pretty popular thing. There were shell replacements such as Hoverdesk, GeoShell, and numerous others that were very promising. Windows XP took out some of them as Explorer got "decent" enough and I have a feeling that Windows Vista may finish the job for all but the most niche uses (that new search in the Start menu is very nice in Vista)

But your mileage may vary. If someone has more up to date news and info, please feel free to comment.

Icon Changing

Changing icons is something that has gotten more popular and yet fewer and fewer programs actually do it.

I hope people will forgive me if I say that at this point, Stardock's IconPackager is the defacto standard in this. If there's another way to change all the icons on Windows Vista in one swoop I don't know of it other than IconPackager.

But the news on Vista isn't completely rosey:

Look carefully at this screenshot and weep. Because Windows Vista has a new type of folder called "Live Folders". It also adds a bunch of new folders types that are very prominent:

Check out closely this screenshot above. Windows Vista folders automatically will show what's in the folder. Here, let's zoom in on those folders:

Do you see what I'm getting at? ALL (as in 100%) of existing icons created in the past decade that attempt to change the folders will no longer work because Live Folder icons replace the traditional folder because these folders are generated dynamically.

In addition, there's tons of new icons (those greenish ones) that no icon package out there currently replaces.  In time, IconPackager will get better at mapping them out. But that won't change that there's simply some new ones (Saved Games, Searches, Contacts). 

And see the ones that look too small? Icons that don't support 256x256 end up looking small like you see the ones above that are small. Which means LOTS more work for icon artists (remember when 32x32 sized icons were enough?). To put things in perspective, 256x256 is about the full screen resolution of a Commodore 64. You're now talking about some serious artwork.

And even then, what about those live folders?  So icon packages will have to be updated to handle live folders. 

IconPackager 3.2 will include icon packages that support all the new stuff on Vista (thanks to Alexandrie and Treetog who have both joined Stardock full-time this year).

Above is an icon package Treetog recently released that supports Vista.

It'll be very interesting to see how this problem is resolved. Will skin authors update their icon packages? Or will we end up having to have some sort of system where there is some sort of icon packages..packages (where users can apply the base icon package and then a vista updated package created by someone else). Who knows what will happen there. But I can say without the live icon folder icons, an applied icon package doesn't seem the same to me.

And any serious icon changing utility has to support this stuff and I can say, it's non-trivial to do this kind of thing without resorting to some ugly hacking (did I mention that dynamic folders are dynamically generated)?.

Logons

Logons remain very popular. On Windows XP there are a number of different ways to change your logon screen. Stardock makes LogonStudio which we made because people were literally distributing logonui.exe's around (In America, that's called piracy). 

On Windows Vista, LogonStudio Vista is out and it's pretty straight forward so far. You can't really design your own logon yet like you can on XP. There just haven't been enough resources available to go and decipher Microsoft's cryptic "format" for their logon screens. And we also don't know the repercussions if we did (as in, we don't want to have a situation where people could hose their systems with a logon screen).

Dreams

For Windows Vista Ultimate users, obviously one big new addition that has made quite a splash has been animated wallpapers which we call .Dream files.  Microsoft includes a Windows Vista Ultimate Extra called Windows DreamScene. For Ultimate users, Stardock has developed DeskScapes which extends that Ultimate Extra to support .dreams which can do all kinds of amazing things as animated wallpaper.

I think as time goes on, animated wallpapers may turn out to be the "biggest new" thing to come to skinning in a long time. It's something that a lot of people can get into that has a very large impact. And the early results have been surprising - what many (myself included) skeptically thought might be tacky and distracting has been done in a way that is classy and interesting. I think Dreams are here to stay.

The Mainstreaming of skinning

A few years ago, pioneering skinners got together and started Pixtudio and Skinplant and started making premium skins. This led others to start making skins professionally for movie studios and major corporations.

In the past year, Stardock has brought in much of the talent from Pixtudio and SkinPlant to form Stardock Design.  In just a few months, two huge projects were won from Microsoft and Dell.

For Microsoft, the aforementioned work to create animated wallpapers for Windows DreamScene was launched and completed. 

