The Master skinners at Wincustomize are a special breed of people. They done the time here.  They skin, they mentor, they skin some more.

So I'm going to try to suck them dry of anything and everything they know.  I want you, the community to send me your questions.  I'll collect them, pick out a couple, and try to collect answers to post here.

No question is too big or small; too general or specific.  It can target one master (but I'll probably open it up too many if I can) or one application.  You wnat to know how they started skinning, what's their favorit skin, how do they start a visual style, what apps do they use; ask and see what happens.

There are lots of questions I've wanted to ask of all these guys and gals at once.  In a perfect world I'd get them all at SD HQ and fire up a camera.

Having said all that . . . I don't know If I can pull this off.  I'll try if you will.  Send your questions to zubaz@wincustomize.com and we'll see what happens.

I think that the Masters will buy into this.  I think the community will too.

Wish us luck

ZubaZ
http://zubaz.wincustomize.com

We wrap up our WinCustomize Wiki Week with a page that everyone who wants to help out should check: The Work In Progress page. 

When you create an article, you can flag it as an incomplete page that needs more attention and assistance (a work-in-progress).  These articles will be listed on the WiP page for everyone to see.  This makes it much easier to quickly find out what needs some tender, loving care.  You know any page on that list has people waiting eagerly for.  Now you can't say "Well, I would have contributed, but I didn't know what was needed!" 

And for our final featured contributor: DoctorNick.  DoctorNick's contributions are probably the most visible as he contributed a lot to prettying up the page layouts, and is the man responsible for skinning the Wiki to match WinCustomize.  He put in many late nights doing battle with CSS incompatibilities between web browsers, and other annoying aspects of the Wiki skinning system.

And that does it for our first attempt at a themed content week.  I hope you enjoyed it, as there will be more to come in the future!

Day 4, and the Wiki week draws close to its end.  So far this week we've focused heavily on tutorials on the WC Wiki, and that's because that sort of user content is the site's greatest strength.  Tutorials transform a piece of software from some intimidating and obtuse application to a tool that someone can use to create great content.  The best tutorials tend to come from users who know the applications best and use them on a near daily basis.  That's why SK Originals and sViz were featured this week.

Today, I want to make sure everyone knows there's a grand index of tutorials on the Wiki.  This page automatically updates when new tutorials are written, so whenever you're looking for a new how-to, be sure to hit up the Tutorials Index.

And today's featured Wiki contributor is CerebroJD.  Along-side of Bebi, JD was one of the early contributors to the Wiki project and helped give it shape.  He provided a lot of help on deciding early layouts and what information to show on the front page.

So todays thanks to CerebroJD!

Yesterday I talked about the WindowBlinds tutorials by SK Originals and held them up as a great example of how to write help content for the Wiki.  But that tutorial is for the visual artist.  What if you're a code monkey trying to make a desktop gadget?  Sure there's art involved, but there's a lot of coding too, and that takes a completely different sort of tutorial.  Pictures illustrating steps help, but they're not the whole story.  You need code examples, and writing code that's understandable and being able to explain it in plain English is a rare talent.

So today we're shining the limelight of attention on sViz and her DesktopX tutorials.  Specifically DesktopX: Scripting Time Displays (Beginner)

sViz is one of our most active contributors to the Wiki and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to DesktopX.  Her tutorials are well documented and clearly explained.  With the Time Displays tutorial, it takes you through the process of adding a time display to a DesktopX widget/gadget from start to finish.  And this is only one out of many tutorials she's contributed to the site.

If you're interested in learning DesktopX, hit up sViz's outstanding tutorials on the WC Wiki!

This year so far we've added 11 new galleries to WinCustomize in an attempt to make sure we're keeping up with what's going on in the wider world of Windows Customization.  Here's the full list for 2007 to date:

• Avatars
• Dream
• Emoticons
• LogonStudio Vista
• Maxthon
• ObjectBar 2
• Google Gadgets
• Vista Sidebar Gadgets
• Sidebar Styler
• SoundPackager
• Xion

Now, some of these galleries have done well, others have not.  Probably the two most successful on that list are Dream and Xion.  Dreams skyrocketed in popularity with the release of Windows Vista, and in general have done very well even as the Vista hype started to die down.  I really think Dreams are going to be one of our cornerstone galleries in the years to come as people get more into putting video and dynamic content on their desktop.

