This week , I played with Vitrex by pixel-z . It's a clean skin, without a lot of doo-dads. The window borders are artistically worked in a way that creates a look of several pages , or a pane behind the window. I like the combination black and sky blue creates, and though I felt there was a lot of white in the skin,it balanced out to a point that I found I was enjoying this skin the more I use it.

I matched  the colors with Brilliance by BrisyZhang , an Icon package created for the 2006 GuiChamps. The sky blue on black theme really created a solidarity between the blind and the IP. I had to borrow an icon from my object dock library for my FireFox3 link. I recolored Firefox Midnight by Mirsguy (for object dock) and saved it as an icon to use on my computer icons. This process worked quite well , and I think I might be pulling more of my object dock icons for replacement of those that need a change.

You know, I really don't think I could've found a better wall for this setup than , EXP 123 by Sed it's dark, deep and just enough detail without taking away from the over all look of things. Very easy on the eyes.

Blue Arrow by lihu1266 rounds out the basics for this grouping. Its simple, sky blue , and unadorned. Just right for this Blind.

I unloaded my object dock this past week, due to some installation issues I was having , so I have no dock to show you.

DesktopX is my old standby when trying to decorate something to look different and useful.

I used three different DX objects, inlcuding some great work by my ol'pal  Chet . Novaweather by DigitalCHET  is a cool skyblue with a greyish white border, it almost reminds me of the silhouette of the U.S. Capital building.

IGlass Clock by 00Zero Cool is an oldie but goodie I picked just because it looked good with this setup.

I found this great meter bar I just had to use , it was the right color and had EVERYTHING in it! P23 meters by _Martin_ is an astounding work of art and functionality. It has everything from a clock to a music player all built into one meter bar. Definitely worth the download. The color match was just icing on the cake here.

............I'll bet you noticed something else on my desktop this week, ain't it cool? I haven't been able to really see what it can do yet, but thus far, it's great, I am now able to show my icons without having them everywhere , and I can scroll line to line to see all of them without having to show them all at once.And I get to have different little "pastures" to corral my icons in. Its a program called "Fences" and it's in the testing stage right now. I've been privileged to be one of the testers. Hopefully in the future there's gonna be a lot more talk of this program.

SkinStudio is a program that lets users create their own user interface for Microsoft Windows.

It walks users step by step the Windows GUI to help them change virtually any aspect of the user interface including title bars, the start menu, scroll bars, push buttons, and everything else.

Version 6.3 is coming out this week and it's a pretty big step up. Let's take a look.

What's new in 6.3

Main window features

The first change is the addition of mini previews of your five most recently edited skins when you open SkinStudio. You can double click on any of these to open up that skin for editing.

When you first upgrade the previews will be replaced by boxes with the skin names until the previews are created.

Once you open a skin you may notice a small X at the top right. This allows you to quickly close a skin. If the skin has been edited then you will be asked if you wish to save your changes.

Based on user requests the name of the skin you are editing is now at the start of the caption text. This is especially useful if you have multiple copies of SkinStudio open as the skin name will now be visible in the taskbar.

You may notice a new option in the list on the left hand side called “How do I?”. This feature lets you quickly change settings in a skin which may be more difficult to find or are the kind of feature someone who is editing a skin for their own use may want to change.

Examples of the options you can change from here are enabling or disabling OS shadows, hiding shadows on menus, enabling or disabling sound support in a skin etc.

Preferences

Based on user feedback we have improved the editing window and we now offer two different editing modes which can be selected from the preferences window. On the very first run of SkinStudio 6.3 you will be shown the preferences dialog so you can select which mode you would prefer to use.

The two modes are section based editing and tree view mode editing.

Section based editing is the default mode and works like it did in SkinStudio 6.2. You can switch sections by using the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom.

Tree mode is a replacement for the basic tree mode that you could enable in SkinStudio 6.2. The tree has been reordered and reduced in complexity to make it easier to use.