And for Dell, the single largest skinning initiative in history. By teaming up with colleges, sports teams, and more, end users have started to be able to purchase themed desktops of their favorite teams.

You'll be hearing a lot more about this as the year progresses and this project really starts to ramp up.  By combining the talents of the top skinners into a single organization, skinning is about to come to "the masses" in a huge way.  Not bad for something that's just got started

The Skinning sites

The skinning community is no longer one tight monolithic group. It has long since splintered into all kinds of forms. 

Our friends at deviantART still support skinning but the site has gone on to focus on art in general and become immensely successful in that endeavor. 

Some of the classic sites of old have gone down. Others exist on seemingly endless life support.  But others, like Customize.org are on the verge of a revolution of new technology and improvements that I think will inspire other sites (including WinCustomize.com) to improve further.  SkinBase continues forward with a tightknit community (for users who find WinCustomize "too big" I highly recommend Skinbase, it's a friendly place with lots of good features and a good loyal community of regulars).

As for WinCustomize, this is the year that it and Stardock make good on repairing the failings of 2006 that were previously discussed. The new site is a good first step but there's much more work to be done.  This is, in many respects, the most exciting year in skinning ever and the community's growth and activity indicates that many people agree with that assessment.

General Thoughts

The same trends we've seen previously continue to evolve. Skinning, which started out as a niche in which people would ask "Why would you want to do that?" gets more mainstream.

At the same time, Windows Vista, even more than XP before it, is culling skinning applications by breaking them outright. Will programs that were on life support get one last surge? Or will they go the way of the eFX's and Chromas or Illumination that were broken by the OS and never updated again and faded.

Community interaction will largely come from the skinning sites in the community implementing increasingly better and more powerful tools to allow for people to collaborate together. You already see a bit of this now but I think you'll see more and more of this over time.

Not everything is rosey. I think 2007 will be a rough year. With Windows Vista, you're going to have a lot of time spent just getting things working at all on them. The time spent getting stuff working will be time not spent making things work better or adding new stuff.  And we don't know yet how hard Vista will be for getting stuff to work well. Still, I'm pretty excited about the horizons.

Overall, I haven't been this excited about skinning in a long time. Excited enough anyway to write this novella that I hope you've found interesting and useful!

Cheers!

First Previous Page 4 of 7 Next Last
TheD2JBug
Reply #61 Saturday, March 10, 2007 8:18 AM
CursorXP - A whole new interface. Get it away from "XP"'s dialog windows and make it your own.
Theme Manager - Thumbnail views. So hard to remember what a theme looks like if they all look the same (especially the CursorXP section - however, if no thumb is available, obviously this idea will fall flat - maybe something similar to CursorXP's views)
WindowBlidns - Great that you added a wallpaper section...however, I'd really change the "Advanced" button. Advanced has been typically viewed as an area in which to change advanced features of a program. Not to view the themes in a different window.
Icon Packager - Just bug fixes.


I appreciate your opinion , but

CursorXP: Why? It just applies CursorXP themes. The only thing you'd do is have a fancy window for that?
Theme Manager: Already done in theme manager.
WindowBlinds: I don't know what you see in the advanced button. My 'advanced' button shows the same/similar advanced functions it has in the past. I'm not sure what you're talking about

Dunno about IP . Only issue I've had is IconExplorer crashing when I use certain .ip files. I'm not sure it's IP since most .ips and icl files I use work.
Jafo
Reply #62 Saturday, March 10, 2007 10:02 AM

i am currently running the 2007-01-23 dev build. should be recent enough.

Thanks, Moshi .....been hanging out for something new ......dl'd....

Frogboy
Reply #63 Saturday, March 10, 2007 1:16 PM

The success of a company, is not how much money they make....what they've sold...or how many people are using the product. But how well the company relates to their customers. I'm simply not like your normal average everyday joe that comes here...asks a question or two...gets ignored except from other users and just walks away scratching their head.

No offense Morpheous but what exactly are your qualifications for defining what "Success" is?

