Where does the time go these days?  It seems like I just put up an edition of This Week in Skinning, and hear it is time for another one.  This week the Halloween Skin Guide for 2007 went up, and has been well received throughout the community. 

Whether you have a Halloween desktop or some other theme, be sure to post a screenshot in our monthly post your desktop thread.  This was another great week for skinning, especially in the CursorXP galleries.  I think I could have devoted an entire article just for the fabulous cursor submissions from the past week. 

Now for this weeks picks!

Desktop WarBird for CursorXP By Drill'n Boss Another great set from Drill"n Boss, and this one has some fantastic animations.  Great work.

Harmony for CursorXP By J. Aroche This cursor set is made to match the Harmony WindowBlinds skin from vStyler.  As usual, J. Aroche goes above and beyond with this theme.

ZoomCam in DesktopX Widgets By Zubaz You might have seen the test camera feed Zoomba is working on, well you can bring his desk to your desktop with this widget created by Zubaz.  A Vista sidebar gadget is also available.

Floating Forest for IconPackager By windycat This was another entry in the 2006 GUI Champs.  It's a very clean, and well designed cursor set that goes with a wide variety of skins.

Autumn Lake in Wallpapers By webby85 Another beautiful landscape wallpaper by webby85.  Great job.

Creepy Hollow in Wallpapers By tippytoenail Looking for a really cool Halloween wallpaper?  Well then you definitely have to check this one out.

Autumn Reflection for WindowBlinds By jazzymjr This WindowBlinds is perfect for Halloween, or just for the Fall season.  There are plenty of matching accessories, so be sure to check them out as well.

Great job to everyone who were featured this week.  Lets keep these creations coming in as I'm always looking forward to see what is shared with us next.  See you next week!

I have been talking about it for several weeks, and the time has come for this years Halloween Skin Guide.  I have gone through the galleries here on WinCustomize, and with the help of our community members, this guide lists some of the best Halloween inspired skins for your desktop.

Over the next couple of weeks I will do more specific features of Halloween skins, but now you don't have to go searching through galleries to find that perfect Halloween skin you were looking for.

DesktopX Halloween Lights Halloween Tree Happy Halloween Aero Halloween 2004 DXHalloweenClock Candle Pumpkin Creepers Countdown Creepers Desktop Halloween DX Spooky Eyes Skull 'n' Candles Tangled Web Raven DX Grim Reaper Date

Misc. My Halloween (IconPackager) Rest in Peace (Dream) Skull Player (Xion) halloween (SoundPackager) Creepers Halloween Countdown (Sidebar Gadget) ScreenSavers Halloween Cat 3D Halloween Screen Saver Halloween 2007 Halloween

Logons Next of Skin - Halloween Halloween night My Halloween 1024 Halloween Hades Graveyard Pumpkins Pumpkins

LogonStudio Vista Happy Halloween Halloween Halloween 2007 Graveyard Pumpkins_Vista

ObjectDock WinCustomize Halloween Halloween Zoomer Pack Glossy Pumpkins Winky Booo! RIP Tabbed Dock Pack

Rainlendar Next of Skin RL Raven Rainlendar October rain_y Halloween 1 My Halloween pumpkin Creepers rainy

WindowBlinds Next of Skin Hallows Eve XPV Beezlebub Halloween2 My Halloween Halloween Creepers R.I.P. 2007

RightClick Next of Skin RightClick Halloween RC Raven October RC

Wallpapers Creepy Hollow Pumpkins The great pumpkin Halloween Fun Home Sweet Home My Halloween Halloween Spirit Autumn's Lil' Pumpkins Midnight Raven Gnarley Pumpkin Patch Creeped. Spooked

DreadSkull Halloween Town Halloween 2005 Aqua Pumpkins Halloween Hades Halloween Dark Halloween Pumpkin Run Graveyard Pumpkins! Keeper of the Crypt October Pack

Over time, the list of applications supported here on WinCustomize grows and grows.  Gone are the days where you only had a small handful of applications that met all of your skinning needs.  While choice is great, the consequence can be that some tools don't get quite the attention that others do.  There's no question that WindowBlinds is successful, we have thousands of skins from the last 8 or 9 years, and the gallery expands nearly every day.