Additionally there is a search field under the tree. Typing in here will replace the tree with a list of suggested sections. Clicking on one of the suggestions will take you to that part or if none are to your liking you can press escape to close the search.

OR

 
Users can now decide how they want the editor to appear based on their preference choice.

The Edit Window

Another enhancement based on user requests is the ability to maximize the edit window. As well as making the tree show more if you are in tree mode, maximizing the window also changes how some of the tabs show information.

Advantages of maximized mode :

- The image tab will show you a full preview of the image you have selected

- The painting margins tab is larger so you are able to resize image to test margins and also set margins on much taller images.

- The text tab will place the preview under the vertical alignment selection box.

- The extras tab shows you more items

- The layers tab shows you more layers

Under the preview there is also now a layers >> option. This allows you to quickly switch between layers without going back to the layers tab.

Grid backgrounds

As well as the usual white, desktop, dialog, background, and black options you can now use a grid background.

This is perfect for seeing the effect of semi transparency such as the taskbar in the example to the right.

This grid option is also provided in the painting margin tab and the frame builder window.

Layers

One of the biggest new features in SkinStudio 6.3 requires WindowBlinds 6.3. While SkinStudio 6.2 and WindowBlinds 6.2 introduced the concept of layers in a skin, the layers are only blended using straight alpha blending.

Layers allow skinners to take an existing image and blend it with another image without having to alter the original image.

WindowBlinds 6.3 introduces the concept of layer blend modes which allows a layer to be blended using a number of different blend modes. Some of the blend modes are auto masking which really helps with applying textures to lower layers.

You can control the layer blend mode from the layers tab. Just select the layer you want to edit and then set the layer blend mode in the box above. There are currently 29 different blend modes which consist of a mixture of auto masking modes, modes which only apply to coloured pixels, and modes which only apply to greyscale pixels.

Should you have a need for a different blend mode and can define it mathematically then please contact [email protected] and provide all the details along with an explanation of why this mode would be especially useful and we will consider it for future updates of WindowBlinds/SkinStudio.

There is no limit to the number of layers you can have, but naturally the more layers you have, especially with complex blend modes, will be slower than a single layer. So having 50 layers on say a button is probably not a good idea.

The multiply blend mode with automasking is often ideal when you apply a texture to an existing part.

Using layers example

This is a quick demonstration of using layers to enhance a skin. The skin here is the DarkAvatar skin and we will be adding a texture to the top of the startmenu.

We will be adding a rust texture to the grey parts of the frame but avoiding the red part.

So firstly we add a new layer to the top of the startmenu by going to the layers tab and clicking the add layer button. Then we should set the layer blend mode to “Multiply Blend onto greyscale destination only with automask”

Then we need to go back to the image tab and select our rust texture and then go to the painting margins tab and make sure we have selected tile mode.

Once you have done that the end result will be something like this :

Now lets see what it looks like when it is made wider.

This really shows the power of layers with blend modes. The rust texture has tiled on top of the base layer and due to the auto masking it automatically fits in with the resized frame. Doing this without layers would be impossible as you would always have a point where the margins meet the middle.

Layers with different textures:

So lets try a different texture. Instead of the rust texture I have used a darkish wood texture and set the blend mode to “Overlay Blend onto greyscale destination with automask”. This produces a plastic wood effect as below

I prefer the rust look so I have set that back and then added identical layers to the bottom bar, left side, right side and more programs background sections. If you have SKS Pro then this can be done using Ctrl-C on the code in the code tab in the first section and then Ctrl-V in the code tab for the other sections.

Ideally you should use a texture with an alpha channel (I.e. TGA/PNG) for the layer rather than a bmp. Using a BMP will work but the performance on Windows XP will be lower. On Windows Vista it makes no difference.

If a section resizes in use (most of them) then a layer can enhance it. If it is fixed size then you can simply use the layers in your image editing application and you will get the same result assuming you mask appropriately.

