Our first skin of note is Dogmax4, by Brewman. Its an excellent and well-made skin that takes advantage of many of the features found in the newest WindowBlinds 5 beta. Currently, Brewman is appealing to a very limited audience, since the beta is only available to Object Desktop subscribers. On a more artistic note, he has taken the Dogmax we've seen in past versions and added a Vista-esque glass border to it, while also adding some glow effects to the buttons, and giving the skin a generally more 'smooth' and 'polished' look.

Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of this particular skin is its start panel. Extreme detail and effort has been put into making it very well aligned and visually appealing. Although the two halves of the panel are distinct, the difference is far less abrupt that it is on other themes. I definitely prefer Brewman's use of the 'flag' and gradient as a blending option on the compact start menu substyle. It shows the authors attention to detail, since its often very difficult to get everything to line up properly on skins. Kudos to Brewman for this excellent piece of work!

Over in the CursorXP library, I spotted Optimal 2, by Z71. Although not nearly as complex as some of the cursors we've seen recently from JJ Ying, its a clean cursor thats very easy to get used to. One might even think that there could be a whole suite of skins based on this clean design. Z71 is just one step ahead though, and actually HAS a whole mini-suite related to this cursor. If you'd like to check that out, view this link.

Z71 is a part of GuiMagic, a site where you can order commercial skins, and the like. He/they are definately increasing skills as times goes on, and I've seen some great work come from his/their direction. I hope to see even more high-calibre themes from them in the future!

OMNI mail 2, by Tiggz, is an excellent piece of work! Often, its hard to get a graphics artist with excellent coding skills, or the oppositel; Generally an artist is strong in one thing or the other. Tiggz, it seems, is out to prove that wrong. His skills in smooth metal and glass skins are only rivaled by his own coding skills. With this spectacular bit of mail-checking perfection, he seems to have raised the bar yet again in terms of top-notch DesktopX widgets. Since I dont use Pop3 or imap accounts, I could only check this with my Gmail account, and it works great! The interface is *very* smooth, and Tiggz has put alot of little animated bits and glowy parts in to keep things interesting. As usual, his symbols are clean and get the point across, and his work continues to rely on them far more than text triggers, making this quite 'multi-language' friendly.

Great work from Tiggz! I really recommend this to anyone who needs to have quick access to email accounts and be notified immediately of incoming mail.

MediaPlayer 2808 is an icon by D. Arnaez, and reflects his unusually polished-looking style. I've been very very impressed by his many icons in both single-icon uploads as well as full IconPackers skins. His full gallery is really something to see, with his massive icon packs, and well-rendered imagery. I highly recommend downloading some of his work, even if only to look at the astounding detail that he puts into each piece of art. Normally, a single icon could hardly be classed as 'art', but D. Arnaez has managed to do such fine work, it would virtually be an insult to call it anything else.

Woohoo! An iPod Nano skin for Windows Media Player. Here's a great little skin that really captures the feel of the iPod Nano! Juanchis has been skinning for nearly as long as me, and since I used to skin WMP, its good to see someone still using the skills it takes to do it. This skin features the ability to view the album art of your currently playing track. While that isnt quite perfect, its still a very neat little addition to an already-awesome skin. Great work Juanchis, keep on skinnin! (Side note: I also love this skin of his.)