As far as Stardock is concerned, CursorXP 1.31 on Windows XP is as far as it's going to go.  A Windows Vista version is in development.

You have moved way beyond "having problems" to now having a list of things you would like us to change and defining success as our ability to meet your own, unique, specific suggestions that have never been (to my knowledge) requested by someone else.

Running a business is, in some ways, like playing a strategy game. You have limited resources and have to dedicate them to the areas that users (overall) want them to be dedicated to.  We are satisfied that we are focusing our resources about as optimally as we can.

My suggestion to you would be to start your own desktop enhancement software company and deliver the products and services you think users would want, at the prices they are willing to pay.

Morpheous416
Reply #64 Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:03 PM
Brad, you win.

You asked about how I define success.....I answered it, you're asking again.
You asked if I had any ideas for the software, I answered, you're asking again.

I concede....call Bill, have a BBQ.




WindowBlinds: I don't know what you see in the advanced button. My 'advanced' button shows the same/similar advanced functions it has in the past. I'm not sure what you're talking about


Oh...well, when I click the Advanced button, all I get is a new window with the same list of themes I get using the scroll bar. (not to be confused with "User Overrides") It's a redundant option, but I've had my fill beating my head against the wall.
vStyler
Reply #65 Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:15 PM
Neil got back to me in my initial thread..

Thanks.
TheD2JBug
Reply #66 Saturday, March 10, 2007 3:17 PM
Try the advanced button in the 'appearance' part of the display properties. That's where I've always done it.
TheD2JBug
Reply #67 Saturday, March 10, 2007 3:20 PM
As far as Stardock is concerned, CursorXP 1.31 on Windows XP is as far as it's going to go. A Windows Vista version is in development.


Brad. Does that mean I can't ask for a 'greyscale' option in CursorXP for XP? I'd like to greyscale cursors but the color slider never gives me what I want
Frogboy
Reply #68 Saturday, March 10, 2007 4:12 PM

You asked if I had any ideas for the software, I answered, you're asking again.

I never asked for ideas on the software. I said what softare companies should be be trying to emulate.

As in: You keep saying how the company needs to do X, Y, and Z to be "successful" and I then ask what company do you feel Stardock should be emulating and in return you start telling us features we should add to our software.

 

Jafo
Reply #69 Saturday, March 10, 2007 5:54 PM

I never did like that 'special olympics' picture.... defamatory, discriminatory, and insulting.

Maybe it's because my wife has worked as a Speech Pathologist for over 25 years working with adults with Cerebral Palsy.

TheD2JBug
Reply #70 Saturday, March 10, 2007 6:44 PM
yah Jafo , it speaks volumes of the poster.
TheSkinsFactory
Reply #71 Sunday, March 11, 2007 8:44 PM
Loving the propaganda. The name of the article is a bit misleading though. Should be called the State of Stardock Skinning in 2006. Chock full of biased information. I'm glad some things don't change. Always need something to read when i have my coffee

There are legal ways to skin Windows without Windowblinds. While Rafael's way isn't exactly sanctioned by Redmond they aren't sending out Cease and Desists either. But The other legitimate way would be to use Style XP which does have the okay by Redmond. Any statements to the contrary would be false.

What's also funny is this statement: "By combining the talents of the top skinners into a single organization, skinning is about to come to "the masses" in a huge way."

Skinning isn't about to come to the masses in a huge way, it's been there and done that. You're late to the game and not bringing anything original. We've been doing this for well over 6 years and the top skinners have been working since 2000 in a single organization... The Skins Factory. So please don't act like you invented this whole idea. This is why i say you should change the name of this article. No mention of the one of the world's best known Skin and User Interface design studio but plenty of yours? Forget the fact that The Skins Factory was contracted by the world's most beloved art studio to do some icon work for their new homepage - I'm talking about Disney. I haven't even discussed the bigger project we did for them because it hasn't come out yet. Forget the fact that the world's largest Portal came to The Skins Factory to create a gadget for Vista - I'm talking about Yahoo! of course. All these "little" things get overlooked conveniently in your grandiose YEAR OF SKINNING 2006. Why? Because this is really about self-promotion not skinning promotion. You'll promote the things that aren't a true threat to you and carefully overlook the things that are. Big mentions of how you won contrats from Dell. Who did you win against? We weren't in the running. Because you and i both know what happens if it comes to that, don't we?

