Skin Roundup - November 16th, 2005
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 by Island Dog | Discussion: OS Customization
Skin Roundup - November 16th, 2005
Looking back at the skins of the past week or two I wanted to feature a few that really caught my eye in the Wincustomize galleries.
Over
in the DesktopX Object gallery I spotted some objects by
MountainDragon
from his Dark Glass DX Theme. If you are anything like me you probably
want to constantly see what state your computer is in. Whether it's how
much memory you are using, or how much disk space you have used, the Dark
Glass Meters will help you see your status. I tried this out with several
of the new "transparent" WB themes and made a great addition to the desktop.
He has several other "Dark Glass" objects so check out his
gallery for
more.
Moving over to the DesktopX Widget gallery I
found that Richard
Mohler has made some Widgets in the "ClearCut" series. They are all
beautiful widgets but the one that really caught my eye was the media
player with a unique transparent style that he has "clearly" mastered.
Richard also has several related widgets
in his Wincustomize
gallery.
With
the coming Winter season
RomanDA has
turned a simple clock into a great Snow Flake clock. With the current
Winter themes, and the coming one's ahead, I know this will make a great
addition to any Winter desktop.
Lihu1266
has made a beautiful Iconpackager set with a very nice "glow" to them. I
tried this set with several different styles of Windowblinds themes and it
accompanied them very well. Iconpackager doesn't a whole lot of
submissions like other galleries, but it's nice when a great set like this is
posted.
When
I was rearranging ObjectDock I was looking for another icon for Windowblinds.
A quick look at the
ObjectDock gallery and a new icon by
D. Arnaez was
just what I was looking for. Windowblinds 2808 is another icon with a
style that is all his own. For more icons with this "style" go check out
D. Arnaez's gallery.
That is the skin roundup for this week. Be sure to keep a lookout for more articles about featured skins by myself, or one of the other moderators here at Wincustomize.
Microsoft Sparkle the next universal skin format?
Extreme UI development
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: XAML
What year is it again? Oh yea, 2005 I think. I've been coding a lot lately on Galactic Civilizations II. I work mostly on the computer AI. So if it seems like I haven't been around a lot, the main reason for that is that I haven't. Lots of coding.
For GalCiv, we are using DesktopX as our way of designing the user interface. Using DesktopX is kind of like our secret weapon. Next time you play a game, any game, notice how primitive the user interfaces, dialogs, and other non "action" areas of the game are. Even on huge mega-budget titles like Battlefield 2 or Age of Empires III or on console games, the parts of the game that have buttons, text, and other information/UI elements are typically very primitive. By contrast, in Galactic Civilizations II, they look really nice. And the kicker is, it probably takes less time for us to create a screen and hook it up than it does in those games with the more primitive UIs. That's because, as any DesktopX user can tell you, when you're designing your creation in DesktopX, it's live all the time. Literally. For GalCiv, we wrote a DirectX 9 UI engine that takes .DXPacks (DesktopX packages) and runs them in 3D. For instance, here's the Alert dialog as a DXPack.
To save this is the wave of the future is probably a cliché but it's true. Microsoft certainly believes it. For Windows Vista, Microsoft is delivering a new suite of software development tools called Expression. One of these tools is called "Sparkle". The idea is to split the GUI development part away from the coding part. Anyone who has made an advanced Winamp skin or Windows Media Player skin or a DesktopX widget knows that there are plenty of cases where the artist and coder are two different people because it takes two very different types of expertise to get that down pat. That's what Sparkle is to do.
In some respects, one might argue that Sparkle is a DesktopX killer. And if DesktopX doesn't evolve, then in the long term, Sparkle will kill DesktopX. Here's why: When you create something with DesktopX you save it as either a gadget/widget (.exe), a .dxpack, or a desktop (.desktop). In realty, it's all pretty much the same with the file extension being there more to tell the system how to launch the thing. Inside the given file is typically an XML file that describes visually the object, a VB Script (of Javascript) for the code and PNG files for the images. The idea with Sparkle is that a user creates their UI and exports it as XAML (XML for applications). XAML can be used to describe virtually anything visually. It's resolution independent and can handle 3D formats (3D Studio, Maya, etc.). Then someone would use Visual Studio 2005 to create the C# or VB.net for the coding make use of the XAML as a resource. It's very similar to what DesktopX does.