The other example of a successful gallery addition was Xion.  It may be one of our fastest growing skin libraries on the site right now.  Community reaction to the addition was fantastic, and in fact the app was added at the request of many skinners. 

Obviously, the success of a gallery depends on how much the community REALLY wants it or is interested in it.  So far this year, we've not had the best track record at anticipating demand.  So now I'm calling out to the community.  What's out there that you're skinning for that you feel would be a great addition to WinCustomize?  Are we missing out on some skinning or computer graphics related area that just can't be ignored any longer?  I want to hear from you!

Post your thoughts here with any relevant links so I can take a look.

Day two of WC Wiki Week brings us to one part of the new site that's really the key aspect of the Wiki: User-provided documentation in the form of tutorials and how-tos.  A user manual is one thing, it tells you what buttons do what, and where to find various bits of info, but it doesn't really tell you how to fully use the software.  This is especially true with creative tools such as Skin Studio and Photoshop when creating a WindowBlinds skin.  So today's featured page is appropriately a tutorial on creating a Start Panel for a WindowBlinds Skin.

Check out the article here.

It's part 1 of a two part series on skinning the Start Menu in Windows using Skin Studio and Adobe Photoshop.  It's packed with screenshots to illustrate the process, and if you go through both part 1 and part 2, you'll end up with a completely skinned Start Menu.  It's one of the better user-created tutorials currently on the wiki.

So it's fitting that today's featured contributor would be SK Originals, the author of the Start Menu tutorial.  SK Originals has contributed a lot to the wiki in addition to his tutorials, providing edits and content on a number of product pages and other tutorials.  He was one of our earliest additions to the wiki project and has been a great help in bringing in content focused on teaching others how to skin.  This is exactly the sort of activity we were hoping for when launching the wiki.

Thank you to SK Originals for your ongoing contributions!

The Wiki project started many months ago after review of community feedback on Brad's "How Stardock Failed the Community" article from the start of the year.  The single biggest complaint was a lack of good resources for documentation and helpful information on the plethora of skinning products Stardock has built over the years.  Our decision was to provide a site and framework for the community to contribute their knowledge of the tools and software available.  The idea was that while a developer knows how the application works from a functional perspective, it's the artists and everyday users who have the deep knowledge of how to really use the tools in a practical sense, and are likely much better than we are at explaining things.

When we began the project, one of the very first pages created to be used as a template for what to include and how to format software pages was the Wiki page for WindowBlinds

It's one of the best places to look for consolidated WindowBlinds information as it has links to relevant external sites, helpful tutorials.  It also has a brief history of the application and major changes introduced at several versions.  If you're curious about WindowBlinds or are looking for help in skinning, this page is a good place to start from.

Also from the beginning of the project, several members of the community stepped in and really made the project their own.  Without the effort of these folks, the project never would have gotten off the ground, and they made sure that this was a community effort from the start.  Probably the most active contributor at the start of the project was BebiBulma. She was critical in corralling other contributors and wrote and helped with formatting for a lot of the initial pages on the Wiki.

Remember, all you need to do to contribute to the Wiki is create an account and start editing/creating pages.  It's open to everyone.

Summer tends to be a slower time for skinning since people are, well, you know, outside.  Personally, the sun causes me to catch on fire. Or at least smolder and no one wants to deal with that.

This Summer, there's been some real gems. Which is pretty amazing since those bastards at Stardock have co-opted most of the skinning community this year to work on MyColors projects.  So without further delay, here are some of the cooler looking things I've seen this summer:

VStyler has really taken off this summer and became a Master skinner.  His Viena for WindowBlinds works on both Windows XP and Windows Vista and is one of our favorites this Summer. [Vienna]

Skinners from China dominated this year's GUI Championships. So it's not surprising that one of the coolest and most popular skins of the Summer came from China. [Metal Vista 3]

Onix from SKoriginals was one of the most original skins we've seen this Summer and it's also very usable as well. [Onix]

Fresh Attitude comes all the way from Russia via othersnow.  It makes great use of the glass features in WindowBlinds 5.  In WindowBlinds 6, users will be able to apply blur options to such skins which will make them even cooler! [Fresh Attitude]

Plasmatron AI isn't a new skin but the Summer update takes I.R. Braniac's highly original skin and makes it incredibly usable as well. It's a true work of art. [Plasmatron A.I.]

