After the very positive reaction to Part 1, today we continue our Developer Interview Series with a chat with the developers behind the skinnable web browser, Maxthon.  A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down with Jeff Chen, founder of Maxthon and SiC, the main UI & Experience Designer and tossed out some questions about Maxthon, how it came to be, why they did what they did and where they feel the application is headed in the future. 

Also to remind folks, we are currently running a Maxthon 2.0 Skinning Contest here at WinCustomize where the prizes are a digital camera, an iPod, and a Wacom Digital Tablet.  If you're a Maxthon skinner, or interested in winning some nice loot, hit the link above for details.  Deadline currently is the end of the month for submissions so get cracking!

As always, if you are, or know someone who is a developer for a skinnable application or skinning utility, and are interested in getting involved in our ongoing Developer Interview Series, send an email to mikec AT stardock DOT com with the subject "Developer Interview Series"  I'm always on the lookout for great applications and developers to chat with!

Note: This interview was conducted before the release of Maxthon 2.0, so some questions ask about the "impending release".  Also, please note that English is not Jeff or SiC's native language.

1.Please introduce yourselves.  Who are you?  What do you do on the project?

[Jeff] This is Jeff Chen, the founder of Maxthon. From day one, I am the main developer of Maxthon. If you find any bugs in Maxthon, it's probably my fault . Now I also take care of the Maxthon Company, make sure everyone here is happy and well organized.

[SiC] I'm the User Interface & Experience Designer, SiC.   I am responsible for the User Interface and some minor parts of the software, such as the Default Skin, Magic Fill, Float Ads Filter, Browser History Page and the Setup Center etc.

2. Could you provide a little bit of history behind Maxthon?  How did it start?  Why a mod of IE?

[Jeff] Maxthon is started from 2003. It's called MyIE2 at that time, when I was at Singapore. The life at Singapore is comfortable, well, a bit boring. And I felt I have nothing to do at night, so I spent most of my time on internet. The more I use internet, the more I feel uncomfortable with the browser. I often need some features that current browser does not have. Since I am a software developer, my developer brain told me to write the feature I need myself. That's how Maxthon (MyIE2) started. The reason of choosing based on IE render engine is simple, I am familiar with IE development and building a totally new render engine will cost too much time.

[SiC] In the very beginning, Maxthon is named MyIE2, which is a descendant of the MyIE created by Changyou.   I was in college then. And I found this little program while browsing the website with no purpose, and then made it my default browser.   After visiting its website, I think I could do a better website for it. And then, I was in. And then, others were in.   MyIE2 was just a hobby project to us all at first. He was in Singapore. I and others were in China. We were separated in different places, but the internet connected us.   After changing the name MyIE2 to Maxthon in July 2004, Jeff (aka. bloodchen) decided to establish a company at the March 2005.

3. In general, skinnable browsers are pretty rare.  Firefox is perhaps the most well-known browser that supports custom themes.  Why did Maxthon go the route of being individually skinnable instead of relying on tools that customize the entire Windows interface?

[Jeff]  First, our users like to see Maxthon will beautiful skins. And we found that customizing the entire windows sometimes cost too much resources. A lot of users do have that tool installed and they want a better looking browser. Then we have no choice but developing our own skin system.

[SiC] We always care about user experience. And the interface is one of the most important part of user experience. This is why we had the skinning feature.   Those customize tools can only change the common part of program interface, and the result is not always good enough.   When we found there is a need to implement the ability to change icons to make the whole browser interface capable with customize interface, I said "Why not implement a full skinning system to let our users have more choices?" "It's hard to implement those skinning ability with current program infrastructure." Jeff responded.   So, we wait, till the whole re-coded Maxthon 2.0 is in our schedule.

4. A lot of the technology in Maxthon has since shown up in the major browsers; Tabs, built-in popup blocking, mouse gestures, automatic updates etc.  How are you keeping ahead of the competition?  What new features are you pushing that no one else has?

[Jeff] We are happy to see some of our features are adapted by major browsers. But there are still a lot that most browsers do not have, to name a few: advanced content filtering system, advanced proxy system, URL key, URL alias, search alias, smart acceleration system... And we believe what we are developing will keep Maxthon ahead. The new feature will include a light security system to help reduce attacks from Trojan, a new web acceleration technology and more...

