It's a short week for me, so This Week in Skinning is coming just a tad earlier than usual.  Saw some really awesome stuff this week, especially in the CursorFX and Wallpaper galleries.  If you have Windows Vista and DeskScapes, don't miss the latest edition of This Month in Dreams.

Now for this weeks picks!

There were so many items this week that I just didn't have the room for, but equally deserved being featured.  Take a browse through the galleries and tell us what skins you liked from the past week.  See you next week!

Every month or so Frogboy does his “FrogBlog” where he gives an insight of things going on in and around Stardock from his perspective.  I have always enjoyed reading them so I that kind of inspired me to do something similar.  I wanted to write a blog showing the stuff going on not only in Stardock/WinCustomize related areas, but the other various skinning/tech communities like WinMatrix and Skinning.net that I visit regularly.  I also thought it might be fun to show off the the things I am working on, because I always appreciate the community feedback because much of what I do is for the communityy.

I first wanted to start off saying how pleased I am with the response to the WinCustomize SkinCast.  When we first started it  both Zoomba and myself were a bit unsure how it would be received and how well it would do.  Well after our 7th episode the number of listeners is at what I would consider to be a great number, and it seems to be steadily rising.  So thanks to everyone who listens and supports the show.  With that being said, one thing we are still lacking is more community input.  We have had a great set of guests on including moderators and skinners, and we should be having our first developer guest soon too. 

I have been getting a lot of questions recently about the status of the SkinStudio 6 tutorial, especially  since we have started to talk about the ‘08 GUI Champs.  The SKS6 tutorial is finished, but with all the cool features that Neil has been adding lately, I am taking a good part of this week and updating the tutorial and the associated screenshots.  Once that is done it will go for some more formatting and then should finally be released to the public.  I know it’s been long awaited, but I think this tutorial series will greatly benefit people interested in creating WindowBlinds skins, but might not be too sure where to start.  I wrote the guide from a beginners perspective, and I’m excited to see the response to it.

On the game side of things the Political Machine has been my main focus.  I love this game, seriously.  Maybe it’s because I’m a political junkie, but regardless it’s just fun to play, and who doesn’t want to create your own bobble-head anyway's?  This game has consumed many late nights, and helping find any last minute issues has been fun to say the least.  I can’t say too much else, but be on the lookup for more news.

Well I won’t keep it too long for the first one.  As always feel free to let me know of any feedback or suggestions you might have for future articles and features.  See ya next time!

Hi All!

Got lazy this week and ended up doing all my reviews today, so apologies in advance for the date showing the same for each review.(oh and I think I goofed on one with the icons,...not going back to make it right cause it still looks ok.)

I am taking one of the community suggestions and highlighting one artist today.Because of the dark themes and superb artistry, I chose KittyMalone. Its been stormy alot here lately and her themes just fit the bizzare mood a good thunderstorm can give a person.

First up, is Vampothika , a distinctly haunted house looking skin that  brings a sense of victoriana to the whole look. Though I don't usually comment on the fonts used for blinds, I feel I should mention the great fonts used for this one. I really love the look the author chose to balance this theme.

I decided to add a slight twist today , instead of highlighting an object bar, I chose to try out my desktopX program on all of you.

Because of the victorian theme, I chose Medival clock by ChaosMachine. While it is considered medieval by it's author, it maintains a distinctly victorian look  that suited the whole theme.

I wanted to show the moon within this view as well and so chose LunaVista by Will Rose . This object shows the moon in each phase(though because I also had another object that showed the phases this one was disabled and showed only full view) with a full rotational view as you might see it in the night sky. Way cool feature for a creature such as myself!

Just for giggles, and because it looked good, I also placed The Raven by loracnamwen on my desktop. While this bird doesn't really resemble a raven to me, it really looks cool on my desktop and blends well with the vision as  a whole. Added bonus, it opens my documents!

As I mentioned before I am using another object that shows moon phases. I like having the weather on desktop and while weatherbug is always my favorite, this desktopx object is really cool to have around especially with all the cool features it includes.

LookinGlass Weather Suite-Lite Edition by Will Rose was the perfect weather object for me. I can see a whole week at a glance, after a few minutes, I can see the whole week's evening weather and moon phases, and I can see live radar as well. Very sleek but powerful. (ya I know it's old , but it's still really great!)

Temple Oblivion is the cursorfx theme I chose for this setup. I know it belongs with a different skin but I liked it best with this one.

To tie up the whole theme here I chose a wallpaper that had some detail but wasn't very crisp, something that made the sharpness of Kitty's work stand out. I dug thru the libraries and found dream by RNA in the ol' wayback machine!

