Submitted by StarDock’s Brad Wardell has published his yearly ‘State of Skinning’ article. He concludes: “So there you have it. 2007 was a bit of a sucky year for skinners. Vista was a pain in the ass to get existing things working on. If you want to create cool new stuff on Vista, it’s very painful unless you use Windows Presentation Foundation but if you do that, you’ll find that your app is incredibly slow until SP1 arrives. And with so many new platforms to choose from, the skinning community is extremely fragmented. And plus, Bill Gates retired which just makes me sad. But 2008 looks much better. The transition to Vista should be completed soon. The software will get polished. More focus will be put on the actual skins. And skinning will likely move from just being mainstream to ubiquitous. So hold onto your hats, this year should be a great ride!”
f you want to create cool new stuff on Vista, it’s very painful unless you use Windows Presentation Foundation but if you do that, you’ll find that your app is incredibly slow until SP1 arrives.
So what happens when SP1 arrives? Prior to Vista, I tried several skins, but I never found any skin that I liked better than the old Win32 classic look, even on platforms other than Windows. When I use Linux, I always revert to a ‘Redmond’ theme just cuz I like Win32 classic so much.
However, when I was playing with Vista for a short while, when I switched back to Classic, it looked like ass. I don’t know what they did to it, but it just doesn’t look good anymore. And since I don’t like Aero much, I’ll be looking for alternatives whenever I switch to Vista full-time. Hopefully by that time it’ll be possible to skin the OS without slowing it down any.
Edited 2008-03-05 00:38 UTC
For a while, in my first adventures with Linux, I was the same way. Nothing ever suited me, as far as themes went. I was just so used to the classic Windows look (specifically the darker gray, Win95 look; not the brighter Win2000/ME look, which IMO is not quite as good). Since then, that’s changed; I still like Windows Classic theme, but these days I appreciate a lot of Linux themes.
I think this, at least in my case, was caused by two things. First, I was just so damn used to Windows Classic, and due to pure nostalgia, everything else just… didn’t work. And second, Linux really has made a lot of progress since I first played around with it. Originally, it really did look pretty… crappy, for lack of better word. These days, Linux distros are taking the GUI/artwork aspect much more seriously. I still get the occasional distro with looks that make me cringe, but for the most part, the major distros at least don’t look offending.
Also, I might add, on the Windows side–one theme I really think approaches the Classic theme is BSRoyal. It is just downright *nice*. When I used the OS, I occasionally switched between them. Something like that is what XP should have been shipped with by default, not that Luna crap.
I sometimes think that I’m a bit shallow when it comes to how my desktop looks. Some people are happy with default themes but I really want everything the way I want it, sometimes to the detriment of productivity, unfortunately. Years ago when I first realized that the theme and icons of XP could be changed I spent a lot of time making icons and downloading themes. But it either required hacks or buying products. And even then I was constrained to themes that other people had made. It’s sad to read that it’s even harder to skin Vista.
I don’t like to come off like a fanboy, but this is actually one of the things that I really appreciate about Linux. The fact that I can easily change the look to my tastes. I started out just going to gnome-look and downloading themes, but soon started making my own themes, since they are just made of easily editable text files.
Linux fans will go on about all the reasons why people should switch to Linux, some with merit, some without. But honestly (and shamefully?), this is the main thing that keeps me away from Windows and Macs. I have a desktop that looks exactly how I want it to look, and despite considerable effort, I can’t imitate the look with Windows.
To detractors, I’m the personification of evil capitalism gone astray. In the alternative history, skinning was this wonderful grass roots movement full of free and wonderful technologies. Then, one day, this greedy, blood sucking creature came and commercialized it — buying out all the pure hearted freeware developers and then brain washing them to become my robotic minions of pestilence.
That’s really funny because that’s actually the way I thought of Stardock. But I have more respect for them now, because of this article, which even mentions one of the ways you can skin Windows without buying anything. (But I still won’t buy Stardock)
In my opinion I think skinning is overrated. Yes, it’s nice to have a default attractive desktop, but most people working on a computer all day long don’t need all the fancy distractions. Besides, a lot of people don’t even know how to change their desktop background, or don’t care to know..
Yes, the problem is that now the fancy distractions are on by default.
Windows at least keeps classic.
Mac OS X is the murder of the best GUI ever.
Default X desktops usually have something that tries to look like Vista, Mac OS X or XP.
I beg to differ. People like to personalize their workspace, and that extends to their computer desktop. At the very least they will change their wallpaper, and that’s because that has the most visual impact. But skinning should be available. And for that matter I do not understand why Microsoft doesn’t make skinning as easy as possible. Perhaps they tried that with Vista and WPF, but it seems it’s not up to par just yet.
I have to respectfully disagree.
I easily spend 10+ hours a day on my PC’s during a given week, and whether it’s the wallpaper, or a complete skin change with WindowBlinds, I like the fact that my desktop is personalized to my style.
I am still amazed , that with all there talent , stardock can’t seem to bother with other OS , who in fact would be better suited for skinner and skinning as they have much less capacity and funds and thought put on skinning. They started on one OS/2 , but in recent years only done some skinning mostly on windows.
They could also drive a more multi Open layered skinning standard on other OS as opposed to Windows where they are only really second hand participant.
I’m still anxiously awaiting the return of OS X skinning now that it’s nigh-on impossible with Leopard (as it stands, at least.)
My second comment is that I’m more excited about developing technologies that could drastically alter the desktop space (while remaining largely backwards compatible,) like compiz. I like seeing the new and radical ideas coming out of there. (Give me a torus-shaped 3d virtual desktop!!!) http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=3265 (Which can be unfurled and displayed on a 2-d plane on demand!!!)
Ok, enough overexcited geekery for one day.
The infinite desktop idea referred in that forum thread was actually my idea. I’d still like to see it implemented my way. But if I get a toroidal sliding desktop, I’ll be fine with it, as long I can slide it with inertial effects and all that.
“The state of our business”
It makes me laugh when I hear windows fan boys complain about being done over by the big bad boys at microsoft. All that time we spent telling them that one day they will cop it like everyone else. And all they could say was “You’re a linux zealot what would you know”
There will never be justice in the winfowls world, move to where the freedom is and stop stuffing around
So this article’s name shouldn’t be the state of skinning, but the state of skinning on windows – right?
Not a single bloody mention of SVG.
2008 looks to be an equally useless year. :/