[SiC] Feature set is just one aspect of user experience. The exposure of features to users and feature accessibility is another aspect of it.   Also, we will continue to provide more innovation ideas to keep our position of this challenge.   What's next? Whatever that makes our users feel better.

5. You’ve gained a lot of popularity in China, which is a vast but generally underserved corner of the IT market.  What are you doing to gain more attention and grow your user base in the rest of the world?

[SiC] Well, I'd better leave this question to Jeff. He knows business more than I.

[Jeff] Yes. We have a lot of Chinese users. Actually we also have a lot of users in other countries, such as US, Russia, France ... we have covered over 200 countries. The reason that Maxthon is not as famous as Firefox or Opera is that most Maxthon users just use it but not talk about it. And we are actually quite low profiled company. (We just have a PR department last month). We don't want to involve in so called 'browser wars', instead, we just want to make users have a better web browser experience.

6. Explain briefly how you implemented skinning in your browser.  According to Wikipedia, you use a mixture of Trident (IE) and Gecko (Firefox).  How did you go about mixing the two together?  What were the major technical hurdles?

[Jeff]  I won't go into details of how we program the skin system. Basically we created our own toolbar, button, frame control that could support our skin system. For Trident and Gecko, we support them in our classic version and will add the support to our 2.x version soon. We used a COM control that wrap around gecko to make it compatible with Trident. The major technical hurdle is that Gecko does not support all Trident interface and we have to either re-implement the missing interface or disable it.

[SiC] We use an interface framework developed in C++. Using native compiled library has a great performance opportunity over cross-platform frameworks like XUL used by Firefox. Since our software requires the Trident engine of IE, and Windows is the most popular operation system, cross-platform support is not a high priority task to us.

About mixing Trident and Gecko together, there really are a lot of things to have done. The biggest trouble is that the two engine uses different technology to communicate with programs. We might have a hard time on wrapping Gecko engine into a control if we.

7.  I’ve read in the news how you’ve received significant venture capital funding from people like Skype co-founder Morten Lund, as well as a few other investment groups.  How has that helped/hurt expansion and development?

[SiC] Another question should be left to Jeff.

[Jeff] It helps us to get more people involved in Maxthon. We have more resources to do some development and marketing. Generally it does not hurt anything because we never give up our development for funding.

8. You have some very vocal supporters such as recognized tech pundit Chris Pirillo.  How connected are you with your most evangelical community members?  Do they influence development decisions?

[Jeff] Yes, Chris is one of our best friends. I have people like him in my msn list. We are very closed connected with our community. We communicate through our forum, msn, gtalk, anything you can image. To us, making our users happy is a main reason that we keep developing Maxthon. I'd say Maxthon is influenced by our community very much.

[SiC]We do thank our users and supporters. We don't expect go this far in the beginning. But they have pushed us here.  Our community really affects our development and design decisions.  Especially, we should thank the testing team in our Chinese forum. They had found out a bunch of bugs for us to fix before every release.

9.  2.0 is nearing release, with RC3 released last month.  I’m sure you’re already starting to think about what you’d like to include in your next version.  What are a few of your dream features for 3.0?

[Jeff] Like I said in question 4, we would put more resource on making our browser more secure and making it faster. We don't have any feature set for 3.0 yet.

[SiC] We haven't got a schedule for 3.0 yet. The 2.0 version is still not completed and its release is just the beginning of the 2.0 series.

What I would dream of in 3.0? A platform for all internet experiences? Might be.

10.  You’ve grown a strong community around the browser, and they’ve turned out some excellent skins and plugins.  What are a few of your favorite user-created bits for Maxthon?

[Jeff] I personally like plugins like 'more options', 'viewpage'. They helped me in development.

[SiC] As a web developer, I like the PowerBand plugin by AWater, though it can not run with 2.0 yet. It's something like IE Developer Toolbar, but much earlier, and had helped my work for 2 years.

As a designer, I would to recommend the SoCool skin by iconsbox and the HuaJing ("Painting Realm" in Chinese) skin by NanShanCaoLu ("Hut of Southern Hill" in Chinese).

The latter skin mixed traditional Chinese painting and modern UI elements.

• PowerBand
• SoCool Skin
• HuaJing Skin

11. Any parting comments or thoughts you’d like to share with WinCustomize/the skinning community?

[Jeff] I want to say 'hello' and 'thanks' to WinCustomize/skinning community. It's their desire that makes us developing an advanced skin system. I also want to thank to all skin authors who have created Maxthon skins. Your excellent work makes a lot of people happy. And I also want to welcome more skin authors to create Maxthon skins and related stuff. Let's grow with Maxthon together and making our browsing experience better.

