Wow, you really have some thought provoking posts.

I don't think you could go wrong with doing decent Pet Related Themes. Maybe Alpo or Purina would buy some?

I got planned to do a Cow skin with various variation to use for a home built renderfarm I want to set up. Problem is getting spottet cow pattern to tile/stretch/repeat itself well...
And of course a cow soundpackage to go with it.

I dunno JG you tell us since you're the one who starts all the trends!

Cp

      

I hope the new trend will include more colorful blinds. I'm tired of black, gray and blue. Boxxi, you're excluded from this complaint.

Recoloring black and gray is hard but you can do a lot with blue and WBs recoloring options.    

And when you're done with that, how about a sheep skin....complete with BAAAA'S and a few bleats? It'd go down well over in NZ.

Actually, how about industrial type themes? Engine Room by BoXXi and Industrial Ectasy by Drill n' Boss are two that immediately come to mind, but there must be thousands of variations that could be applied....

Buttons that glow to indicate/highlight hazardous materials/items.
Animations to represent various actions or moving machinery, etc.
Occasional rising steam (if possible) to indicate industrial heat
An animated Dreamscene background depicting factory type settings.
Coordinated Soundpackage appropriate to each theme setting.

****and how about a secretary with a sexy voice who says: "Good morning Mr starkers, and what can I do for you today?" *****

Yeah, there's a multitude of industries to choose from: automotive; construction; computer; electrical; textile, and so on...and then there's a myriad of sub-branches within those....there's gotta be a million and one ideas for themes and textures among that lot. Now git ta work.

I thought someone had to redraw an Heavy Equipment WB6 skin ?   

That's one opinion

There are still lots of xp users out there that actually enjoy the "vista look".
More of the bloated vista sales figures are primarily from new pc sales that is machines that come with vista pre-installed, I would argue that only a small fraction of vista sales figures that are reported are from people upgrading their xp machines to vista - reason being alot of existing machines that run xp capably will have problems running vista and alot of people don't feel the need to toss their current machine for a new one when it does everything they need it to do. Plus, XP is actually an excellent operating system (aside from all of the security issues that it's plagued by) and alot of people will be running xp on their machines for quite some time - however alot of people (like myself) enjoy the vista themes - it's a superior gui to winxp and windowblinds facilitates transforming your desktop into many different looks and one of those looks happens to be the popular vista theme - that's why it's so popular with alot of users.

Boxxi you mention that people just create the vista themes for the downloads, I definitely don't create my themes just for the downloads - there is no monetary gain from high download#'s, the only gain to be had is a personal one which is the satisfaction derived from other people downloading & using your work and you get that from whatever theme you've worked on & uploaded to the site, regardless if it's vista or not.

I'm a fan of the clean, usable & comtemporary themes. Clean lines, updated, modern looks is what drives me when I'm looking for wb's to download & use. That is the current trend and it will continue to be so in the future, people want something that they can use everyday, that's easy on the eyes, modern and stylish.

I would say if you're looking for design ideas for new skin themes, I would look to the world of everyday fashion. Check out running shoes for example, puma & nike pump out wicked looking, well designed athletic footwear that people purchase for the look, not for any type of athletic enhancement they may receive from using that product. The other day I saw a incredible pair of puma runners, they were black & white with a grey curved section on the side and I had never seen footwear that looked so cool and I said to myself, that design would make an awesome looking wb skin!

I'm not necessarily looking for the next trend but when it appears and if I like it, I'm sure I'll try to emulate it in a skin for use on my pc and if I can't do it myself I'll wait for somebody else to create the skin so that I can use it on my pc. Not everyone can be an innovator and not everyone will have the skillset to create innovative designs either - that's why I come to this site, that way I can enjoy the innovation that alot of the resident pro's at this site are capable of. Most of the users that frequent this site are like that too.

My primary interest currently would be in improving the amount of time it takes to create a good looking wb skin. I don't always want to change the windowframes & buttons & startpanel, just tweak the colors and special images to make the skin something new, kind of like customizing the same model car into several different model variations. Currently it takes weeks to create something half-decent, I can't even imagine how much time it would take to create a master set of skins like the Vienna series.

just my 0.02 cents cdn

There are some insanely cool technologies just waiting to take over how we interact with our computers. I am thinking we will be seeing Vista wanna be skins until then.

Of course with every new version of Windowblinds it seems like we lose more control of the customizing. Menu bars, IE7 tabs (XP), Ability to add extra buttons, start panel text mouseovers, and more. By the time we get to WB 7 we will probably be back to oldtime windows 98 themes. Thats not a knock at Stardock. I know these things are conflicts with Windows but Stardock has always found a way to make it happen in the past. Too bad for the XP users that Vista had to take priority over everything.   

oops   

   Really pickles my sausage   

SOUNDS cool but....How many sounds can a cow make? And from which end of the cow are we talking about.

Transparency is the big thing now. I would like to see an invisible skin.

I'll start on that right away....just don't hold your breath on seeing it anytime, soon or otherwise.

Invisible WB mockup... make sure to click it twice, ( Imageshack jaggies ) Comments welcome.











More color perhaps?   

You stole my idea ...I was gonna do exactly that, just with a thinner taskbar and bigger startpanel icons. SEE!!











Notice the clean lines and absence of shadow to give it a crisper look....yours is hardly any different to mine, if at all.

I had an idea of a truck WB/suite. I see a Semi tractor that looks like a Kenworth or other 3 axles semi tractor, in the top right corner of a window,A small truck with the 3 axles/wheels as the buttons that animate on mouse over (they could roll), the borders would be a 2 lane road. about the thickness of a standard top bar, all black and asphalt looking with yellow broken lines in the center and Grey curbs at the edges...the Start menu could be the front grill of a truck with the 2 sides of the menu being the left and front half of the grill... the user pic would be swap able with the various Hood emblems that are similar/reminiscent to the brand truck you would want..get the idea ?



just a something that popped in to my head..

Maybe a mini-trend, I'd like to see more along the lines of IRBraniac's Knot Vista - subtle tone variations within the statusbar and titlebars without looking very tiled or stretched, based on imagery you might see in the non-computer world. I certainly like all of the other stuff too, a lot of my more natural looking blinds are pretty old though and kind of outdated.

I quite like the Furry Panel pictured above too! Seems like tiling it or stretching it would be a trick, but it could be nice!

Another idea...archaeological type themes with mummies, treasure and all that Tomb Raider type of stuff. Just think of all the textures there...dust; cobwebs; rotting timbers; all kinds of masonry...decaying corpses....mwahahahaaaa.



Not me...reminds me too much of my ex-missus after she decided to quit shaving and using Nair ...if only I'd known beforehand, if only I'd known.

I call it "Tattooed Vista Werewolf Skin". HA!

I still have the original..



it was the damn taskbar that was giving me hell..

Zubaz waves at Po

"Tattooed Vista Werewolf Skin" works for me!

Not a lot of creative talent on my end - anytime I've tried to create a textured statusbar it's either come out looking like a cat's hairball or a cat's hairball repeatedly   

Valid point, but are 654 billion more or less equal variations really necessary?

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Po..... sweet looking skin-thing you've got going there!

Seems to be a general rule now a days that a WB has to be see-through! isn't anyone tired of this? It's cool that we can do it, but it's also an option to not.

All Im saying is: let's get back to start panels that you can actually read against a browser window!

Yes!

Let me share this with you. I have been anxiously awaiting the finished skin for FAR too long. It's posted at DeviantArt. WWW Link



It's skins like this that got me hooked.

Thats cool, Po! I love things with texture!