This wall didn't have a famous name nor was it particularly popular, judging by the rating. It just really fit the look I  wanted and so I downloaded and put it up for view with the rest of the theme. Glad I chose it. Works nicely.

I also tried out Kitty's  Temple Oblivion theme ,though I am not a big red fan,I have to admit the styling and darkness of this blind really works with the coloring.

The cursor I chose for this one was Blade 50 by Rycher. The curling blades accentuate the pointed blades of the start menu this blind uses.

MB-MetalReligion By ModBlackmoon is a very dark, ominous looking DesktopX theme that totally sets KittyMalone's Temple Oblivion blind off. There are quite a few features in this theme, most of which I haven't really tried out yet, but I had to use it because it was just perfect for the look I was going for here.

Blacklight rc by buzzh58 is the right click menu I used here.

The wall is one that came with one of my blinds. wish I knew which one , but I imagine it's one with a nice dark theme!

well I really wanted to add one more to the list but I see this is getting long and the time is going very fast. If I  want to get it out before tomorrow I am going to have to leave it here.. so you'll have to wait till next time to see what other theme I made up to highlight this author!

be safe all and thanks for reading!!!

Long Zheng (istartedsomething.com) has created a Windows Vista UI "taskforce" which will gather and record all known UI quirks in Windows Vista.  Obviously, nothing can be guaranteed to be fixed, but Long will send the list to someone at Microsoft and hopefully get some results. He is asking for help in finding these quirks and there is already quite a big list of some interesting glitches in the Vista UI.  These are also fixes that could lead themselves into "Windows 7" as well.

Head over to his site and check out the current list, and if you know of something that should be there, go ahead and submit it.  You can also help out by spreading the word about the UI "taskforce" on your blog or social network.

Link: Window UI Taskforce

Update: Long Zheng has created a special website dedicated to the submission of any UI suggestions.

Short cuts are always nice, but it seems like more work is always packed in to them.  Well at least it's Friday so that means this weeks edition of This Week in Skinning is here.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Star Trek 11 Enterprise 2 in Bootskins by I.R. Brainiac This is an awesome image of the Enterprise, and now you can see it when you boot up Windows.
	Gold Scarab for CursorFX by Libardo This is one of my new favorite CursorFX themes.  The details are amazing and it's just a really cool design.  Great work.
	Plasmatron A.I. in DesktopX Themes by knofsky I'm sure you will recognize the basis of this DX theme, and that is the popular Plasmatron WB skin.  Knofsky has done a great job at turning that style into a DX theme.
	Koi Pond Waterfall for LogonStudio Vista by OutdoorPictures A beautiful waterfall scene is the perfect addition for the Vista logon screen.
	Marbled Dock for ObjectDock Backgrounds by messiah1 The texture on these docks is just perfect, and the smooth look of marble makes this a very clean design.
	Full sails & a wind of fantasy in Wallpapers by ahabkaba This wallpaper pretty much speaks for itself.  The design is incredible, so be sure to check this one out.
	Corrosion in Wallpapers by Cavan1 Another one that is hard to describe, but this render is beautifully done and the colors are a nice fit on the desktop.
	Dockside II for WindowBlinds by jazzymjr  Here is the second edition of Dockside, and although it stays true to the original design, this one has a style of it's own.  Great job.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit their creations.  If you like the skins featured here, then be sure to stop by their pages and leave a comment for the authors.  See you next week!

The Los Angeles Lakers MyColors theme is probably one of the most popular screenshots that are viewed on my Flickr page.  I also get asked a lot of questions about it, so I thought I would start a new series of articles showing off MyColors themes.  If you have never heard of MyColors from Stardock, then you can read through a walkthrough or view a screencast with more information. 

Just as a quick introduction, MyColors allows you to easily change the appearance of your Windows desktop without having to worry about various software applications to download.  With MyColors, you choose the content and it's applied to your desktop with just a few steps.

Lets take a look at what is included with the L.A. Lakers MyColors desktop.

Gadgets

The MyColors themes are much more than just a visual style and wallpaper, they also have gadgets!  Gadgets are mini-applications that reside on your desktop and can display a variety of information or functionality.  One of the gadgets included with the Laker desktop is a weather gadget. 

The weather gadget will display your current weather condition at your selected location, along with the forecast for the next couple of days.  It also has an option to go into "mini-mode" for an even smaller size, which can be expanded at any time.

Next gadget in the Lakers suite is the media player.  The really cool thing about this player, aside from the fact it can play your media files, is the animations that this player has.  It can also be minimized down to a small basketball for when you don't need the full player open on the desktop.

Icons

MyColors themes also include a complete set of icons.  The set included with the Lakers theme matches perfectly with the skin colors, and includes many elements any basketball fan will love. 