One of those apps that people forget about, but is absolutely fantastic is ObjectBar, a toolbar utility that comes as part of Object Desktop.  It lets you create start bars, finders, pop-up menus, launchers, docks and so on, and it can all be skinned to match your chosen theme!  It's a stellar utility for any power user who has to keep track of a lot of different applications and tasks. 

Development has kept going, with version 2.1 having been released just yesterday.  So I'm hoping that this article can entice skinners to take another look at the program and start skinning for it again.

Now, why should you care about ObjectBar?  Well, like I said, it's a great tool for anyone who finds themselves managing a lot of different applications, files, folders and misc content on their PC.  I personally have about half a dozen applications open at any given time (not counting IM, IRC, e-mail or web browsers) that I need to do my job.  I have files on my desktop, on external drives, and various locations across the network that I regularly have to update and reference.  Having a bunch of shortcuts on my desktop just wouldn't cut it.

And of course, not only do I need a utility to help me manage all of these items, I need it to look good too!  Now, ObjectBar does come with some outstanding skins, and it has the ability to try and match your current WindowBlinds skin, but sometimes that just doesn't do it for me.  Even the skin matching isn't always enough since it does match parts of the skin, but sometimes it will match less interesting parts (like the skin I'm using now uses gray bars with spashes of color at the edges and for buttons, the ObjectBar matches to a gray bar.  No splashes of color.  Kind of boring).  In those cases, you'll want to download a skin designed for the tool.  And skins can go beyond just visual enhancements, they can add actual utility.

Currently, we have one gallery for ObjectBar 1 and another one for ObjectBar 2.  ObjectBar 2 will actually run all v1 skins, so we'll be consolidating them in the near future, but for now you have two galleries to browse through when looking for skins.

• ObjectBar
• ObjectBar 2

Here are a few of my favorite skins for ObjectBar.

WindowBlinds 6 has been a big deal for us the last few months with all the new capabilities it brings to skinning Windows Vista and Windows XP.  Combined with the new version of SkinStudio, we're expecting a renewed interest in skinning and a jump in great content to pick from on the site.  Though, for a lot of people, they look at screenshots and recent skins and go "Meh, so what?  What's so new about this?" 

Sometimes I guess it's hard to see what's changed when you've followed every incremental update to the software.  So, I thought it'd be fun to step through the WindowBlinds Gallery and get a look at what skins have looked like over the history of WindowBlinds.  To do this, I went through to the first skins on the site and started moving forward in time, so I could see what all has changed.  Personally, it amazes me how different skins are now versus then.

So lets step into the wayback machine and see what we find...

1998
While WinCustomize itself wasn't around back then, we did manage to pull in a bunch of skins from the years BWC (Before WinCustomize) so our gallery had that historical perspective.

• ObjectDesktop 2001

The very first skin in our WinCustomize gallery is from December 30th, 1998, the Object Desktop 2001 skin from none other than Frogboy himself.  If the date on the skin is to be trusted, this even predates the 1.0 version of WindowBlinds, which according to the Wiki, wasn't released until September of 1999[1].

While this doesn't hold the honor of being SkinID 1 (that was removed by the original author), it is likely the oldest WindowBlinds skin you'll ever come across.

• PDA

Yet another skin by Frogboy, who you'll find frequently mentioned in the archives, back in the day when he had more free time to skin.

(we hear he's busy "running a company" now... psssh whatever!)

• Holiday

This is the first skin in the gallery that isn't attributed to Frogboy, and the first (of what will be many) holiday themed skin.  Built and uploaded by Masashi Ickikawa, a user so old I can't even find them in the database, it shows off how skins don't just have to be techy inspired and can be more fun and light.

