An Introduction to making skinsWhat are skins? The term "skin" refers to the concept of changing the surface look of something. There are skins to change the outside of cell phones. Their are skins to change what your computer case looks like. There are skins to change the look and feel of particular applications like media players. And there are skins that can change the overall look of your computer operating system. The skins designed to change the look of the Windows operating system are t...

Skin Creation TutorialTable of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Making a new Start Bar

Chapter 3: Changing your Title bars and window frames

Chapter 4: Replacing your buttons and other controls

Chapter 5: Creating Windows XP specific elements

Chapter 6: Making Windows Vista specific elements

Chapter 7: Fun with Fonts & Colors

Chapter 8: Tips & Tricks for better skins

Chapter 9: A Guided Tour of a Sample Skin

Chapter 10: Places to submit your new skin

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Windows Vista has a lot going for it that most people don't really hear about. It's understandable because marketing some of these new features would essentially be tantamount to saying "Oops, XP had some problems". 

What makes Windows Vista a much better experience aren't due mainly to the  major new features. Instead,  it's the hundreds of barely documented improvements to the OS that users notice but quickly take for granted -- at least until they have to go back to using W...

In many ways, The Magic Desktop represents a real triumph for the WindowBlinds / Object Desktop community.  The Magic suite is the ultimate "I told you so" moment for long time skinners and users of skins who supported Stardock and WindowBlinds.

Let me explain what I mean by that:

Since 2001, users of WindowBlinds (and its big brother, Object Desktop) have taken a bit of a beating from people who advocated merely patching parts of Windows in order to run unsigned msstyles.  Sure,...

Making your own color presetsOne of the coolest new features of WindowBlinds 6 is the ability to selectively color parts of a skin. Combined this with another new WindowBlinds 6 feature - user created substyles and you have customization heaven.

For this demo, I'm going to show off a skin that hasn't been released at the time of this writing - Turbo.  Turbo is a new skin from Stardock Design that is being released exclusively for Object Desktop users.  It's not quite done yet - you ...

I like Windows Vista quite a bit. I like it a lot more than Windows XP.  That said, it's not perfect. There's been a real dog piling on this but me and the Greenreaper had an interesting conversation on 10 issues in Windows Vista that could be rectified.

Problem #1: The UAC. The most obvious new "security" feature in Windows Vista is the User Access Console known as the UAC. Type in "UAC sucks" into Google and you'll get tens of thousands of results. No single feature in Windows Vista ha...

 
 Top Skins of August (click on thumb-nail to view)

1The Ease of EleganceDesktopX2Metal Vista 3WindowBlinds3SD DesktopWindowBlinds4Novum OSWindowBlinds5Vienna for VistaWindowBlinds

Icons & Windows VistaWindows Vista looks great but making new icon packages that support it has become significantly more labor intensive.[Icon Making & Windows Vista]

TweakVista ArrivesIf you have Windows Vista, you can now download TweakVista. This new utility allows users to safely and easily...

I admit it. I'm an iconphile. Back in the Windows 3.0 days, I used to go and change all my Windows icons by hand. I thought this was pretty impressive. Admittedly, it didn't help me pick up women for some reason.

Since then, icons have come a very long way. A VERY long way. With Windows Vista, the end-user icon experience out of the box is beautiful. But from an icon creator's point of view, the lack of backward compatibility and effort to support has gone up tremendously. As a result, we've ...

Windows Vista has kind of gotten a bum rap. Some of the rap is deserved -- Microsoft shipped it too early. But for the most part, the rap is carried on by vocal techies who just like to poop on things because they think criticizing things makes them appear more knowledgeable.

Talking to a techie about the quality of mainstream software is a lot like talking to a film school graduate about the quality of mainstream movies. Sure, you might have liked Pirates of the Caribbean but talk to a film...

The iPhone has been out awhile and now that the initial hyping has subsided and the glowing reviews have faded a bit, how good is the iPhone really? I mean, for real people?

Stardock's Island Dog takes an indepth 2 part look at the iphone.

The iPhone Review (part 1) The iPhone Review (part 2)Do you have an iPhone? Tell us what you think of it.

Version 3.5 Info GuideIntroductionDesktopX is a program that lets users build their own desktops.  It does this by giving users access to desktop objects. These objects can come in all sizes and shapes. They can have scripts attached to them, they can be combined together to form mini applications or turned into an entire desktop.A new way of looking at the desktopLet's take a look at a typical desktop. For this example, we'll use Windows Vista but it could just as easily be Windows XP.
Wi...

Summer tends to be a slower time for skinning since people are, well, you know, outside.  Personally, the sun causes me to catch on fire. Or at least smolder and no one wants to deal with that.

This Summer, there's been some real gems. Which is pretty amazing since those bastards at Stardock have co-opted most of the skinning community this year to work on MyColors projects.  So without further delay, here are some of the cooler looking things I've seen this summer:







V...

Our friends over at deviantART are celebrating their 7th birthday this week.  In 7 years, deviantART has become the world's largest art site on the Internet.   With over 40 million pieces of art on the site and rising, deviantART continues its explosive growth.On behalf of everyone at WinCustomize.com and at Stardock, we wish deviantART a happy birthday! Congratulations!

Stardock is pleased to announce that the beta of SkinStudio 6 is now available for users of Object Desktop to try out and give feedback on.  SkinStudio 6 is a complete re-design from scratch of SkinStudio. 

With a totally new user interface and completely different design philosophy, SkinStudio is designed to make skinning much less labor intensive and welcoming to new skinners.  Check out the linked to preview guide for a taste of what's in it.


SkinStudio UI.With SkinStu...

VERSION 6IntroductionStardock is pleased to announce the availability of the BETA of SkinStudio version 6.  SkinStudio is a program designed to allow users to create their own skins that, when applied by the popular GUI changing program, WindowBlinds, can completely alter the look & feel of Microsoft Windows.With SkinStudio, users design their own title bars, push buttons, Start bars, scroll bars, and virtually every other part of the Windows interface.  Users then take their creatio...