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!

 

A few weeks ago I posted a question asking if any members were working on any Halloween inspired skins.  Starting next week I am going to compile this years Halloween skin guide, and I need your help.  In past years I would do sweeps through the galleries here on WinCustomize, but I often missed some really great skins simply because there are a massive amount of skins to search, and not everyone titles their works with "Halloween".

If you have any skins that are perfect for the Halloween skin guide, or know of some, I would appreciate your help in putting this guide together.  Post the links to the skins in the comments here and I will be sure to include them in the guide. 

 

I like Windows Vista quite a bit. I like it a lot more than Windows XP.  That said, it's not perfect. There's been a real dog piling on this but me and the Greenreaper had an interesting conversation on 10 issues in Windows Vista that could be rectified.

Problem #1: The UAC. The most obvious new "security" feature in Windows Vista is the User Access Console known as the UAC. Type in "UAC sucks" into Google and you'll get tens of thousands of results. No single feature in Windows Vista has done more to harm the first impression of Windows Vista.  But it could have been avoided.

The UAC is a prompt that comes up whenever the user does something that requires elevated "priviledges" to run. This can include everything from installing software, changing your screen resolution, to any number of seemingly trivial things. Even if you are logged on as an administrator, you will see this prompt..often.

The implementation of the UAC is unbelievably bad.  There are no fewer than 4 different dialogs (each looks different) that can come up depending on the circumstance. 

The net result is that many users have simply disabled the UAC which undermines much of Windows Vista's new security initiatives.

Solution: The UAC concept isn't bad, it's the implementation.

1. First off, Microsoft needs to have the UAC prompts be consistent.
2. The UAC shouldn't change the screen resolution (there's a security reason they do this but Microsoft needs to have this be an option as it's extremely annoying). This option should not be hidden in group policies but somewhere easy to find.
3. The UAC should remember what programs and settings the user has given permission to and have an option to "Always Permit" that application or setting to be elevated.

Greenreaper responds: Reading what you said about the "circumstances" for UAC, I would have been unclear about what you meant, unless I already knew about it. I think it could use more explanation.   As for why they had the differences, my understanding was that they were intended to indicate differing levels of likelihood of danger - for example, a Microsoft signed app is viewed as less dangerous than a generally signed app, which is viewed as less dangerous than a random executable. There are ways around it but most virus/malware writers are *not* that smart, and it seems reasonable for there to be some differentiation - you don't want to be as seriously worried when you're launching control panel as when you launch a random executable from the Inernet.   That said it would indeed have helped to have more options for customizing it, though I suspect the "always permit" option would be used a lot more often than Microsoft would like.

Problem #2: Releasing Windows Vista before the drivers were ready.

As a practical matter, the first beta of Longhorn that was remotely useable was late Summer of 2006 -- just 6 months before release.  That gave everyone only a matter of months to get their software (and drivers) ready for Windows Vista.

This has been particularly problematic with video drivers. Many early adopters have discovered that their favorite games and other applications have problems with the video drivers.

The rush to get Windows Vista out by the end of 2006 resulted in an OS whose video drivers just weren't ready for prime time and this has had significant consequences in user perception of performance and compatibility.

Solution: Make sure Service Pack 1 doesn't ship until the second-generation video drivers are ready and bundle them in.

Greenreaper responds: Yes. Microsoft underestimated how long it would take the driver manufacturers to adapt to a major new driver model. Perhaps they really thought people would drop everything else they were doing and concentrate on LDDM when it first came out. Most likely the driver teams were being driven internally to create XP drivers for linking two graphics cards together at the same time, and decided it wasn't really worth looking at until it solidified. Other driver teams were also affected due to x64 driver and signing requirements, though this was partly their own fault for not doing it earlier.

Problem #3: Eliminating GDI hardware acceleration.

Windows Vista has a new desktop window manager (the DWM) which provides 3D acceleration to the desktop. This is very nice for future applications.  But in the process of doing this, Microsoft eliminated 2D acceleration entirely.

For the past decade, Windows programs have used GDI for their on-screen drawing. And video card manufacturers provided hardware acceleration for this.  But now in Vista, this acceleration is gone and the result has been a noticeably slower desktop -- particularly with programs that make heavy use of GDI drawing routines.

It's a little flabbergasting to developers who were told to use GDI and GDI+ for years to suddenly have their apps no longer performing as well as they did on Windows XP. I am not even sure why Microsoft did this.