Visual Style and Wallpaper

The basketball themed visual styles are some of my favorites.  They have the hard-wood details along with the other elements that match the team colors.  Just looking at the start menu you can see the fine details that went into creating this theme.

The visual style is also clean enough so that it can be used everyday.  It's not distracting and is certainly an improvement over the default Windows visual styles.

The Lakers MyColors desktop is available for both Windows XP and Vista.  If you are a subscriber to Object Desktop you also get a discount on MyColors themes.  For more information, visit the Los Angeles Lakers MyColors page.

Only a week or so left until we go gold with our new PC strategy game, The Political Machine. It's scheduled to hit stores in North America on June 17th so we're up against the gun! I haven't been to bed in over 2 days! The AI and the pacing has to be just...right. But we're in the home stretch and very pleased with how it's turning out - especially compared to the version we did in 2004.

The last days of Bush...

The Political Machine 2008 includes more than just the US election. It has other scenarios as well. Some are educational (Election of 1860) some are fantastical (Drengi) and one is offensively funny (Europe as seen through the eyes of an American high school student).

Players of Galactic Civilizations can picture the coolness of the included candidate editor. Both candidates were made with the included, easy to use editor.

Only an indie could make a game with a map like this.

The AI in The Political Machine is very good (if I say so myself). But it also comes with multiplayer built in and will be the first PC game to make use of the Common Multiplayer Platform (CMP) that is being launched with Impulse. CMP is the answer to any gamer who has bought a game and struggled to find people to play multiplayer (especially strategy games). 

 
You can design your own candidates from scratch, give them positions on issues, and all.  I have taken the liberty to make my lovely wife and my dear aunt for tonight's test game.

They're all bobble heads which means they're bobbing at you and trying their best to look at you.

He looks..familiar...

Getting endorsements is very important. Depending on which political party you play as, some of these are harder to get than others.  They change depending on the scenario of course (Europe, Drengi, and the election of 1860 have their own sets).

There's a ton of different ways to view the maps depending on what sorts of information you want to get.

as you can see, late in the game, you can hire a lot of operatives, consultants, and less than savory chartacters to help you out.

Plaeyrs can make speeches, take out advertisements, raise money, etc.  When players make a speech, they pick what issue they want to speak on. This is not window dressing as your speech will persaude others of your point of view - in that state anyway.

If you can make it in New York...

Different states have different issues. The start of the game has pretty realistic issues. But players can manipulate through the course of the game what issues care about through clever advertising, speeches, TV appearances, etc.   In one game, I had "Alien Abductions" as a top issue in some states.   In a game against experts, you won't be able to get away with that kind of thing as much though.

Hooray! I need to improve the AI more...yay...yay...sigh.    More sleepless nights it seems. The AI didn't get enough endorsements and focused too much on fixers.

Yes, we include a tutorial too! A little mention of our local school.

That's right, the 2008 GUI Champs are approaching!  The last event, which wrapped up at the end of 2006, was a big success and we're aiming to top things with this year's edition.  One of the first things we're looking at revamping is the GUIC Website.  If you look back, you'll see that we used the 2004 site again in 2006, and it didn't age well.  For a competition focused on GUI greatness, the site was pretty embarrassing.  It was also very buggy and hard to update with contest results etc.

So this year it's back to the drawing board!

One thing people probably don't realize is how much planning has to go into even a relatively simple site like the GUIC one.  It's not as simple as throwing together an upload page, news page, gallery page and skin page and call it done.  For the 2008 GUIC Site, we have to design and implement over a dozen completely unique pages, each with very different tech requirements.

Here are a few of the big improvements that are currently being talked about.  Keep in mind we're still in the design phase of this, so it's all subject to change.  But I wanted to tease everyone a bit with this to get some interest going in the competition, and to get some feedback on what you'd like to see in the site.

Improved Team System

Previously, all you had was a page with a text list of who was on a team, and how many skins individuals had uploaded to the competition.  For 2008, we want to encourage teams more, we're even debating (again, no promises) the idea of maybe a team event where everyone on a team contributes to a skin.  If we do that, we need the Team System to pull off a lot more.  Here are a few thoughts being kicked around:

• Team logo
• Team leader, members
• Latest skins by all team members
• Awards won by individuals, by team
• Current point total
• Mini-message board limited to that team (very iffy)

Think of it as a personal page like on WC, only with multiple people's content.  The guestbook would be improved/fixed too.