So what does DesktopX need to do? It will (and should) evolve. Vista marks a new generation for software development. Sparkle and Visual Studio 2005 are way over-kill for the kinds of things people currently use DesktopX for. I'm skeptical of how many people really are going to want to have to use those programs to create gadgets and such. But DesktopX will need to embrace XAML in a big way IMO. When you export your creations, they should be XAML inside. That will mean they'll only work on XP and Vista but I think by end of 2006, Win2K/98Frogboy will be so legacy as to not be much of a factor.
For users and skinners, it'll be a glorious day. For 3D artists it'll be a golden age. And for developers it will mean being able to bring their visions to fruition. One can imagine websites like WinCustomize.com having huge sections for people to upload XAML creations. In some respects, XAML could become a universal skinning format for applications. In a sense, that's what it's designed for. At that point you'll have two different kinds of skinning formats: WindowBlinds for the Windows GUI and XAML for everything else (only reason not to use XAML on the Windows GUI is because the GUI of the OS and its native UI apps is preset).
Stay tuned to WinCustomize.com as Sparkle gets closer to release. And be prepared for a ton of software (both from companies like Stardock to many other third parties) to make use of this. With a universal skinning format, the customization communities will likely become more unified and applications won't be starved for content.
Mods Eye View
Some skins and themes that caught my eye this week!
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 by CerebroJD | Discussion: Skinning
Well, I'm hoping to make this a weekly venture, highlighting some of the cooler themes that I've spotted and tried out over the course of each entry.
Our first skin of note is Dogmax4, by Brewman. Its an excellent and well-made skin that takes advantage of many of the features found in the newest WindowBlinds 5 beta. Currently, Brewman is appealing to a very limited audience, since the beta is only available to Object Desktop subscribers. On a more artistic note, he has taken the Dogmax we've seen in past versions and added a Vista-esque glass border to it, while also adding some glow effects to the buttons, and giving the skin a generally more 'smooth' and 'polished' look.
Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of this particular skin is its start panel. Extreme detail and effort has been put into making it very well aligned and visually appealing. Although the two halves of the panel are distinct, the difference is far less abrupt that it is on other themes. I definitely prefer Brewman's use of the 'flag' and gradient as a blending option on the compact start menu substyle. It shows the authors attention to detail, since its often very difficult to get everything to line up properly on skins. Kudos to Brewman for this excellent piece of work!
Over in the CursorXP library, I spotted Optimal 2, by Z71. Although not nearly as complex as some of the cursors we've seen recently from JJ Ying, its a clean cursor thats very easy to get used to. One might even think that there could be a whole suite of skins based on this clean design. Z71 is just one step ahead though, and actually HAS a whole mini-suite related to this cursor. If you'd like to check that out, view this link.
Z71 is a part of GuiMagic, a site where you can order commercial skins, and the like. He/they are definately increasing skills as times goes on, and I've seen some great work come from his/their direction. I hope to see even more high-calibre themes from them in the future!
OMNI mail 2, by Tiggz, is an excellent piece of work! Often, its hard to get a graphics artist with excellent coding skills, or the oppositel; Generally an artist is strong in one thing or the other. Tiggz, it seems, is out to prove that wrong. His skills in smooth metal and glass skins are only rivaled by his own coding skills. With this spectacular bit of mail-checking perfection, he seems to have raised the bar yet again in terms of top-notch DesktopX widgets. Since I dont use Pop3 or imap accounts, I could only check this with my Gmail account, and it works great! The interface is *very* smooth, and Tiggz has put alot of little animated bits and glowy parts in to keep things interesting. As usual, his symbols are clean and get the point across, and his work continues to rely on them far more than text triggers, making this quite 'multi-language' friendly.
Great work from Tiggz! I really recommend this to anyone who needs to have quick access to email accounts and be notified immediately of incoming mail.
MediaPlayer 2808 is an icon by D. Arnaez, and reflects his unusually polished-looking style. I've been very very impressed by his many icons in both single-icon uploads as well as full IconPackers skins. His full gallery is really something to see, with his massive icon packs, and well-rendered imagery. I highly recommend downloading some of his work, even if only to look at the astounding detail that he puts into each piece of art. Normally, a single icon could hardly be classed as 'art', but D. Arnaez has managed to do such fine work, it would virtually be an insult to call it anything else.