[SiC] I hope there will be more great skins from the WinCustomize community.  And your feedback of our skin system could help us make it more flexible and beautiful.

The screenshots in this article are previews of Maxthon browser skins.  In order they are:

1. The default Maxthon skin
2. HuaJing, Winner of the Most Creative Skin in the Chinese Maxthon Skinning Competition
3. SoCool, Winner of the Most Usable Skin in the Chinese Maxthon Skinning Competition
4. Vreaming, Winner of the Most Popular Skin in the Chinese Maxthon Skinning Competition

The last day of August is here, and a long weekend is ahead for some of us.  What a great way to kick off the long weekend with an edition of "This Week in Skinning".  Since it's the last day of the month, maybe I feature a few more submissions than usual.

Since the month is just about done, be sure to keep an eye out for the next edition of "This Month in Dreams".  That should be up sometime next week, and there are quite a few .dream submissions for this month. 

Now for this weeks picks!

Prototype 03 Color Pack J. Aroche continues his "Prototype" series, this time with a color pack for the 03 version.  Great work!

Snow edition 2 in Dreams By chaorendabusi I like the "snow" effect in this dream, and I can see this technique being applied to some other cool dreams.

Russell Falls in the Mist for LogonStudio Vista By mrs starkers I found this to be a really beautiful image when logging into Vista.  Nice work.

seanimals in ObjectDock icons By ethylmorphin This is just a really cool set of icons, that's definitely different than what we usually see.  I hope to see more of this type of design.

CitriumXp v3 RightClick for RightClick By buzzh58 Last week I featured the Citrium WindowBlinds skin, and the matching community skins have been fantastic.  One of the latest additions is this RC skin by buzzh58.

Moonrise in Wallpapers By boss0190 Very beautiful wallpaper.  This goes great with several WB skins, especially the more transparent variety.  Great job.

Azkaban WB 5.1 for WindowBlinds By HeirOfSlytherin HeirofSlytherin has created some very creative, fun, and well designed WB skins in the past, and I see this one is no different.  Be sure to check this one out.

This was a fantastic week for submissions, so let's keep that momentum up.  See you next week!

With the launch of WinCustomize 2007, we introduced the Master Skins program.  It was a way for some of our most senior and talented artists to sell their work directly through WinCustomize.  It was our way of giving back to the individuals who have given us so much over the years and helped make skinning and WinCustomize what it is today. 

Intrigue SKoriginals	Knot Vista I.R. Brainiac	Odyssey Suite vStyler	Optix MikeB314

In just a little over half a year, the program has been a resounding success with more and more master skinners posting their outstanding work.  And as the year has progressed we've promoted a number of Journeyman users to Master as well, so the ranks continue to swell. 

Up until 2007, skinners wishing to sell their work often had to develop and maintain their own websites, and find ways to market themselves and spread the word to attract customers.  That's a tall order considering how much noise there is out there on the web.  By providing these skinners a space at WinCustomize to sell their work, we were able to provide millions of potential customers every month.

Relent brewman	AeroS JJ Ying	Nuage essorant	StingRay Z71

As I said, the program has been an amazing success, with many skinners selling hundreds of units in just a few months.  Some of these folks have made skinning a full-time job, and we've been helping support that decision through the Master Skins program.

Expanding Shapes Neil Banfield	Suite 18 adni18	Challenger Treetog	Aero-extreme gef

We hope to see more master skinners step up to the plate with more of these outstanding skins in the future.  Already we have seen WindowBlinds skins, full suites, Dreams, DesktopX Themes and Gadgets.  I'm personally looking forward to IconPackages, and new WindowBlinds 6 skins with all the bells and whistles.  There's a lot out there that's yet to be skinned, and a big opportunity with Vista slowly gaining acceptance.  The skins we've already seen are just the tip of the iceberg I'm sure.

Holiday Countdown Pro RomanDA	Customize gef	DX-PDA gef	Metal-vista gef

In case you haven't been keeping up with releases, here are all of the community Master Skins uploaded to-date.  These really represent some of the best skins ever uploaded to the site.  There's no question that the folks making these deserve the title of Master.