Other changes

Other changes to SkinStudio 6.3 are the addition of text descriptions to the various Vista fonts and colours which are under the Vista Fonts and Vista Colours buttons on the Edit Fonts and Edit Colours windows.

Control over the system fonts has now been added to the edit fonts window. Simply select Show me the skin defined system fonts option from the drop down at the top of the window and you can then control the system fonts.

Finally a quick tip

Double clicking on the preview in the Painting Margins tab will resize the preview to the image size.

It's hard to believe 2008 is starting to come to an end.  The yearly snapshot of Object Desktop is starting to come together. This year, however, we're doing to do some things differently.  First, we're going to release a lot of updates/new features with the snapshot instead of releasing putting things out bit by bit in the months leading up to it.  This way, the release is more of an event.

Object Desktop Today

Let's first start off with Object Desktop as it is today:

Object Desktop is a suite of desktop enhancement utilities that allows users to transform their Windows experience. It comes in two forms: Object Desktop and Object Desktop Ultimate.  The Ultimate Edition is designed for power users while the standard

edition is designed for everyone else.

The key parts of Object Desktop are:

• WindowBlinds - which can change the Windows GUI.
• IconPackager - which can change the icons of Windows all at once
• DeskScapes - which can provided animated wallpaper
• SoundPackager - which lets users package and share sets of sound schemes
• DesktopX - which lets users create and use widgets and desktops
• MyColors - which lets users apply professionally created themes that completely change the Windows experience. And Object Desktop users get 4 free ones per year.

Object Desktop Ultimate adds:

• TweakVista - a utility for getting the most out of Windows Vista
• WindowFX - a utlity that lets Windows XP users add special effects to their PC
• SkinStudio - an application that lets usres create skins
• IconDeveloper - an icon creation utility
• ObjectBar - let users create and use their own replacement UI elements to Windows
• IconX - Lets users enhance the Windows XP desktop icons
• LogonStudio - lets users create and use their own Windows XP or Windows Vista logons
• Keyboard LaunchPad - lets users assign hot keys to common actions
• RightClick - lets users replace the desktop right-click menu with one of their own creation

So that's where we are today. Anything not listed above is something that is already probably set to legacy already.

Object Desktop Tomorrow

Now, someone who purchases Object Desktop right now gets everything we do for an entire year which includes Object Desktop 2009.  Below are the things we're working on for Object Desktop 2009. All of this is subject to change but this gives you an idea of what we're hoping to accomplish/do within the next year when Object Desktop 2009 is released.

Things that are going to go away...

Some programs are going to be phased out (existing users will still be able to download the latest version):

- IconX is going to go away. Sorry. I like this program too but making it work on Vista would be virtually impossible.

Things that are going to go into maintenance mode (no longer updated):

- ObjectBar. This is one of my favorites but we need to rewrite this to keep it up to date and at that point, we would release a new program based on today's requirements.

So there's the bad news.

Things that are going to get attention for Object Desktop 2009

+ DesktopX.

+ RightClick.

+ Keyboard LaunchPad.

+ SoundPackager.

Things that are going to get a lot of attention but may not be available on the release of Object Desktop 2009 but should be released within a year depending on Windows 7's release date.

+ DesktopX 4.0 (Vista/XP/Windows 7)

+ WindowFX 4.0 (Vista/XP/Windows 7)

+ WindowBlinds (Vista/XP/Windows 7)

+ SkinStudio (Vista/XP/Windows 7)

+ DeskScapes 3 (Vista/XP/Windows 7)

Also, anything that doesn't work on Windows Vista 64-bit by the time Object Desktop 2009 ships gets pulled (other than WindowFX). 64-bit is the future.

NEW THINGS we hope to have available either on the release of Object Desktop 2009 or shortly after:

+ Theme Manager 3.0. Major update, everything everyone was hoping for.

