SkinStudio is one, but the article's intended to be a little more general, with ideas that don't only apply to skins creatable with SkinStudio. Of course, I'm only a WindowBlinds skinner, so it may have a certain bias.
Umm . . . it was an article on the left. Now there's two. Not that that's really a problem, I guess . . . and your one has a better address. *grin* Oh, and if anyone has any comments on the article, post them here - you might get quoted in future revisions, though.
Hehe, yeah. Thanks for the thought, though! (oh, and nice picture . . .)
It's quoted for him, not against him. The whole point is to make people's views heard, Styl.
bordfryr123 and I.R. Brainiac, thank you for your comments, which have been added to the artwork page ( http://www.zen9361.zen.co.uk/mgs/artwork.html ).
Oh, and to over-extend the car metaphor, if you're moving the buttons from one side to another that's like moving from left-seat steering to right-seat steering. You end up grabbing for the gearstick on the wrong side all the time, and weaving all over the road as you do.
My deepest apologies for the web colours - not setting *foreground* colours is one of the things I hate sites for myself, as I use white text. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not a web expert! They should be fixed now. As for the usability, you're right, do I take Nielson's views to heart. I don't go as far as Jef Raskin and think that skinning is evil, otherwise I wouldn't do it. But I do think skins would be easier to use and more popular if they built on the standard rather than invent
I've been skinning for a while, and using other skins, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what helps make a good, usable skin that people will like. So I've made this article: http://www.zen9361.zen.co.uk/mgs/ But I know I don't have all the answers, so I'd like to ask people here what they think. Do you have any advice that you'd like to pass on? What do you think makes a skin great? Am I totally wrong on something, and can you say why? Do you have any other resources that
Martin, Stardock apps are almost always in beta on OD, because they're always in further development. That's one reason why people buy OD - so they can get access to things before they are at "release" status. If you don't want to see betas, just turn off "show pre-release versions".
Mokey? OK, so not a muppet from the show, but the fraggles were sooo cute.
It's OK - don't worry about it, AlphaDraco. IRC's a lot of sound and fury anyway, and this weekend's been a little . . . stressful for some people.
Services should now be restored (at least IRC, news and mail are now online).
Aschell, your problem is being worked on.
They can't release something they don't have yet.
It's only 7AM in the US where Stardock is. They have to wake up and get into work first. It should be in both the Component Manager and Stardock Central sometime later today.
WinCustomize Forums
WB 4 is pretty good, you should go with that one if you're on XP. There was a lot of work done on stability/compatibility issues for it.
WinCustomize Forums
This is an advance warning - if anyone here is using WB 3.5a and has sudden problems, you may be experiencing an unforseen expiry condition in this build of WB. Stardock personnel aren't around right now, but when they are, they'll fix it. If you're experiencing problems (eg unskinned windows, rundll warnings), don't panic! For now just sit tight and maybe unload WB. You can also try turning the clo
Use one as the base skin and have the others as per-app skins. That way you can use them all at once.
"Game over, man! Game over!" (because GalCiv doesn't have anything like enough references to facehugging alien spawn)
And it has to be the registered version, of course.
[Message Edited]
So wait . . . Infogrames was the distributor for GalCiv - does this mean GalCiv is now ann Atari game?
The problem is that you are on Windows NT or Windows 95 where the FlashWindowEx function is not available. The programmer needs to change it to use FlashWindow on those versions of Windows.
GreenReaper
I think it would be better if the message edited note was not on a new line (maybe a note next to the date?) - it wastes quite a bit of space. [Message Edited]
Stardock Forums