Time Commander RomanDA	SportStrip RomanDA	Site Checker RomanDA	Capsulated gef
	File Transporter RomanDA	Xaphire JJ Ying

Also, remember that if you're a WinCustomize Subscriber, you get a 20% discount on all Master Skin purchases.

In our ongoing efforts to improve WinCustomize and make participating and contributing more fun and fulfilling for our skinners, we're looking at changing around how certain systems related to user reward work.  The first one is the Medals system.

Currently automatically award Medals to users for hitting any number of milestones here on WinCustomize.  We track who's the top skinner across the entire site, who is the best in any particular gallery, how many downloads are achieved etc.  This information is mostly displayed on your personal page.  It's a lot of data to sift through, and it's something we need to do a better job of presenting and highlighting. 

To that end, we're looking for feedback on the current user medal system.

• What do you like about the current system?
• What do you dislike about the current system?
• What are your favorite awards?
• What are your least favorite awards?
• What awards do you think we should add?
• How do you think we could improve presentation and meaning of the awards?

Any feedback you have on this system is more than welcome.  We'll be taking it into account when revising things, though we can't promise every suggestion will be implemented.  This is the first step in a chain that we hope will lead to greater focus being placed on individual users, as well as a more equitable distribution of recognition. 

Yes, it's Friday and that means it's time once again for This Week in Skinning where we highlight some of the top skins submitted in the past week.  The galleries are getting active again, and what a great selection of skins to choose from in the last few days.

Now for the picks!

MB-Classics (4Colors) for CursorXP By ModBlackmoon A simple, 4 color pack of cursors with a really nice "stained glass" look to them.  Great work.

Poubel Rays v1.0 in Dreams By brenopoubel This is a very nice .dream of "rays" beaming down over the land.  This is one you need to definitely download.

The lines 2 in Dreams By chaorendabusi This is a very cool .dream with fantastic animation with changing colors.  Very nice work.

System Control in Sidebar Gadgets By Incomps_Creations This Vista Sidebar Gadget gives you the ability to shutdown, logoff, standby, right from your Sidebar.  The gadget also has several other commands and has a variety of themes to choose from.

CitriumXP for WindowBlinds By Night Train I really like the brightness, and color used in this skin.  There are several matching skins made by various community members, so be sure to check those out as well.

Great job and hats off to all the skinners this week who shared some great works with us.  See you next week!

I admit it. I'm an iconphile. Back in the Windows 3.0 days, I used to go and change all my Windows icons by hand. I thought this was pretty impressive. Admittedly, it didn't help me pick up women for some reason.

Since then, icons have come a very long way. A VERY long way. With Windows Vista, the end-user icon experience out of the box is beautiful. But from an icon creator's point of view, the lack of backward compatibility and effort to support has gone up tremendously. As a result, we've seen a lot fewer custom icons made for Windows Vista than one might have expected.

Microsoft made three decisions with Windows Vista that will forever affect the way we look at icon making on Windows.

Microsoft Decision #1: 256x256 icons
First, Microsoft created a new icon size -- 256x256. For users, that's great. Having icons that are 256 pixels by 256 pixels means you will have beautiful icons that are incredibly detailed. But from an artist's point of view, it means that each and every icon is basically a work of art.

Years ago, I used to make icons. At 32x32 for the "big" icons and 16x16 for the "small", even someone with only moderate art skills could make pretty decent looking icons. Today, not only does such high resolution icons mean that only talented artists can make them, it takes talented artists with a lot of time to dedicate to them.

A full set of icons for Windows Vista is around 120 icons. You can get away with as "few" as 40 icons for most casual users but someone who wants a complete desktop makeover needs well over 100 icons. that's a serious amount of time and effort.

In the Pirate Suite, over 120 icons were made all supporting 256x256 pixel icons.  The effort involved in going from 128x128 was more than double because now you have to create some serious artwork.  How do you think this will affect hobbyist icon packages going forward?

Microsoft Decision #2: No Desktop Scaling
The second decision Microsoft made that has affected icon creation is the decision to have programs displayed with either a down-scaled 256x256 icon or an un-scaled 48x48 icon. This decision is baffling for many reasons.

Check out this screenshot. See how the Windows Vista icons are noticeably bigger than the third-party icons? That's because the third-party icons don't supply a 256x256 icon. But here's the kicker -- the "large" icons are only displayed at 96x96 and will use the 48x48 icon size even if a 128x128 icon is available.

