Skin Primer 2003 sneak preview

I like the "Don't be a drone" line

Yeah, what David said..

Hmm, I often have problems to reach joeuser.com. Is that a known problem ?

very nice site

how about a list of skinnable programs at bottom to show how many apps there is?

Wow
That was very informative, I certainly learned a few things...Thanks

7 Terrabytes in skin transfers a month
Stardock products definitely are impressive
Stardockian

I'll be updating it tonight. Any suggested tutorials you think I should include?

After reading your info and seeing some of the Screenshots...I would like to see a tutorial on 'Skinning' for Desktop X themes and possibly LiteStep. Some of those really opened my eyes

I wouldn't mind trying to do a Desktop X theme.

You said the LiteStep can be technical...If it's not too much trouble, it would sure be nice

Not sure if this is necessary, but for the purpose of being unbiased, you might want to mention TGT Soft? Just a thought.
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DavidMandle - I do indeed mention msstyles and themexp.

The reason I don't specify TGTSoft is that I don't really see them as being a contributing factor. And I mean that sincerely. For instance, what is the difference between TGTSoft and say Lokai.net? (http://www.lokai.net)? Or any other provider of a patch for making it so that you can use msstyles? I mean that as no offense to TGTSoft, I just don't see a concrete contribution.

This actually goes well with that other discussion on communities. If someone says a false thing enough times, eventually it becomes a truth. There are actually sites that call msstyles "Style XP themes". Unbelieveable. One has to wonder what the poor guys at Microsoft who actually put in the effort to create the skinning engine think of that. Not to mention that they SELL this stuff. Someone can knock WindowBlinds but at least it actually does something.

Giving msstyles time is a tricky thing but they and boot screens have become popular enough that a primer needs to talk about. I just wish someone else would write a thorough primer because I feel a bit handcuffed. I mean, do people realize what they're doing when they replace their logonui.exe? or their NT kernel? Or use a shellstyle.dll? or patch uxtheme.dll? Ack. But if I point out the blatant security/virus concerns, I get accused of bashing. I had always hoped that someone like Teknidermy would do an expose on this kind of stuff.

hehe Brad, Hey tell crae or Ken it's just us 3 atm...
(and I do the chit chat and pocket pc stuff)

Hello Brad.

Just to point out a little typo: "But it's note quite the same" in the "Konfabulator" section.

Edit: same section: "there is on "conversion" tool" ..

Great read btw, as I was clueless as to what UIS standed for, for instance, now I know!

Edit: Wow, there are sooo many things I had no clue about.
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Thanks for head's up!

Hmmm how did I miss this?

HEY, I'm famous! I knew I should have plastered my name right in the middle of my stuff.

I'll have to give this a going through tomorrow.

Random notes:

1. Explain the difference between skinnable apps and window skinners. Oh wiat, it's further down the road... *ahum* never mind.

2. Why are you grouping DesktopX with sysmeters like SysMetrix?

3. LiteStep wasn't started by "a group of young developers [that] got together and wanted to make a shell that is faster (or 'lite') and simpler than Explorer".

4. Describe WinStep instead of NextStart?

5. IconPackager, CursorXP, LogonStudio and BootScreens aren't skinnable apps and thus shouldn't be there. They should fit in better in a "customising the OS" section.

6. The "sites as a universe" bit is good.


Now, why hasn't Tek picked up on this? a) time; priorities; and c) the double nature of the subject. It is both static and dynamic, so if I were to write an article on this every year, I would in fact be rewriting the same old article every damn year. I want to create, not rehash! So an article is clearly (for me, probably not for others) not the right way to tackle this.

craeonics is right on the LiteStep thing. for your reference (Francis Gastellu´s old wesite from the WaybackMachine): link
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well, that did not work. neither with pasting the link, nor with html tags. this will do as well: http://www.desktopian.org/olddesigns/
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Thanks for the feedback!