Oh, and it's technically the lowest Skin ID on the site, clocking in at SkinID 5

1999

At first, you'll notice that most skin previews were of a skinned notepad window and a bit of text with the skin name and author information.  Things changed though in early 1999, skinners moved away from notepad previews to shots that showed off more of the skin elements themselves (windows, boxes, buttons etc.)

• Destruction

Originally posted in June of 1999, Destruction by Decoder is a great example of the new preview method people began using.  The skin itself is a nice example of how skins began to evolve away from emulations of other operating systems, and move more into being original creations and designs.

Imagine how much more popular Windows 98 would have been with a default interface like this.

• LCARS V

Oh, it's an LCARS skin!  By "Death" in June of 1999, this skin shows off the ability to use more complex image elements in window borders.  It's a great example of how folks really started to get creative with their skins, and didn't necessarily care about keeping it small if it meant a cooler look.

• Total Annihilation

Video game inspired skins can be some of the coolest and most visually interesting out there when done right.  This is, from what I can tell, the second such skin in the gallery (the first being Zerg Viscid by BaT).

GGame skins have been in short supply in recent years, I'd love to see them make a comeback.\

• 100_Camels

The fourth skin by DavidK really shows off how people start to take incredibly creative directions with their WindowBlinds skins.  It's a great example of artists transforming the user interface into something that no one really imagined before.

This is also a great skin to peek at since it's an early entry from one of the community's most veteran skinners.  Nice to see where they started.

 

• StardockOJ

I wanted to toss this one onto the list before closing 1999 out because it shows a skin preview generated by BuilderBlinds, the predecessor to SkinStudio.  Just another glimpse at how much things have changed over the years.

StardockOJ is a pretty interesting skin by CRUMBUT.

So that brings us from the first skins, the ones before even WindowBlinds 1.0 was out, up to some of the first skins using WindowBlinds 2 (beta) features and the first glimpses of BuilderBlinds previews. 

In Part 2, we'll cover 2000 - 2003 to show the evolution from WindowBlinds 2.0 to 4.0, the version that really started catching people's attention.  Expect that later this week.

For some reason I'm really glad today is Friday, and I bet many of you agree with me.  I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has posted Halloween inspired skins for this years Halloween skin guide.  I'm going to start compiling it this weekend so if you have any last minute additions, please feel free to add them to this post.

I think this years list is going to be fantastic, as I am seeing a steady flow of Halloween submissions coming in.  I have a feeling this years holiday season is going to be great as far as skinning goes.

Now for this weeks picks!

My Halloween in Bootskins By StuSchellhamer This is a bootskin version of the matching wallpaper which should definitely get you into Halloween.

Rest In Peace in Dreams By Stardock Design This is a matching .dream for the RIP_2007 WinCustomize subscriber suite, but this .dream is available to everyone.

Solarion Tabbed & Side Docks for ObjectDock By WebGizmos WebGizmos comes through again and brings us some great dock backgrounds to match the WindowBlinds skin by MikeB314.  Great job.

Otherland II in Wallpapers By webby85 Webby85 has created some beautiful wallpapers in the past, and this submission is no different.  Very nice.

Home Sweet Home in Wallpapers By vStyler So many great Halloween wallpapers coming in, and vStyler puts his hat in the ring as well and gives us this fantastic creation.

Nuage Redux in WindowBlinds By essorant Essorant has updated this skin for WindowBlinds 6 and Vista.  It's a great, clean skin with good use of transparency.

Great job and congratulations to all the skinners featured this week.  To see more of their works just click their member name to see their personal page here on WinCustomize.  See you next week!

With WindowBlinds 6 finally released, I wanted to start taking users on some quick tours of some of the new and cool features of this latest update.  I thought it would be appropriate to start with the completely redesigned user interface.  The new UI is a big change from previous versions, and I think it's a great addition for both new and previous users.