It has not been a very good summer for icons.  Making icons these days is a lot more work than it used to be. Now, icons are expected to be at least 128x128 (Vista expects 256x256 icons! That's about the full screen resolution of a decent LCD cell phone! For one icon!). But mkorashy's Edifice helped brighten up an otherwise slow summer in this area. A great icon package brought to you all the way from Egypt! [Edifice]

Webby's Over the Hills and Far Away comes to us all the way from Italy.  This incredibly cool wallpaper makes working inside almost bearable. [Over the hills and far away]

Boss's Pacifico can make one imagine that they're in a tropical paradise.  It's just a stunning wallpaper. [Pacifico]

Ixium Minor comes to us from AngelicJean in Australia. This is one of the most hauntingly beautiful wallpapers I've seen in years.  [Ixium Minor]

 

Summer is only half-way over and we've only covered skins, icons, and wallpapers. Stay tuned, more to come!

Here at WinCustomize we talk a lot about skinning in general, be it how to best skin some UI element, what the best skinnable web browser is, or to chat about the fantastic work done by many of the artists in our community.  One thing that we don't talk a lot about are the names and faces behind the tools and applications we use.

To that end, we're kicking off a new feature today, the Developer Interview Series.  The idea is to sit down with the main developers behind some of the most popular skinning/skinnable applications out there and pick their brain in a general sense, getting an idea of why/how they do it, some of their background and where they think they'll be taking things in the future.  It's not really an attempt to answer technical questions, because support forums are better for that, but more to get an idea of who the people are behind the scenes.  We give a lot of attention to the artists who create the skins, but we should also take the time to shine the spotlight on the people who make skinning possible in the first place.

Our first interview in the series is with Cliff Cawley, lead developer behind the Xion Media Player, a skinnable media player that makes it as easy as possible to create a skin by letting you directly import Adobe Photoshop files (PSD) into the application.  Instead of creating the image elements separately and then combining them in another application, you just need to layout your elements in layers and arrange them as you'd like.  So instead of skinning the application, it's more like doing the first design mock-up.

Last week, I sent Cliff a set of questions about Xion, himself, and skinning in general.  Read on for his answers.

If you have a specific developer you'd like us to interview, or if you are a developer of skinning/skinnable applications yourself and would like to be a part of the interview series, email me at mikec AT stardock DOT com with the mail subject "Developer Interview Series".

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[WinCustomize] First off, I’d like to say thanks for taking the time to do this. Would you like to briefly introduce yourself before we begin?

[Cliff Cawley] Thanks Mike, this is the first interview I've done and I feel very honored to be interviewed by WinCustomize.com.

My name is Cliff Cawley and I'm the Developer of Xion Audio Player. I'm 26 years old and live in Queensland, Australia. I've been writing software for about 12 years now. I develop Xion in my spare time and work at a Computer games company to earn a living.

I also run r2 Studios (http://www.r2.com.au/) in my spare time where I provide quality software for a great price (free!). It hosts two of my other popular applications, Tonic and Startup Delayer.

[WC] Why a skinnable media player? WinAmp and Windows Media Player already do the skinning thing, and it's been done for quite a while now. What made you decide to do a new media player?

[CC] Music is a big part of my life. I listen to it whenever I can and it helps me power through my day. I used to use WinAmp , and even made some skins for it back when skinning was first discovered. Over time I found that it didn't always suit my needs and I noticed that it got more and more bloated. I was especially put off when they added a Web Browser. I wanted to make a player where the user could decide if they wanted a Web Browser or even a skinned interface in the first place.

[WC] You took a very interesting approach to skinning, using Photoshop layers to separate out the elements, basically making it as easy as possible to create a skin. Many skinners in the community have had heavy praise for this approach. How did you come up with the idea?