+ BootSkin Vista.

+ StyleVista 1.0. (Ultimate Only)

NEW THINGS that are in development

+ Fences (Ultimate only)

NEW FOCUSES IN DEVELOPMENT

We are looking at Windows 7 closely and one of the things we are going to be looking to do going forward is developing more software that improves system performance and usability as well as improving productivity.  Keep a close eye out on Impulse.  It's not just a download manager, it's a platform. Expect to eventually see a lot of "cloud" features in Object Desktop that help make Windows faster and easier to use.

To learn more about Object Desktop, visit www.objectdesktop.com.

Stay tuned!

Has this been a really slow going week, or was it just me?  It seemed like Friday took forever to get here.  Well anyways, we had a great week for skinning, so lets get a quick recap.

• GUI Champs ‘08 Pre-Kickoff
• LanTec becoming a WC Moderator

Now for this weeks picks!

	Mission Andromedia by gropull This bootskin features a really cool image to give your XP bootscreen a completely different look.
	Carbon Alloy Dock DX by PuterDudeJim PuterDudeJim gives us another phenomenal DX theme.  Just download this one and see for yourself.
	Media Processor 6.0 by Vad_M All I can say about this is ….wow.  The stuff that can be done using DesktopX is amazing.
	Red Vines by TheMasterBaron This is a fractal .dream with smooth animations that doesn’t put too much of a distraction on your desktop.
	WraithRC 1..2 & 3 by WebGizmos WebGizmos has now gotten himself into RightClick skins, so expect a bunch more great ones from him.  Just don’t neglect the docks!
	Rockin’s All Nite by g33z3r I just thought this wallpaper was cute.

See you next week!

For anyone who uses a computer at least on a daily or weekly basis, or someone who uses their PC for things like keeping photos, doing financial work, etc., a backup solution is very important.  I’m sure everyone knows someone, or at least heard the stories of people who have lost very important data that was unrecoverable, and that’s why finding a good solution is key.  I was happy to see that Genie-Soft has some applications available on Impulse, so I wanted to give the Home version of Genie Backup Manager a run through. 

The first thing I noticed is it has an “Easy” and “Normal” mode.  Easy mode has a very basic interface that even the most computer illiterate could use, but for most users, the Normal mode should suffice. 

One of the great things about an application like Genie Backup Manager is that you can either backup your entire system, or just pick and choose the elements to backup.  Getting started is easy as you just click the Backup button and you are guided through the steps to create your backup.  In the left hand menu you can see the steps and jump to a certain section if needed. 

Flexibility is key, and Genie Backup Manager gives you several options on how you actually want to get your data backed up.

• Local/LAN
• Removable Media
• Remote using FTP
• CD/DVD
• Online backup

I think the bases are covered when it comes to location choices, and where you backup will really depend on your system, your needs, and really what is easiest for you to manage.  By no means think you are limited to one backup, I personally do a full backup and then a separate backup of items such as mail, photos, etc.  I will typically do a full system backup using an external USB hard drive, and for my smaller backup jobs I will use a DVD, and also the online backup service.  More on that in a minute.

Moving on to the next step, you can now select the data to be backed up.  What really stood out to me is how Genie Backup Manager not only lets you select the specific item to backup, but has selections of “common” items like Contacts, My Photos, Fonts, etc.  You can even backup the registry from here.

Now here is the feature that seals the deal for me…..plugins!  There are tons of free plugins available that make backing up specific applications that much easier.  I was browsing through and found one that will backup the themes and settings of WindowBlinds 6.  No more lost skins!

After you select your data, you can now give the final options such as enabling password and encryption protection on the backup job, and enable the SwiftRestore feature which creates an .exe that can be viewed and restored on a system regardless if Genie Backup is installed or not.  That is a very useful feature.  There is also a scheduling manager that lets users select the times and frequency of scheduled backups.  Genie Backup Manager Home also has a disaster recovery feature to help you in the event of a system failure.  It guides you through the process of creating a boot disk which you can use to restore your system if you ever find yourself in that situation.