Woohoo! An iPod Nano skin for Windows Media Player. Here's a great little skin that really captures the feel of the iPod Nano! Juanchis has been skinning for nearly as long as me, and since I used to skin WMP, its good to see someone still using the skills it takes to do it. This skin features the ability to view the album art of your currently playing track. While that isnt quite perfect, its still a very neat little addition to an already-awesome skin. Great work Juanchis, keep on skinnin! (Side note: I also love this skin of his.)
Done for this week! I'm keeping an eye out for cool skins. If you've got a suggestion for next week, toss it in the comments and I'll see what I can do!
Episode III is out on DVD
Monday, October 31, 2005 by Island Dog | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
I am so excited that Episode III will be released on DVD. I thought it would be a great time to list some Star Wars inspired skins.
CursorXP
Lightsaber - https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SID=1&SkinID=1445&LibID=25
Lightsaber Dark Side - https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SID=1&SkinID=1452&LibID=25
Star Wars Cursors - https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SID=1&SkinID=1596&LibID=25
Bootskins
Iconpackager
Star Wars - http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21002328/
ObjectDock
Star Wars Icons - https://www.wincustomize.com/Skins.aspx?LibID=29&view=1&sortby=4&sortdir=DESC&p=1&advanced=0&searchtxt=star%20wars
Rainlender
Lightsaber - https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SID=1&SkinID=443&LibID=37
Windowblinds
Star Wars - https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SID=1&SkinID=5206&LibID=1
Under The Skin: (Episode 3)
SkinYourScreen Podcast, and Windowblinds 5.0 beta.
Thursday, October 13, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: OS Customization
| Under The Skin: (Episode 3)
|
|
| We are about a month late, but we finaly got the chance to sit down and recorded Under The Skin (Episode #3). This week we have Rich Kulesus, a.k.a. MrBiotech from skinyourscreen.com. He lets us know what's new with SkinYourScreen and his new podcast. We also fill you in on the latest in Skinning news, including the new beta of WindowBlinds 5.0 | |
|
Show Notes: Host: Paul Boyer All this and more, spiced with quite a bit of me ranting! | |
Support Under The Skin by subscribing at:  and  | |
| Under The Skin thanks Stardock.com for their support and, more importantly, their bandwidth. Visit www.stardock.com for all the latest skinning software. Thanks to Wincustomize.com for hosting my blog, which I am abusing by hosting our show notes and the Under The Skin, index. If you have any questions comments or suggestions please email us at undertheskin@gmail.com | |
It's yours for free in this week's exciting episode. Subscribe to any of the links below or stop by iTunes 6 released
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 by Island Dog | Discussion: Windows Software
From the Apple website.
"iTunes 6, the next generation of the world’s most popular music jukebox and online music store, lets fans purchase and download over 2,000 music videos and six short films from Academy Award-winning Pixar Animation Studios for just $1.99 each."
10 Features Longhorn needs
My wish list
Friday, October 7, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: Windows Vista
The next version of Windows really does need to take things to another level.
Let's face it, Windows XP is basically Windows 2000 with some fixes and cosmetic enhancements.
Longhorn needs to be much more than that. Here are a few things I think it needs:
1) New display system. This is what Avalon is supposed to address. The new display system needs to let us always run our systems as the maximum resolution our monitor supports and have the DPI (dots per inch) be fluidly scaleable without impacting software compatibility. I shouldn't have to run my laptop at 1024x768 in order to be able to read text if it supports 1600x1200. I should be able to run at 1600x1200 and size everything on the fly to be bigger.
2) Updated Searching. Google Desktop search only exists because the Find Files feature of Windows is essentially useless. I should be able to quickly find something on my system instantly. WinFS won't be out as part of Longhorn so what will they be improving in the meantime?
3) Smoother Multitasking. Windows still sucks at multitasking. Even when running on an SMP box, if the OS is "busy" doing something, you still can't quickly do something else. I eventually gave up on SMP since on Windows it's only good for CPU bound tasks and doesn't really affect multitasking efficiency very much (on MacOS X and OS/2, for instance, SMP basically made it so you could always be doing something in the UI, but on Windows, the UI is apparently not as multithreaded as it could be). In the meantime, I use Multiplicity to maximize my computing power. But I'd like the OS itself to let me always be able to do stuff -- even if the app is written badly.
4) More Componentized. Whether we'll get Microsoft to make it so that pieces of Windows can be replaced or inherited from remains to be seen. I would like to be able to easily add more views (no, Ishell stuff doesn't cut it) to foldrers.