Solution: Bring back GDI acceleration

Greenreaper responds: I think Microsoft's official view is that we care about performance we should just be using DirectX, or WPF, both of which are hardware accelerated. Obviously this is not entirely practical in some (a lot of) situations, in part because it does not have a good system of fallbacks in the lack of hardware support for a particular operation, but also because we have to work with everyone else. DX 10 solves the first problem because just about everything *has* to be supported - but then you can only develop for Vista, so you might as well use WPF anyway and rely on its fallbacks . . .   if you can find the tools and samples you need, and if it's even an option for you (obviously WindowBlinds could find it hard to work well using WPF).

Problem #4: UI changes for the sake of change

At work, my laptop's wired IP address is assigned by the DHCP server. At home, I have it hard-coded to a specific IP.  Not only has Windows Vista not made it easier to have multiple configurations for network adapters, they have made it much more difficult to go and change the existing settings.

In Windows XP, from the Start-menu if one wants to change their IP address they could go to "My Network Places" and then click on "View Network Connections".  On Windows Vista, getting to the same place requires additional steps.  Changing something as basic as your IP settings should be easy.

Solution: Let people create different network configurations that they can easily switch.

Greenreaper responds: Things are certainly confuisng in some areas. It took a fair amount of time for me to get rid of all the duplicate wireless network settings I had built up over time, I had a hard time even finding the list and when I got there I saw over ten networks. When I got rid of all the duplicates, I found I could actually connect to Kris' network automatically again, when I hadn't been able to for a long time. An example of bad usability actually causing a feature to break.

Problem #5: The new Start Menu

I really like the search being built into the Start menu. It's very handy to be able to type a word in and have it quickly find the program.

On the other hand, losing the fly-out menus to a cramped listbox for showing programs is ridiculous.  How did this bad UI get into the final product?

Solution: Provide an option for fly-out menus.

Greenreaper responds: Nothing to disagree with here, but I would note that the Classic start menu is surprisingly usable. Saves over 1Mb in memory and 40/30/60 kernel handles/USER objects/GDI objects as well. Of course, the XP one probably isn't much better. Still, I think Classic works better as a menu - and isn't that the point of the Start menu?

Problem #6: Unbelievably bad desktop operation performance.

Whether it's unzipping a file or copying a few files around, Windows Vista is incredibly slow now.  How did this happen? Windows Vista now insists on estimating how long it will take to copy files -- and the estimation process is usually longer than it would take to copy the files.

If I unzip 200 files from a command prompt, I can do it in a second.  If I do it with the built in Windows ZIP, it can take several minutes.  Next time you see someone on a forum say "I wish Microsoft would bundle in some feature" remember how crappy the ZIP handling got (but still "good enough" to take the low hanging fruit from ZIP utility vendors).

Copying files from the GUI is similarly slow. It's should be much much faster. Again, if you use a third party file manager or a command prompt it's very fast.

Solution: Fix the ZIP support and copying. Get rid of the "estimating time" portion (use those "thead" things and do it in the background_.

 

Greenreaper responds: There's been a lot of speculation for the causes of this, from poor network handling to the kernel not releasing buffers soon enough to having to update the Explorer treeview and wait until it's completed. I think it's one of those "didn't have enough time to bring everything together and polish it, just enough time to make it work at all" situations.

Problem #7: Upgrade Pricing is far too high

I have a lot of PCs running Windows XP Professional. I'm the only person who uses these machine. I've got my gaming rig. My test box rig. My power laptop. My tiny laptop.  Now, Microsoft would say (correctly) that I represent a tiny fraction of the user base. But I do represent a pretty large % of the early adopter profile -- the people Microsoft should be trying to migrate to Windows Vista as quickly as possible.

And yet, even if I use the Windows Vista "Family Discount" where I paid $259 for the "Upgrade from XP" for Windows Vista Ultimate, I still pay $50 apiece for 2 additional licenses.  So to get me and 3 machines to Windows Vista, I am paying $360.  That's more than a new Xbox 360 system!

Does Microsoft really think there's that much new value over Windows XP in Vista? Really?

Solution: Family Discount should be $30 and be up to 3 licenses. The Upgrade Pricing should be 50% less than it currently is. (Vista Home Premium Upgrade is $160 right now. What is in Windows Vista that is worth $160?).

Greenreaper responds: Does Microsoft really want people upgrading at all? I'd have thought it's almost more profitable for them to have the users buy it on a new computer.   They're less likely to have problems (both performance and general technical) and if they do the're less likely to complain directly to Microsoft about them. Perhaps the upgrade pricing is a buffer against this.   Everyone wins in terms of efficiency if you buy it with a new PC, though it does mean you have to shell out for a new PC.

 

Problem #8: Microsoft Marketing failed to make compelling case for Windows Vista

This really ties into #7.  Microsoft believes that Windows Vista Home Premium Edition is worth $160 for users who already have Windows XP.  Okay, it's marketing's job to make that case.  What's in Windows Vista Home Premium that adds up to $160?