Now to my favorite feature of all…..online backup.  Backing up to online services has always been a bit tricky, and finding a good service always seemed difficult, but not anymore.  Genie-Soft has their own online backup service which can give home users up to 5GB of storage space.  There are other plans available, but this is perfect for home users.  There is a free 1 month trial available for Backup Manager users to try it out, but I’m sure it’s something many people will want to upgrade to and use.  I ran several online backup jobs and every one of them was very, very fast.  Even through the restore process it acted as if it was just an external HD connected to my system.  Kudos to Genie-Soft for making this so easy to use.

There are many features that I could go into, but after using using Genie Backup Manager 8.0 for a while now, I definitely can and will recommend it to anyone looking for a complete backup solution for their PC.  The ease of use and reliability make this a winner.  Next I will take a tour of the Pro version, and see how that can benefit users who need more than what the Home solution offers.  Genie Backup Manager 8.0 is compatible with Windows XP and Vista, and is available in the Impulse Store for $49.98.

(Better late than never?)

I wanted to do a red theme this week, but was unsuccessful in finding a good number of red skins that worked well with my system.

I managed to salvage my idea with just one skin ,Thundera by Z71 . I wasn't really thrilled about using this skin because it looked kind of light in color, and it has a cat on it..(wolves, cats,...don't really mix...) but I tried it , because I was running out of time and options. I am glad I did. Despite the cat, this skin is clean, and fast. I like the sword animation on the start menu , and the plum color of the window not in use.

The biggest problem I had with most red skins was the text boxes tended to be either too dark, or totally white(I guess to compensate for when the background was dark, the light text would work best.. but on a white background((shudder)) it just didn't work.)

I used Light Streaks Ultra Ver by DEVJIT for the wall. I tried a few, but this one was less busy and had a nice three dimensional depth without having such detail as to detract from other things.

For the CursorFX theme , I chose Interfaced FX by PuterDudeJim . Not really a flashy cursor, but it has great speed, sharp point, and a nice animation that doesn't last overly long. oh ya and it's red. lol see where this theme is goin?

Valentine Vious by Skinhit rounds out the basics with a red hued icon package. Though it's called valentine, it is really a year round look. There's nothing frilly and hearts n flowery about this package. It' great to use anytime. And as a great side note, this is one of those special packages that includes some extra icons for much used programs , like firefox! I love bonuses!

I added a clock object just to dress things up a bit,Red Grunge Clock by ravenbloodbath has the red dragon skin bezel with a nice black face . I liked the look and decided to keep it. I just wish there were a widget set with the same theme. I think a grouping would really look good.

I purchased Object Dock Plus this weekend, and was hoping to have enough time to set it up prettily, but time ran short, so I am going to show you just a few of the dock changes I made. One of the benefits of Object Dock Plus is the ability to create more than one dock. I chose to have two in view. I also have noticed the quality of the graphics has changed dramatically between the free version and the plus version. I don't know if it's just the choice of icons and dock backgrounds, or if the higher quality is intentional but I do know I like it.

First I chose Red Satin by Cavan1  for my dock background. It's a nice sleek red look, with stylish curves at the edges.I changed the firefox icon to Firefox by SG since it's a red hued theme , that icon works best. I used as many of the icons from  Wraith Dock icons by Skoriginals. as I could. It worked ok for this setup and I wish the wraith set had icons for start menu and configure dock. I would have done the whole thing with that. I really dislike the object dock icon, so I changed that one to object dock pngs by Brickhead I used the metal looking one.

Well folks, now is the time to start the real countdown to this years GUI Championships, the largest GUI customization competition around,  and to give some more details about the competition.  Let me first start off by thanking all our sponsors for this years event, I have no doubt this will be the best one yet!