5) Stop bloating with needless bundling. Every new version of Windows throws in some half-assed immitation of third party software. While we can all appreciate having a "free" version of ZIP or uxtheme or movie maker, it damages third party software development. I'd rather think that when I BUY my copy of Windows that the work was put into features that only the OS vendor could do. Especially since Microsoft rarely puts any effort to let third parties expand on what they bundle (like adding RAR support to the compressed folders for example). There are some features only the OS vendor can really do. I'd rather see resources put there.
6) Make Networking better. I don't know about you guys but the LAN support in Windows is still quite a pain. As I type this, I am on a wireless LAN which has several computers on the same work group. It often takes several seconds, if at all, to find all the machines on the network. It would be nice if Microsoft re-thought how people use network resources and included ways of working with them in a more straight forward, ROBUST, centralized way.
7) Better use of memory. I have 2 gigabytes of memory on my main machine. I turn off the swap file. And yet I still hear the hard drive chipmunks going away. Why is that? And don't even get me started about the limited number of handles. Even on my 2 gigabyte machine, if programs use more than 24,000 or so handles, programs start crashing. The average person doesn't even know why their system becomes unstable because limited user handles on Windows XP has been largely ignored.
8) Fix Internet Explorer. CSS 2.0 compliance would be a nice start. How about making it much smarter about what it caches? I have lots of friends at Microsoft who admit to having switched to Firefox (or Opera). That's sad.
9) Fix your third party licenses. One of the ugly secrets of the PC OEM market is that computer manufacturers can't install things on Windows that changes the first boot-up experience. At best, they can put a few things on the desktop. But they can't, for example, include an alternative shell or have WindowBlinds running by default or change the boot screen or many ohter things. In short, there's not much way for PC manufacturers to distinguish their computer from every other computer. That means a LOT of lost innovation.
10) Fix Security. Outlook Express is still a spyware/spammer's dream. We shouldn't have to "upgrade" to Outlook to have some basic protections. There should be more end user tools that make it very easy to monitor net traffic. The "Network" tab in task manager is a nice start but it needs to go much furthre than that. Worms and the like should be stopped at the OS level. SP2 was a nice start, but there's still so much more to do.
There's lost of little things that are being addressed that I'm very excited about. Avalon is the big thing for me. XAML in particular is interesting but I fear it may lead to a ton of wacky looking "apps". I don't want my apps to be as poorly designed UI as the typical website. Let me put it this way, the people who make Office are VERY different from the people who made http://www.microsoft.com. I want the former writings the stand alone apps I use, not the latter.
So what would you like to see? What features in Longhorn make you excited?
Azenis mini suite
WindowBlinds, IconPackager, CursorXP and Wallpaper
Saturday, October 1, 2005 by JJ-Ying | Discussion: Suites
And here I want to tell you the known bugs of my new skins.
First, it's a very big problem that the IconPack may crash the soft. And I'm very sorry for my carelessness. But according to the contest rules, I can't update it now. Howerver, here is a easy way to solve this problem:
please rename the file"Azenis_IP.ip" you downloaded to"Azenis.ip" and it'll be OK.
And for the WindowBlinds skin. Some people reported the tab content problem and the more program arrow. I'll soon try to fix them and maybe release a new version at my blog: http://yingjunjiu.77g.net/blog
WindowBlinds: http://jjying.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SkinID=5329&LibID=1&comments=1
IconPackager: http://jjying.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SkinID=1377&LibID=2&comments=1
CursorXP: http://jjying.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SkinID=1667&LibID=25&comments=1
Wallpaper: http://www.deviantart.com/view/23515003/
Thank you!
Does Stardock "need" WinCustomize?
Business vs. Community
Saturday, October 1, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: Community
There are some people who think that the moment someone starts a business that they instantly become greedy, money grubbing corporate robots. But the reality is, most companies are privately held and those companies do things based on what motivated the stockholders. In a private company wealth may only be a secondary motivator.
I can say as the principle shareholder in Stardock that accumulating wealth has never been my motivator. I want to do cool stuff. And I consider it my "talent" to be able to generally take things I enjoy doing and be able to do them as part of my "job". Some things are done strictly because we think they're neat to do even though there's no remote business justification for it (JoeUser.com for instance). We recently started doing PowerUser.tv too. There's no money to be made in podcasting (unless you're a mega player). But it's fun.