Brand New Upload Tools

We've actually had a completely new upload tool about 60% completed for a while now, but no time to really sit down and finish it up and test it.  So we're using the GUIC hopefully as the trial-run for the tool.  Features that could be included in the new tool:

• Only allows valid file types
  No more uploading something only to have it kicked back hours later by a moderator for not having the right file type.  The tool won't even let you upload files that aren't on the "approved" list.
• Background Uploading
  Type in your skin description and other meta data while your files upload in the background.  Saves a lot of time for the user, lets them know if there are any problems before even hitting "submit"
• Check preview images
  Tired of getting your submission kicked back because your preview was under 1024x768?  This new tool should be able to check the preview file once uploaded and immediately tell you if it's OK or not.
• Better error reporting
  No more "upload failed" universal error messages.  Because we're checking individual files (i.e. the skin for file type, size, the preview image for dimensions etc.) we should be able to pinpoint exactly where something failed.  Of course, if the file transfer itself fails, you'll still see "Upload failed" but in that case, it should actually help us track down the problem.

Basically, the goal with the new upload tool is to make it as idiot-proof as possible and to head off problems before they get into moderation.  Only allowing submissions that meet basic technical requirements will help speed up the submission and moderation process.

A Site that Focuses on Skins First, News Second

The GUIC 2006 site is almost all text.  To get a look at any skins, you have to dig around.  It's not exactly a skin-focused site.  So the 2008 GUIC site is going to be a first pass at a design that puts the emphasis on the user content first.  Sure there will still be news, there will still be forums, but for a skinning site, maybe that needs to take a backseat to showing off what users are creating.  Like I said, parts of the GUIC 2008 site are going to be a dry-run for features and improvements to WinCustomize in the future. 

New Moderation Tools

This point is really of more interest to our moderator staff, but we're going to be taking the opportunity with the 2008 competition site to take a pass at redesigning the moderator tools for skins.  You may not know this, but the tools the moderators have at their disposal haven't really changed much at all since probably 2005.  They were updated code-wise to work on the 2007 site, but from a design or workflow perspective they haven't changed in over 3 years now.  For the GUIC site, we want a robust set of tools for contest moderators to be able to handle skins. 

Ideally, we want to handle everything from moderating submissions to designating event winners and automatically tracking who's winning overall, team totals, even points based on skinner country of origin.

Cleaner overall design, improved navigation

We've been going through sites lately and drastically simplifying their look and feel.  Aiming for something that is easier to use, faster to load, but still pleasing to the eye.  JoeUser was our first major effort in this direction, and we refined it a step or two further with the Impulse Community site.  One of the major criticisms of WC2k7 was that it was a heavy site to navigate.  And as I said above, the GUIC 2006 site wasn't exactly user-friendly.  The watch-word for the GUIC 2008 design is "simple".  The skins and other content should be the overall focus, everything else on the site should work to make it easier to view/download that content.

Like I keep saying, this is all stuff we're talking about in the design phase, some of this might not make it to the final site depending on the amount of time we have allocated to actually building it, but we're hopeful.  If the features work well on the GUIC site, you can bet they'll make their way over to WinCustomize in the future.

Is there anything you'd like to see improved/added to the GUIC site for the 2008 competition?  Thoughts on what I outlined above?  I'm looking for all the feedback and additional ideas I can get here.  But please keep it limited to site design and features.  We're not ready to talk about events in the competition or exactly when it will start.   Questions about stuff like that will likely be moderated, I want to keep this discussion on-topic.

It's Thursday afternoon, the mid-afternoon sugar rush is wearing off and we start to get a bit fidgety.  Looking around for something to entertain us for a few minutes we spy an empty desk.  It turns out that T-Man took the day off.  Now, we don't know where he went or why, but we did know that his desertion needed to be punished in some way.

Of course, we can't just hide his chair or PC monitors.  We've done that before (*glares at andrew_*).  We needed something a little bit more creative.  Well, one thing we did have was a pile of toilet paper.  So, being the mature and responsible adults that we are,  we TP'd T-Man's desk.

Now, we didn't just toss toilet paper willy-nilly all over the cube and make a mess.  That lacks style and finesse.  We wanted this prank to show that not only were we thinking of T-Man while he was away, but that we cared enough to really do the job right.  So we wrapped everything on his desk in TP.  Pens, mugs, empty coke cans, action figures, telephone, monitor, mouse, dry erase markers etc. 

We even got the inflatable kangaroo Jafo sent us years ago into the act.

Here are the results:

A wide shot of the whole desk.  Yes, we mummified the kangaroo and wrapped it to the chair.   Oh, and if you look closely at the top right of the photo, you'll see we wrapped the doors to his overhead cabinets too.

Close-up shot of his desk.  Each can was individually wrapped.  The big package in the middle of the screen is T-Man's giant blue mug.

Keyboard, mouse, pens, even his pad of post-it notes.

When I go on vacation next month, I'm taking everything off of my desk and locking it away!