[CC] I was initially going to do some sort of slicing of images and perhaps even a script file, however after trying for the 20th time to get one of my artist friends to understand what he had to do to create a skin, I gave up on that approach and asked him what he uses and what would be easiest for him. He looked at me and said, "Photoshop". He didn't want to learn another tool, he just wanted to use Photoshop. He's always been a good point of reference for Interface Design as he comes from a Mac background and enjoys their clean and easy to understand UI. I came away from that trying to figure out how I could provide a similar experience for skins and for the UI in Xion. I didn't want artists to have to jump through hoops or find programmers to make their skins come alive.

I was aware at the time that Sonique used PSD files, however they used a scripting system to power the skins. After some more thoughts, I came up with the idea of using keywords in the layer names to represent the function of the layer. That way you didn't need a separate file to tell the skin how to function. Keywords were a simple, yet powerful way to describe the skin.

[WC] I'm guessing you're a fan of UI customization. How tweaked out is your desktop right now? ( Can we get a Screenshot?)

[CC] Haha, a couple of years ago I was all into customizing my UI. Ieven made several WindowBlinds skins. I then tried some of the shell replacements. However, due to my slow PC, I found that it slowed me down too much. I ended up reverting to the Windows Classic look. These days I have the simple Royale XP skin. When I get some more time to relax, I'd love to customize the whole UI again.

Cliff's current desktop, and a look at building Xion

[WC] How difficult was it to write the skinning portion of the audio player? What was the single hardest aspect in getting the whole thing to work right?

[CC] The skinning engine was very time consuming. I built the PSD reader by browsing the Photoshop 6.0 File format documentation as well as a lot of hex editing and stepping through while I loaded the PSD file. After I was able to load the individual layers from the PSD file, I verified that the loader had worked, by dumping the data back out to RAW files and reading them back into Photoshop. Thereafter I built the rendering side. It was very rewarding to see a skin load up into the prototype code I had built. I think the first functionality I added was 'Stop' and 'Play'.

[WC] What Xion skin are you running on your PC right now?

[CC] I currently use the Thin Default Skin. I use it when I'm busy coding so that I can see all of the code. I do have a lot of favorites though and occasionally switch to them when I need a change of scenery.

[WC]Have you ever built a skinnable application before Xion? Are you considering building other skinnable apps beyond media players?

[CC] I've built several skinnable applications, including Chat and Media Players. A lot of them were never released. I think you can still find a Media Player I wrote long before Xion. It was called 'SCAMPS'. It never quite made its way off the ground. I wrote it in Visual Basic and it included many utilities to help with making skins. I guess you could say it was Xion's predecessor. I've built many applications, some of which are available on my other website: http://www.r2.com.au/ (They are mostly not skinnable though)

I am considering using the technology I have developed for Xion in other applications in the future, however I currently have nothing in the works as I'm too busy with Xion

A snippet of BoXXi's Xion skin, Scope

[WC] What did the very first public build of Xion look like?

[CC] Very similar to the current build actually, just with less features and more bugs! The first public build was build 56. You can download it from:

http://xion.r2.com.au/download/xion_v1.0b56.exe

I had wanted Xion to be well received and so I only released when I was happy with the quality.

[WC] What's next? Xion is at version 1 at the moment, and sees periodic updates (some quite significant). Do you have anything special planned yet for version 2?

[CC] I haven't really given any thought to a 2.0. I have found that users can get confused with the strange version systems that developers use, hence the reason I now make the build number the dominant number. For now I will be simply increasing the build number for each build. It may always be known as version 1.0, just with a larger build number. I think I will only upgrade to 2.0 if I make a large change that breaks a lot of things!

Some special goodies that I have planned for upcoming versions are:

• Hardware accelerated rendering (At the moment it's all done in Software. I hope to use DirectDraw or some form of DirectX to accomplish this)
• Better Playlist and Library support
• Support for WinAmp/Sonique/WMP visualizations
• Component SDK (Currently in Beta)
• For a more complete list, check out the forums under the Feature Requests threads

[WC] What are some of your favorite skinning/skinnable applications?