For instance, see the Galactic Civilizations II icon? You can see how it's smaller than the new Vista icons. This inconsistency is visually maddening to me. But what is even worse is that the GalCiv II icon has a 128x128 alpha blended icon in it. They could have used the 128x128 icon! In Windows XP, Microsoft encouraged ISVs to use the "new" 128x128 icon size. Many did. And in Windows Vista, they've been orphaned. They're not used.

Would it have really been difficult for Microsoft to downscale 128x128 icons like they do 256x256 ones? As a result, every single program will need an updated icon and every icon made will need an updated version or face being displayed as a stunted looking icon.

It gets even more obnoxious: Even though the icons on your screen are displayed at 96x96 pixels when you choose "large icons" on Windows Vista, it will not use the 96x96 icon that is in there. See here for what I mean.

To sum this up: Windows Vista will display either a down-sized 256x256 icon if you have large icons or it will simply display a 48x48 icon (or 32x32) inside of a box. It will do this even if the icon in question has an exact match for the display size.

Microsoft Decision #3: "Live Folders"
One of the coolest visual parts of Windows Vista in my opinion are the Live Folder Previews. When I look at a selection of folders, I can see some of the files that are inside. It looks really cool.

But on the other hand, it also makes changing folder icons impossible without third-party software if you want to keep the live previews and still change the folder.

Since the Windows 3.0 days, I've liked changing my folder icons. Sometimes I did it for purely cosmetic reasons, other times I did it because I wanted a particular folder to stand out. But on Vista, you lose those live previews.

On Windows Vista, you can change folder icons as follows by right clicking on folder, choose customize and press the change icon button. See here for what I mean.

Now, if you can find a stand-alone icon (because Windows Vista breaks Windows XP .ICL files) you will lose the customization and have an icon that is probably smaller than your other icons.

The Impact
There's no denying that aesthetically, Windows Vista is light-years ahead of Windows XP in the icon department. The icons that come with it are beautiful. And by forcing developers and others to make 256x256 sized icon or have their icons displayed in second class citizen mode will likely result in a much more visually impressive Windows experience for end-users -- eventually.

But during the transition, it means we'll be seeing an awful lot of stunted looking icons on our desktops that, to me, seems completely unnecessary. Ignoring 128x128 icons entirely seems to be a big missed opportunity. The difficulty for users to create and use customized icons on Windows Vista has meant a slow-down in the number of customize Windows icons.

Hardly the end of the world but for those of us who like pretty, consistent icons, it's a bummer at how it was implemented. What's your take? Icons schmicons or do you too like changing your icons around?

Originally posted at Neowin.net

We are at the halfway point of the month, and I'm starting to see the signs that people are getting back to work on their projects.  I would recommend checking out the "what are you working on thread" where you can get a glimpse of some works our members are working on.  There is some really great stuff coming up.

One gallery that was getting many submissions was the .dream gallery, but it's slightly slowed up during summer.  Is anyone working on some .dream projects?  If you do, feel free to add them to the above thread and share what you are working on.

Now for this weeks picks!

Arileen for CursorXP By Quentin94 Quentin makes his way from gallery to gallery, and this week he ends up in the CursorXP section.  This cursor is made to match the upcoming Airleen WB skin.

Plasma Ball v2 in Dreams By JuiceDaddy JuiceDaddy has been turning out the .dreams lately, and this week he brings us an updated Plasma Ball.  Nice work.

Glass in IconPackager By Asect Another great icon pack with over 200 icons, and more available in the misc. icon gallery.  Great work.

Adobe Creative Suite CS3 in ObjectDock icons By wstaylor This is a wonderful set of icons for the CS3 suite.  I look forward to seeing more icons like these.

The Oracle for Xion By BoXXi BoXXi has once again created a clean design for Xion, and this time we have several colors to choose from.  Be sure to check out his gallery for many more works.

Be sure to visit the galleries here on WinCustomize for more great submissions from the past week, and always stop by the skinners personal pages and leave them a comment on their works.  See you next week!

Version 3.5 Info Guide

Introduction

DesktopX is a program that lets users build their own desktops.  It does this by giving users access to desktop objects. These objects can come in all sizes and shapes. They can have scripts attached to them, they can be combined together to form mini applications or turned into an entire desktop.

A new way of looking at the desktop

Let's take a look at a typical desktop. For this example, we'll use Windows Vista but it could just as easily be Windows XP.

