VERSION 6

Introduction

Stardock is pleased to announce the availability of the BETA of SkinStudio version 6.  SkinStudio is a program designed to allow users to create their own skins that, when applied by the popular GUI changing program, WindowBlinds, can completely alter the look & feel of Microsoft Windows.

With SkinStudio, users design their own title bars, push buttons, Start bars, scroll bars, and virtually every other part of the Windows interface.  Users then take their creations and save them as a WindowBlinds skin which will work on Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Vista.

SkinStudio lets users create completely new looks and feels (Zelda skin property of Nintendo who used SkinStudio / WindowBlinds to create a Legend of Zelda branded desktop)

The Evolution of SkinStudio

SkinStudio 1.0 was released back in 2000 and was designed with WindowBlinds 1.x in mind.  Since then, two major new versions of Microsoft Windows have been released (Windows XP and Windows Vista) and the capabilities of Stardock WindowBlinds have also expanded.  SkinStudio has been continually updated to keep up with all these changes but its design became difficult to use.  For SkinStudio 6, Stardock went back to the drawing board and created a brand new version of SkinStudio.

SkinStudio 5 (left) and the new SkinStudio 6 (right)

A Guided Tour of SkinStudio 6

The primary goal of SkinStudio 6 is to make it easy for artists to get into skinning.  The existing SkinStudio (version 5) was an extremely powerful, capable program for users who already know how to make WindowBlinds skins. But for new skinners, it was daunting.  SkinStudio 6 changes this. 

Moreover, combined with changes in the upcoming WindowBlinds 6, skinners no longer have to worry about skinning every part of the OS.  In previous versions, if a user didn't provide graphics for a part of the skin, that part was shown as "Windows classic" which looks downright primitive.   Now, SkinStudio 6 will fill in either Aero (on Vista) or Luna (on Windows XP).  This allows new skinners to worry about changing just the parts they want and grow from there as they gain expertise.

First Impressions

When you first load SkinStudio 6 you get this dialog:

SkinStudio will change its experience for the user based on experience level

Once that question is answered, the UI gets even simpler:

The only two realistic options -- opening an existing skin or creating a new one.  The entire philosophy in the design of SkinStudio 6 has revolved around only showing what is needed rather than bombarding the user with hundreds of options. 

Making a new skin

When a skinner chooses to make a new skin, they're presented with an Aero-like UI (in the beta, it's Diamond) to start with.  On Windows XP, they start out with Luna (the Windows XP style).  Skinners can change as much or as little as they want. 

On Windows Vista users start out with an Aero-like skin. On Windows XP, it's Luna (Windows XP Style)

The design of SkinStudio 6 is task oriented.  When people look at the Windows user interface, they tend to think of it in pieces -- the Start bar, the Window frames, the buttons, etc.  SkinStudio 6 takes this route to break skinning up into manageable chunks. Want to just change the Start button? No problem.  Click on Start menu and Taskbar, then click on the horizontal (or vertical) taskbar option:

Editing the taskbar of Windows is a snap. Click on the taskbar option

Then click on the part you would like to change

I have set Photoshop as my editing choice from the preferences menu.  Since I have no artistic abilities, I'm going to just turn my start button into a blurred orb:

Quickie change to start button

All I did is do a Photoshop blur to it.  But I could have just as easily replaced it with a new image or created an entirely new start button. SkinStudio 6 automatically converts images between PNG and TGA for ease of editing.

Control over the details

The key thing here is that skinners have full power over how much or how little they want to skin.  And the various parts of the UI are designed to make it self explanatory over what is being skinned:

Users can easily go through and alter hundreds of details of the look and feel of Windows at their leisure.

Packaging and using

At any time, users can go to the file menu and apply the skin they're working on.  No need to go and save and then go into WindowBlinds to load.  As long as WindowBlinds is already on the system, the user can simply apply right then and there.  If users want to share their skin, they can export it as a WindowBlinds archive file (.WBA) to give to other users.

Getting SkinStudio

SkinStudio 6 will be a free download once it is done.  But it is available to users of Object Desktop right now.  Visit www.objectdesktop.com to get Object Desktop and access to both SkinStudio 6 and WindowBlinds 6.