The GUI Champs ‘08 will officially start on Monday, October 13th. 

The judging and more detailed schedule will be posted soon, but this is when we will start accepting entries.

Prizes (as of 9-15-08)

• Video Cards from AMD
• Camtasia Studio 5, and SnagIt 9 from TechSmith
• Subscriptions to WinCustomize.com and DeviantART.com
• 32GB iPod Touch
• Subscriptions to Object Desktop from Stardock
• Cash $$$
• Autodesk is sponsoring a copy of either Maya or 3DS Max (to be determined)
• and more!

As it stands now, we have well over $10,000 in cash and prizes for this years event so far.  I say “so far” because we are still talking to a few great folks about additional prizes, and I will post more info as it comes in.  More details about prize distribution for categories will also come later.  Just be assured we have a great prize lineup already.

The current GUI Champs ‘08 categories are:

1. WindowBlinds Skins
   1. Most Original
   2. Most Usable
   3. Best Overall
2. IconPackager Sets
   1. Most Original
   2. Most Usable
   3. Best Overall
3. Animated Wallpapers (.Dreams)
   1. Most Original
   2. Most Usable
   3. Best Overall

So that is the Pre-Kickoff, and more info will be along shortly.  There’s plenty of time to get the skins going before the official start, so get to work if you haven’t already.  Also, be sure to visit this post that details more of the rules for this years event.

It’s been a busy week, but I still wanted to make a quick This Week in Skinning.  Here are this weeks picks!

See you next week!

Yesterday was the last day of my trip to Stardock HQ.  It was a very productive day with a few meetings, and I’m happy to say that Zoomba and myself have nailed down the final plans for the GUI Champs ‘08, and a more “official” announcement will be posted in just a few days.  While I missed my family, I was a bit sad to leave because I was having a great time and it was just awesome to get to know people better than I have in the last couple of years.  I also have a lot of a cool stuff to talk about, so watch the front page of WinCustomize today for a big “teaser”.

I flew back to Florida late last night, which happened to be a very rough flight back, and now I’m just catching up on the last few days.  Here are a few more pics from my trip.

Brad (Frogboy) and myself.

Hanging with Zoomba.

Stardock HQ.

Well Day 2 was my first full day at Stardock, and let me first start off by saying the weather is just fantastic.  I think it was around 60 degrees when I left the hotel this morning, and it felt really good.  I got my own little cubicle to work out of, which is weird to me to be in an office with other people, but I enjoyed having people around.

Here’s me at my space catching up on some WinCustomize moderation.

Just about right next to me we have Zoomba peeking over to say hello.

The rest of the day was meetings, and more meetings.  But I can’t wait to tell you what’s going on!

Lets start off with fdlafkdfj fadf adlfafdkfa d afkdjf adkfaldkfja ldkf adl akfjalkd fa d d dkfjdlfka dlkfa dlkfaj dlka dflkadfl kadf adlkfadlkfa dlka dfdflkadjl ldkjaf ldk fadlkfa dlkafdfadfkjd dflaadfkdfj lafk . Yeah, unbelievable right?

The most exciting thing is aldfkadjlf akd;fkd fa dflkad;lfakdj; faldkfj ;aldkfj; aldkf aldkfj;ldkfaj; ldkf a;dlkfjdlkfldkfja lkf a;ldfkdlfkd;l fka dflakdfjla dkfal;dkfaj; dlfak d;lfakd;lfakd flasd fsldfklkdf dlskfjldskfj dlfkjdslkf which is probably the greatest application ever!

There was some other stuff like dlfakdlfk dlfakdjf aldkfa dlkfjd lfkadfjlakd flakdfjlakd, but I won’t bore you with anymore details. 

So tonight is my last night in Michigan, but there is still a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow.  GUI Champs ‘08 is just about a month away, and hopefully we will have the formal announcement soon, but there is not reason to wait, get those skins started!