Windows Vista's desktop

When DesktopX is first loaded, it provides 4 primary options:

Loading DesktopX brings up its launch menu

This menu lets the user decide whether they want to load an existing creation (widgets, objects, and desktops) or create their own.  For our purposes, we'll go with create.

DesktopX appears in the system tray

From the system tray, users can now create a new object which will appear on the desktop like this:

An object on the desktop

This object can be made into almost anything the user wants.  Let's look at a couple simple examples:

Making an object into a glorified desktop icon:

DesktopX objects can be turned into fancy desktop icons easily. They have the advantage of being sized however the user wants. Just right-click on the object and choose properties:

From there, a dialog comes up in which users can choose what they want the object to appear like. Users can use .PNG image files (or .BMP or even .ICO) to change the image.  By selecting a new image, the user can see this:

The size of the image can be controlled by the summary page.

The object can be resized right from the summary page.

Now I just have it point to whatever program or website I want. In this case, I'll have it open WinCustomize.com.

And Voila I have a really fancy desktop icon.

Making my object into a widget/gadget

Technically speaking, objects are widgets/gadgets.  The difference is one of format.  When you have finished, you can take your creation and save it as an object pack which simply saves the raw data to be imported back into your desktop or you can save it as a widget which turns it into a program (.EXE).  If you have DesktopX PRO, you can also save as a gadget which turns it into a program that can run on any Windows XP, 2000, or Vista machine without requiring DesktopX to be installed. 

What's new in DesktopX 3.5 in this area is that users can also export their works as Windows Sidebar gadgets.  The Pro version will turn them into stand-alone sidebar gadgets.

Let's create a simple widget.  First, we start back with our object.  I'm going to us images and script provided by David A. Roman for this example.

Show/Hide desktop icons widget

This widget, when it's done, will show and hide desktop icons when clicked on.  This means I'll need two images for my object: One to represent the hide desktop icons and one to represent show desktop icons.

DesktopX objects support multiple states -- unlike icons. This gives them incredible flexibility.

This object has two states

For each state, I provide an image.

The next step is to write some VB Script (or JavaScript).

Writing the script

This script is obviously more advanced that what a beginner would create but I wanted to show something that was fairly useful and it's only 67 lines even with spaces and comments.  What it does is react to being clicked on. If the icons are showing, it tells Windows to hide desktop icons. If the icons are already hidden, it tells Windows to show them.

Turning it into a Windows Sidebar Gadget!

When I'm done with my object and have made sure it does as I ask, I can export it as a Windows Sidebar Gadget:

Since I have DesktopX Pro, I can export it as a stand-alone sidebar gadget (otherwise, the user needs to have the DesktopX run-times installed).

And there it is. the .gadget file

There's my new gadget

The advantage of DesktopX for making Sidebar gadgets is that DesktopX has a much larger library of APIs to call on and is a visually oriented development platform for gadget makers.  Something as simple as a show/hide desktop icons toggle isn't very easy to make as a Sidebar gadget. But with DesktopX, it's a snap.

Building a desktop

So far, we've really only scratched the surface of what DesktopX can do.  DesktopX can create widgets & gadgets. But these days, there's a gazillion different gadget/widget creation tools (though DesktopX is probably the most powerful one currently available).

DesktopX doesn't stop at being able to make mini-applications. Users can build an entire desktop and then save it as a .desktop file to distribute out.  It's a lot like making a widget except on a much larger scale.

Building a desktop

As we've seen, objects can be given images of any size or shape. Objects can have multiple states to them. And objects can be grouped together. 

In this example, objects have been grouped together and also given scripts to allow for the creation of new objects:

A replacement desktop created with DesktopX

Since objects can be created by other objects with all their key properties assigned by other objects, users can literally construct their own Windows environment with DesktopX -- in a fraction of the time it would take to write ones own shell.

DesktopX can even give objects "hit detection"

When done, a user can simply export their creation as a .desktop file and anyone who has the DesktopX run-times installed can use it. 

This Play-ground theme will be coming with DesktopX 3.5.

About DesktopX

Developer: Stardock (www.stardock.com)
Price: $24.95 for standard client. $14.95 for run-time client.  Both come with Stardock's Object Desktop suite.

Users who want to get DesktopX Pro can get it for $69.95 and that adds the ability to export stand-alone programs and Sidebar gadgets.

Visit http://www.desktopx.net for more information.