If you go to www.windowsvista.com you see these bullet points:

• Flip3D (I can do much of this stuff with WindowFX on Windows XP). But let's say the new Aero stuff is worth $20 -- which is how much a third party would charge for it.
• Desktop Search. Okay, but Google gives this away for free.  
• Windows Sidebar. You can get Google Gadgets, Yahoo Widgets, or Stardock DesktopX for free or very cheap.
• Windows Photo Gallery. Okay, this is nice but I mean, is it really that big of a deal?
• Windows Defender. This is free for Windows XP users.
• Media Center.  Okay, the new Media Center is very well done.  I can get Beyond TV 4 for $70. It's not as good but then again, they're not selling 100 million units a year.
• DVD Maker. Is there anyone with a DVD player that didn't get a DVD making utility?
• Niche goodies. There are some neat things in Vista like Windows Meeting Space but they're not the kinds of things that you could use to sell Vista.
• Misc. Minor features are listed like Super-Fetch, Self-Healing, Diagnostics,

Now, perhaps I'm way off here but I jut don't see $160 of new stuff. Especially for the increasing number of people who have multiple licenses of Windows XP. Heck, even the crummy Home Basic is $100 and that doesn't even have Aero or the Media Center.

Don't get me wrong, I like Windows Vista.  I just don't think it was a good idea to have it priced this high unless Microsoft was prepared to make a better case on the marketing side. 

Solution: Microsoft did a very good job with the Windows Featured Community project. One wonders how things might have gone if Microsoft didn't have dozens of high-profile tech sites feeding users the new features of Windows Vista.  But there is more that needs to be done.  Microsoft needs to get its evangelists out there more.  It needs to promote WindowsVistaBlog.com more and make it easier to get that info out there.

Greenreaper responds: I'm one of the people who might be willing to upgrade for the promise of increased general performance. The kernel team has not spent 6 years doing nothing, so there must be some value in there. For me, it's not so much having the latest and greatest *features* so much as having generally better performance. Consider it similar to a Linux kernel upgrade. Unfortunately, this is crippled by the poor performance of the shell and a generally increased memory footprint. It does no good for disk operations to be 20% faster if there are 50% more of them.

Problem #9: The Development Tools were not ready for prime time

If Windows Vista launched and there were a bunch of compelling programs available for it on release day, then that $160 upgrade price might have been more compelling. 

Unfortunately, writing Vista specific stuff has been no panacea. Getting your Visual Studio 2005 up to writing Windows Presentation Foundation apps is an arduous process. And even when you do, the available documentation and inconsistent performance (see video driver part) mean that many cool stuff that Windows Vista makes possible isn't really practical yet.

Solution: Update Visual Studio soon to have all the "stuff" on a single DVD with a more seamless installation process.

Greenreaper responds: Agreed, and yes, it wasn't just the technical tools. It's never easy keeping up with a new operating system. However, this has been a death march for external developers as well as internal ones. Never before has there been so much gunk to plough through in terms of new APIs and application frameworks (some of which are later discarded), only to find that important things still haven't been documented; most likely because they were just added this build. Perhaps I just don't have enough experience with OS releases - I suspect the documentation issue is true in most cases - but it seems to have been drawn out to an exceptional extent. How many millions of dolllars does Microsoft make, and it still couldn't get this right?

Problem #10: Stupid Icon Handling

The good news is that Windows Vista has much nicer icons. The bad news is that Windows Vista's icon implementation is awful.

Here's the deal: If you don't have a 256x256 version of an icon, the icon displayed is the 32x32 or 48x48 one.  Even if you have a 128x128 icon (which many icons have) it will still use the 32x32 or 48x48 one. 

So even if your icons on your desktop are sized at 128x128 and the icons in question have a 128x128 version, it won't use that version but will instead look to see if there's a 256x256 (and shrink it down) and failing that just show the 48x48 or 32x32 version which looks ridiculous.

Solution: Support the Windows XP icon format better -- if there's a icon that's the right size then use it.  Don't abandon all those high resolution icons.

Greenreaper responds: Agree totally, there's no real excuse for this - even if an icon is not in the right format to start with, there are things that could be done, but they didn't do it. Perhaps a ploy to get people to make more Vista icons?   It'll just backfire; most people are going to be too busy or too lazy to recreate icons, even if they have the ability to do so. It might have helped if they'd made a proper tool for making them (though I'm sure the creators of third-party icon editors would complain).

Conclusions

So that's a conversation between two techies on these 10 issues regarding Windows Vista.

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