[CC] Haha I know this may sound biased, but definitely Xion! A couple of years ago I was into WindowBlinds and WinAmp. The funny thing is, that once you start developing your own such application, you tend to not have much time left for even checking out the new skinnable applications, so I guess I'm a bit behind the times in that respect! (Behind the times, not old timer! )

BoXXi's iPhone Xion Skin

[WC] Is your skinning engine patented/available for developer license?

[CC] Currently it is not available for developer license, however I've always wanted to make it available so that I can perhaps recoup some of the costs and time I've spent on it and others can benefit from the system I've developed.

[WC] It’s been a full year now for Xion, in that time how many downloads have you tracked?

[CC] Wow, has it been that long already? The downloads to this day are sitting at just under 94,000. The climb has been quite slow and steady until recent months where it has increased to almost 10,000 a month. It seems more and more people are discovering Xion

[WC] Right now Xion is completely free, I don’t even see a PayPal donation link on the page and only one or two Google ads on the entire site. In order to support continued development, will there ever be a premium version of Xion? We wouldn’t want to see you out on the streets after all.

[CC] That's correct. I actually originally released Xion as Shareware, however I received a lot of complaints and quite a few users insisted that Xion would never become large if people had to pay for it. It has taken me about 4 years in my spare time to develop it to where it is today and I hope that I can soon release a premium version that will help support me. It would be great to be able to work on Xion and my other applications as my full time job, instead of just in my spare time. I do have a PayPal donation set up on my r2 Studios website which you can find at http://www.r2.com.au/donate

I occasionally receive donations which help to pay for the Web hosting and Domain registration.

MysticSteel by REDstyler

[WC] That’s it from me. Is there anything you’d like to add?

[CC]Keep those awesome skins coming everyone! Its really great to see the way that the Community are able to use the skinning engine in Xion. You've managed to twist it to do things that I hadn't really thought were possible! If you have any bugs/feature requests or general feedback, don't be shy, come and visit us at the Xion Forums: http://xion.r2.com.au/community/ and post away!

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Thanks again to Cliff for taking time out of his busy schedule to chat with me.  If you're interested in learning more about Xion, or want to snag a copy yourself to start playing with, here are some important links:

• The Official Xion Homepage
• The Official Xion Skins Gallery
• The WinCustomize Xion Skins Gallery

And of course, check out more of the great software Cliff has been working on by checking out r2 Studios.

ObjectDock is pretty flexible, and there are more ways to use ObjectDock than just having it sit at the top or bottom of your screen.  One of the big advantages of having ObjectDock is the ability to have multiple docks on your desktop along with the ability to have tabbed docks.  With ObjectDock you can also "mix" docks, and by that I mean you can have a tabbed dock and a "zoomer" dock on the same desktop which allows for even more flexible setups.

I use ObjectDock on my desktop in a variety of ways, and I wanted to share 3 of my favorite ways to use ObjectDock.

Learn more about ObjectDock  |  Get ObjectDock for just $9.99

 

1) Having a docklet dock 

I'm sure everyone knows what a docklet is, but for those who might not know, docklets are mini-applications that reside on your dock.  There are a variety of docklets available, including docklets for weather, clocks, web searches and more. 

One of my favorite ways to configure ObjectDock is to have one dock solely dedicated to nothing but docklets.  I usually place this dock on the right or left side of the screen, and depending on what's going on in the rest of my desktop, I might set it to auto-hide.  I will place all my favorite and most useful docklets in this dock, and leave my other docks for application shortcuts only.

 

3) Go for minimalism

Sometimes I like to go real minimal with my desktop, and ObjectDock makes this possible and even better than other methods.  For my ultimate minimalist desktop, I remove everything from the desktop except for ObjectDock, and if you don't want to see the dock you can set it to auto-hide.

The new start menu docklet gives me access to the Windows start menu, and I can choose to see any programs I have minimized in the taskbar.  Pretty much everything I need access to I can do through ObjectDock, and it even has an option to hide the Windows taskbar. 

 

I have listed my favorite ways I use ObjectDock, and I'd like to hear how you use it as well.  Have you used any of these configuration I mentioned, or do you have a setup even better?

 

Learn more about ObjectDock  |  Get ObjectDock for just $9.99