So yes ladies and gentlemen, this article is chock-full of skinning information slanted toward Stardock and its offering. And really there is nothing wrong with that because this site is owned by them. My gripe is the title is misleading and the content is slanted but other than that - Goooooo Stardock!
TheD2JBug
Reply #72 Sunday, March 11, 2007 8:53 PM
Loving the propaganda. The name of the article is a bit misleading though. Should be called the State of Stardock Skinning in 2006. Chock full of biased information. I'm glad some things don't change. Always need something to read when i have my coffee

There are legal ways to skin Windows without Windowblinds. While Rafael's way isn't exactly sanctioned by Redmond they aren't sending out Cease and Desists either. But The other legitimate way would be to use Style XP which does have the okay by Redmond. Any statements to the contrary would be false.

What's also funny is this statement: "By combining the talents of the top skinners into a single organization, skinning is about to come to "the masses" in a huge way."

Skinning isn't about to come to the masses in a huge way, it's been there and done that. You're late to the game and not bringing anything original. We've been doing this for well over 6 years and the top skinners have been working since 2000 in a single organization... The Skins Factory. So please don't act like you invented this whole idea. This is why i say you should change the name of this article. No mention of the one of the world's best known Skin and User Interface design studio but plenty of yours? Forget the fact that The Skins Factory was contracted by the world's most beloved art studio to do some icon work for their new homepage - I'm talking about Disney. I haven't even discussed the bigger project we did for them because it hasn't come out yet. Forget the fact that the world's largest Portal came to The Skins Factory to create a gadget for Vista - I'm talking about Yahoo! of course. All these "little" things get overlooked conveniently in your grandiose YEAR OF SKINNING 2006. Why? Because this is really about self-promotion not skinning promotion. You'll promote the things that aren't a true threat to you and carefully overlook the things that are. Big mentions of how you won contrats from Dell. Who did you win against? We weren't in the running. Because you and i both know what happens if it comes to that, don't we?

So yes ladies and gentlemen, this article is chock-full of skinning information slanted toward Stardock and its offering. And really there is nothing wrong with that because this site is owned by them. My gripe is the title is misleading and the content is slanted but other than that - Goooooo Stardock!


You do realize you aren't in Kansas anymore , Toto?

This is WC , and he is Brad Wardell. You were expecting something else?

Go troll elsewhere , please.
TheSkinsFactory
Reply #73 Sunday, March 11, 2007 8:58 PM
Considering I've been a member here since it's opened, considering i think we have the 3rd most downloads (translation: we contribute to this community), I think I'm well within my rights to speak my peace. So spare me the troll comment.
CerebroJD
Reply #74 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:04 PM
Ahh, Jeff... I never fail to get a laugh...

We havent seen anything skin-wise from you guys in a long time... at least nothing public.  I would even go as far to say that you have "come and gone", so my apologies if your slight whinging about not being mentioned doesnt necessarily get the result you're looking for.

Worlds largest portal?  Yahoo? Hmm... I may have to research that, but the fact that I didnt immidiately think of yahoo when I read that shows me that either I'm out of the loop, or else....

Can you show us some links to your material released to the PUBLIC in 2006?  Perhaps then I would consider your points with some merit.  Personally, though, I've never seen TSF as much of a positive contributor, but more of a 'content provider'.  As for you still having the best skinners in the world... I'd have to see names to go for that claim.

How long has that disney suite been in the works anyways?  Seems like years now....  Designing it for WindowBlinds 3.5 or something?  Better get it caught up before release....

So, all in all, very nice advertisement for yourself... how unfortunate that it had to be on the second page of comments.
TheD2JBug
Reply #75 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:06 PM
Mabye the wrong people pulled their skins and left.
vStyler
Reply #76 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:07 PM
We've been doing this for well over 6 years and the top skinners have been working since 2000 in a single organization... The Skins Factory.