WinCustomize falls into a middle category. Stardock makes software such as WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX, and so forth. People who buy that software or are thinking of buying that software will want to see what can be done with it. So in that sense, having some sort of gallery of content is necessary. Statistically, most people hear about the software somewhere else or see a screenshot, download the trial version, and THEN start downloading skins after they've purchased it. It's not the other way around -- as a percent, few people discover our software through the skins first.
WinCustomize is a lot more than a skin gallery though. It's a whole web community. It's the largest - by far - site dedicated to downloading content to enhance your Windows desktop experience. With over 22 million monthly visitors, it's one of the largest sites on the net period. And it's safe to say that of the 22 million visitors, only a tiny tiny % actually have purchased (or will purchase) a Stardock product.
The growth of WinCustomize has been steady. In December 2004, the site was getting around 14 million visitors per month. In September 2005, it got just about 22 million. That's a very significant increase for such a short period of time. Yet subscriptions to the site have declined. That is, people who pay $20 to support the continued existence of the site and receive a number of (I think) pretty cool services.
Some people have argued that WinCustomize has no business even trying to get people to buy subscriptions. Since Stardock "owns" it then Stardock should pay for everything because it's a "marketing" expense. Running a site that gets 22+ million visitors per month is not like running some home page. It takes rooms of servers and hundreds of megabits PER SECOND. It also requires an IT staff, database developers and web developers. You're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in expenses.
As a marketing expense, WinCustomize's value is pretty limited. After all, DesktopX has been on WinCustomize since its founding and yet the wider world seems completely unaware of its existence. You hear a lot about Konfabulator. But little about DesktopX. Why is that? There's lots of reasons. But one of the root reasons is a lack of marketing. A lack of ability to get the word out on DesktopX to get users and developers to try it out. More developers doing things with it would mean more and better content which in turn would encourage more users to use it. But in the end, Konfabulator ended up as the program people think of for adding mini-applets to their desktop. And those who have heard of DesktopX are often unaware that it does a lot more such as build entire desktops and allow for desktop objects. So how valuable is WC for marketing? Not much. To be generous, I'd say $50k. And that's just one example.
But WinCustomize currently costs over $300k per year to exist. And in a year, it'll likely cost closer to $400k. Advertising and subscriptions bring the cost down by around $100k. That leaves $200k left. It WC worth $200k in marketing? Not on your life. If Stardock had $200k in extra marketing dollars to spend each year, think of all the advertisements, high end PR firms, and community outreach programs it could have invested in?
The point being, while WinCustomize has some value as a marketing resource, its value is pretty limited. The simple fact is that WinCustomize exists because of what I mentioned at the start -- Stardock, as a private company, can do things simply because it thinks it would be cool. It cares about the skinning community and it thinks having a site like this is neat and worthwhile -- to a point. Individuals have hobbies. Private companies have hobbies too (that's a big difference between private companies and publicly held companies). But just as with personal hobbies, at some point they get too expensive to keep going.
To try to change things, Stardock has brought in two new people right away to help create more incentives for people to subscribe to WinCustomize -- more content for subscribers. But odds are, things are going to start getting tighter for those who simply visit the site month after month who haven't contributed anything (on WC, skinners, even if they've not subscribed or bought anything are given access so that they are treated as subscribers).
Some things that come to mind:
- People with no accounts will only be able to download things that have been uploaded in the past 48 hours and only 5 megabytes of content.
- People without account will likely see a lot more ads. See www.gamespot.com for a good model.
- People with accounts will be able to download up to 50 megabytes. After that they must become an SD customer or a subscriber.
- People who have purchased a SD product (Object Desktop, CursorXP, etc.) will have unlimited downloads but there will be some skins that will only be available to subscribers.
- SD customers will see fewer ads but they will see some ads.
These are just a few ideas floating around -- ideas submitted by users incidentally -- that we're seriously considering. Since WC isn't paid for by ads, the # of monthly visitors is not as much of a goal as one might think. If we could cut our traffic in half, we could probably save around $50k per year in expenses. Another $50k would likely result from increase SD product purchases and/or subscriptions. That would be a net difference of $100k.
There are plenty of other good skin sites out there people can visit. Here are a few: http://www.skinbase.org, http://lotsofskins.com, http://skins.deviantart.com/, http://www.skinz.org, http://www.customize.org.
Stardock - the company - needs sites for people to be able to download skins and themes for its software. But it doesn't have to be WinCustomize.com. Ultimately, if the wider userbase doesn't or can't support WinCustomize as it exists today, then WinCustomize will evolve to be a site that caters more to those who can support it. The current model for it is unsustainable.