In future articles I will go into more detail on the specific features we talk about today, but this is just a general walkthrough on the new UI in WindowBlinds 6.  Lets start with the section that many of you will probably spend the most time in, the Visual Styles window.  You can get there by selecting the "Look & Feel" tab near the top of the window, and then selecting the Visual Styles button.

Visual Styles (Vista)

Here you will see all your installed WindowBlinds skins and you can cycle through them by using the scrollbar at the bottom of the window.  Clicking on a skin will show a preview and you can also select any substyles (if included) and preview them as well.  To the left of the preview window you have the options to edit the skin in SkinStudio, delete it, and change the color.  You can apply the skins by double-clicking the skin entry or selecting "Apply my changes".

Next under the "Look & Feel" tab we have the Colours category.  WindowBlinds has the ability to selectively change the color of a skin, and even create your own substyle based on your changes.

Colors

Another new feature of WindowBlinds 6 is the ability to adjust, or change the fonts in a skin.  In the Fonts section you can make the fonts used bigger or smaller, or change the font to something completely different.

Fonts

One of the most popular new features of WindowBlinds is the ability to adjust transparency and blur in skins.  Selecting the Transparency & Blur button will take you to the screen where you can select the level of transparency for the taskbar, start menu, window frames, and menus.  A drop down menu and slider make this very easy, and you can view your changes before applying them in the preview window. 

Transparency & Blur

Vista users will have the Sidebar category.  Here users can choose and apply different skins for the sidebar in Windows Vista.

Vista Sidebar

Windows XP users will have the Toolbar icons menu.  This will allow users to change the icons in the toolbar in explorer windows.  Additional toolbar icons are downloadable from WinCustomize.

Toolbar icons

Also for XP users, you will have the Explorer animations option.  You can change the animations you see when you copy, move, or delete files with WindowBlinds. 

Explorer animations

That is everything in the "Look & Feel" category, so now we can move on to the next tab which will be the Wallpaper category.  Selecting this tab will open up the configurations for Change my Wallpaper and Random wallpaper settings.

WindowBlinds has an integrated wallpaper manager that allows you to easily view and change your wallpapers.  It also has the ability to automatically change your wallpaper every hour, every logon, every morning, and other additional settings. 

Wallpaper settings

Next is the Settings tab which gives access to the default and advanced settings of WindowBlinds, along with the Change the look of an app section where you can apply changes based on a per application basis.

Settings

The last two categories are the System Info and About sections.  If you need to report a problem to support then this information is very important.  Copying this information and including it into your report will be very helpful in solving your problem.

System info

 
This covers the basics of the new user interface and its features.  For more information about WindowBlinds 6 visit www.windowblinds.net.

SoundPackager is one of those applications that people have seemingly been talking about for ages, always wondering when it would finally materialize.  Well, last month we finally pushed a beta of SoundPackager out the door and testing/tweaking began in earnest.  To go along with this, we launched a new gallery at WinCustomize just for SoundPackager files (.soundpackage).   The entire idea behind SoundPackager is that if you wanted to customize your Windows sounds previously, you'd have to navigate to some obscure control panel, and one-by-one manually set every sound event.  What if you wanted to share your sound schemes?  You were more or less out of luck.

SoundPackager lets you create a unique sound scheme in a simple and easy-to-use UI, and then wrap it all up in a .soundpackage file to hand off to anyone else running SoundPackager.

Now, why should you care about SoundPackager or the ability to share or download themed sound packs?  Well, we've managed to customize every visual aspect of your Windows PC.  We've done skins, icons, cursors, wallpapers, animated wallpapers, widgets, media players and more.  So we've covered our visual bases, but not audio.  Lets say you found yourself with a killer Halloween theme and wanted some spooky sounds to really round out the ghastly experience?  Well, now you're in luck since we have just such a SoundPackager theme in the gallery for you to grab.

This also opens up WinCustomize to creative types who lean more towards sound and music.  So now we are open to traditional 2D artists, 3D artists, animators, and audio artists.