Yeah.. ummmm...Im gonna have to go ahead and sorta disagree with you there..

Not the Top WB skinners   

Tell you what , ill take anyone of your Wb skinners any day of the week on and smoke em' 9 times outa ten.
Hows that for cocky?

I don't remember seeing any tutorials for the community on your site. I don't remember even having emails answered by you sent by myself to your "support staff" I don't recall seeing your State of skinning 2006 article.

The free skins that you have offered are no more than marketing material for yourself and your clients. I mean seriously, what do you offer the skinning community other than a smug better than thou attitude? Stardock may have its flaws but damn.. In one paragraph I absolutely garauntee you just lost a ton of respect community wide.

That aside.. I had respect for Theskinsfactory until..5 minutes ago. You must not believe in karma.

Bravo to the horn tooter !


That aside.. I had respect for Theskinsfactory until..5 minutes ago. You must not believe in karma.
Jafo
Reply #77 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:20 PM

jEFF...TO BE FAIR, YOU HAVEN'T BEEN ALL TOO PROMINENT OF LATE.  i ASSUMED YOU HAD 'THINGS' IN THE PIPELINE...BUT

BUM....too lazy to retype...excuse the caps...RSI is setting in

I think it's pretty obvious the thread is about Stardock and Wincustomize.com, and hasn't really made any references to 'external' skinners/sites, you and yours included.

It'd be nice to hear more regularly what's happening in your camp, too....

TheSkinsFactory
Reply #78 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:27 PM
Can you show us some links to your material released to the PUBLIC in 2006?


Well let's see... Gadgets for Vista count?

Yahoo! Search Gadget: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portPage=1&portID=170

Nero Burning gadget: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/tsf-temp/Nero-GadgetFull1.jpg

Lost Planet Windows Media Player Skin for Capcom: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=156&portPage=1

Stalker Windows Media Player skin for THQ: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=171&portPage=1

Nero ShowTime 3: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=154&portPage=1

The Superman Theme for Alienware: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=161&portPage=3

The Origami Default Windows Media Player skin for Microsoft: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=124&portPage=11

Disney.com's Top Level Navigational Icons: http://www.theskinsfactory.com/skinsfactory/?page=view&portID=166&portPage=1

You thought we came and gone? LOL. We doubled our revenue from the year before. Difference is we've done more UI work and less WMP skins so it appears like less. We have a lot of work coming out. As far as the Disney Desktop, it states clearly that it will most likely not be released. It was a proof of concept for them for CES 2005. I would love to release just so i stop getting emails regarding it. But ultimately its not up to me. Maybe one day, but it won't be released on WindowBlinds if it does. It's been on hold since i put up the promo on TSF. So your comment is off-base.

Contributer? Like anything else, you do what you have time for, but do not dismiss the fact that I/we were around well before Wincustomize was around. Brad and I may disagree and bicker but we've both paid our dues in the skinning community. And he'll probably agree with that. I may not like how Brad does things and will always speak out about it, but the respect is there for what he's accomplished and still accomplishing. Though Stardock Design is not doing anything we haven't done, or other studios for that matter. So yeah i'm filling the gaps with what i know which is my company. Other studios who are members here are free to chime in also.
Rafael
Reply #79 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:28 PM
TheSkinsFactory,

Just a few updates I wanted to share.

I will soon abandon the ways of illegitimate patching/distribution of Uxtheme (and related) binaries for a newer in-memory method [1]. I have also gone down the road of open-source rather than closed-source/proprietary (StyleXP) for maximum community absorption.

- Rafael

[1] libunsigned source code - http://anti-tgtsoft.com/?p=8
TheSkinsFactory
Reply #80 Sunday, March 11, 2007 9:30 PM
Crap I forgot to use the hyperlink thing. Oh well

We have about 12 projects that are unreleased as our clients wait to release them Jafo. We have tons more being developed. But like i may have mentioned, most of the work wasn't WMP skins though we have done a few gadgets and only a couple of WMPs. There's more to skinning then just the categories listed on Wincustomize.

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