Visual Style MERGE!

clean up the site??
where are the xp skins?

WindowBlinds section. If you have WindowBlinds 3.3, any WB skin can be used as a visual style.

I much prefer the XP skins on a separate heading rather than mixed up with all the standard skins.
Just means I have to search harder or preferably not bother.

How do we know, out of all the WB skins available, which ones have all the XP Stuff. Download and hope for the best. Oh? if one is a Premium subscriber are the WB Skins categorized.

There needs to be some indication whether or not a skin supports the XP startbar features.

I'm glad they have been merged. Since XP skins can also be used on older versions of Windows, it didn't make sense to keep track of my skins in 2 libraries (3 including GUI Olympics) when they are the same exact skin.

I do agree that they should be marked as XP skins. When we upload skins, we check off a box indicating that it has XP support, so I imagine that skins could easily be flagged as XP skins in the WindowBlinds library. Also, I noticed that GUI Olympics is a search filter to help narrow down the WB results. XP Support should probably be added as a filter as well. I'm sure you guys already thought of this ... we can't expect you to do everything at once. I'm sure just the task of merging the libraries was far from trivial.

Just wondering, how were comments and ratings handled? It looks like comments were merged and the highest rating was retained. But I guess the ratings could have been merged as well, creating a new average rating. I bet that's it.

Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

i have to agree with most other people's comments in here so far

if i find the best ever skin that is perfect and does everything i want, if it dosen't have XP start menu support, then it's basically no good to me.

maybe you could keep the existing Windows XP skins page, and merge the skins in with the normal windows blinds skins, but only to show xp skins on that page. if you know what i mean. that made sense to me, but i'm not sure about everyone else

By all means, add an XP filter selection. XP is just too different from previous versions of Windows.

Would be nice if the download counts had merged as well.

As you may have heard by now, Monday we will be releasing WinCustomize v2. With the new Website you will be able to see if a skin support XP or not and be able to sort on that. And yes, the download counts were added.

That's a good idea. We can definitely do that. XP-optimized skins DO have a flag in them for the database so we can make it easy to look at those.

Hey Pat, I had an idea - we could have a "favorite" queries section which has us creating special SQL queries based on all the extra data.

Examples:
(besides XP optimized skins)
+ Star Wars themes (would display all the Star Wars stuff on the site)
+ Spider man (same thing)

Download counts were merged btw.

Just an idea.

Keep the XP WB skins in a separate section please.

I agree. Running XP, I have no desire to wade through skins that don't support it.

You can add me to the group of users who would like to see a separate section for XP skins for WindowBlinds.

Don't like it!! I want my XP Skins section back!

Maybe you guys (last 4 posters) haven't noticed the checkboxes at the top of the WindowBlinds library. They let you filter only the types of skins you want to see. Once an XP filter is added, you will easily be able to see just the XP skins without wading through them all or having a separate XP only library. As a skinner, multiple libraries doesn't make sense and it makes keeping up with comments and keeping my skins up to date more difficult.

I don't see the point of having a separate section for XP only skins, I'm assuming you look at the screen shots before downloading them, pretty much all of the XP skins show the XP startmenu in the screen shot. The only skin that I know that does not is the Leangreen skin.

Mine (Docking Station) did in the WBXP one, but not for the WB one.

Is the new site going to have dropdowns like Devart?
If so couldnt we have a click on in the dropdown that would filter skinz with xp support? I agree with the others having to go to the WB section and then check the filter and reload the screen can be a bit time consuming especially if your on a dialup account.. Not to mention for each person who wants to filter the xp skins the server is going to have to serve an extra page....

The bottom line is that the most recent XP skins were one click away before. Even selecting check boxes before browsing adds more complexity to the process. Why "fix" what wasn't broken?

Leangreen shows the XP startbutton and quicklaunch just above the non-XP taskbar in the screenshot.

Why would anyone want to limit themeselves to only XP skins? You can select your favorite XP taskbar stuff to display with any skin and there are hundreds of great windowblinds skins that were made before XP came out (thousands maybe?).

Windowblinds works with all versions of Windows. XP is just the latest (and most expensive) version. Having a seperate library is nonsense, it's like saying you don't know how Windowblinds works or what it's for. Don't forget there is also the per app settings, UIS1 skins and plenty of other reasons to access the whole library even if you are using XP...

Until this thread I didn't realize that the Search bar has a drop down menu with WinXP as a selection. So this can be chosen from the main page. It also has a "Sort by" menu with "Update date" as a selection. This option doesn't work correctly, because you always set the Update Date equal to the "Created date". The update date should be set to zeros until there is an update. Then only the updated files would appear at the top of a search by update date. This could be fixed by setting the Update Date to zeros if it is currently equal to the Created Date.

The reasons why I prefer to view and download only XP skins are, well, just my own preference. It's like having to offer a reason why I want Mozilla one click away in my quick-launch bar. I just like it that way. What's happened here, is that now an extra step or two has been added to what was a one-click process. It makes no sense at all to me.

Probably the newer skins, as they appear, will all be made with the XP bits. If not, there will certainly be more, even most of them that are. So you skip over one skin on the list... it's not an extra step, it's the same as choosing to not download a particular skin because you're not interested in the design.