Here are a few of my favorite items currently in the SoundPackager gallery:

Making your own color presets

One of the coolest new features of WindowBlinds 6 is the ability to selectively color parts of a skin. Combined this with another new WindowBlinds 6 feature - user created substyles and you have customization heaven.

For this demo, I'm going to show off a skin that hasn't been released at the time of this writing - Turbo.  Turbo is a new skin from Stardock Design that is being released exclusively for Object Desktop users.  It's not quite done yet - you will see some minor graphical glitches in the screenshots - but it will serve our purposes of what you can do with selective coloring.

First, let's look at Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista by default:

For a skin to be relevant, it has to look as good or better than the original. Aero looks pretty good I think but has some minor UI issues that are a matter of taste (I don't like that the address bar looks like it is part of the title bar, it might be a matter of taste but I think it harms the UI context).

Here is Turbo running Internet Explorer 7:

Turbo has a graphical glitch with the address line still but the site address and search field are clearly part of the client instead of part of the title bar. The status bar is also a lot cleaner.

But the important part and why I chose Turbo for this demo is that the skin has 3 main colors - black, red, and yellow.  In WindowBlinds 5, you could hue shift the whole skin but the results wouldn't have been desirable. In WindowBlinds 6, things are different.

Step 1: Create a substyle

WindowBlinds has supported sub-styles for a long time.  But with WindowBlinds 6, users can create their own mini sub-styles called presets that allow them to customize a particular skin and then save it as a sub-style.  So here we're going to do just that.  ON the Colours tab, create a new sub-style.

Create a new preset.

Give your preset a name.

Step 2: Turn on colorizing.

Once you've made a new preset, select the option to colorize your skin (see left side).  There is a small button in the middle that activates the selective coloring option. Once clicked, you get the advanced HSL colouring dialog.

Turn on coloring, then opt to use the selective colouring mode.

Step 3: Choose the color you want change

This can be a little tricky when you first start. The easiest way is to grab the little color picker on the right side and drag it (holding down the mouse button) onto the color you want to change.

Drag the color picker to the part of the skin whose color you want to change

The two sliders you see on the right determine which color you want to change. The second slider determines the color range -- how many similar colors do you want to include in your color changing?

And that's it.

Here are some example of it in action:

Note how the red buttons remain red. And there are areas that use other colors as well such as push buttons that have green mouseovers. In this way, users have a lot more control over the look of their skin and one skin becomes many.

For more information on WindowBlinds 6, visit www.windowblinds.net. 

Another week ends, and another edition of This Week in Skinning.  In case you missed it earlier in the week, Septembers edition of "This Month in Dreams" was put up, so be sure to check that out for the best .dreams submitted to WinCustomize last month.

In the last couple of weeks you have heard me asking about Halloween skins, and now is the time to start showing them.  I'm putting together this years Halloween skin guide and I'm asking the community to help me put this together.  Check out this article for more info on how you can help.

Now for this weeks picks!

Raven in DesktopX Themes By buzzh58 This DX Theme is part of a suite that also includes a wallpaper, rightclick skin, and DX widgets.  Be sure to check his personal page for all the matching skins.  Great work!

Poubel Island v1.0 in Dreams By brenopoubel Another fantastic .dream from brenopoubel this time with a beautiful island scene with  a very smooth animation.

Vienna 2VL for LogonStudio Vista By Morpheous416 I liked this logon for XP, so I was glad to see it available for LogonStudio Vista as well.  Nice work.

Window Blinds 6 in ObjectDock icons By D. Arnaez D. Arnaez brings us his interpretation of the WB6 packaging.  Looks great!

Stache in Wallpapers By Richard Mohler Beautiful and colorful wallpaper with a wide variety of resolutions.  Very nice.

Adamant for WindowBlinds By Stardock Design A great, clean and usable skin by Alexandrie.  This looks great especially on Vista, so be sure to check this one out.

Another great week, and it seems to be getting better and better.  Congratulations to all the artists featured, your work is greatly appreciated.  Be sure to check out the personal pages of all the skinners.  See you next week!