There's so much grreat stuff in this year's GUI Olympics. And much of it is a lot better than a screenshot or casual use can determine. I've been reading on-line as people root for the skin they think is "the best". But how do you define what is "the best"?  Many users are casually using these things (if at all) and making their determinations simply.  So I sat down with some (not all, just some) of my favorites and wanted to bring to people's attention much of the work involved on some of these along with other issues judges may look at.  BTW, I was about half way done taking screenshots when I discovered that I had WindowBlinds skinning only theme aware controls which, for some reason, turns off progress bar skinning. My apologies to those skin authors who made great progress bars whose screenshots are showing the default ones.

This is FlyOS visual style with PirateOS for the icons.. The first thing about icons that many casual users tend to ignore is the number of icons in an icon package.  Someone loads up mega-cool looking icon package that only has 50 icons in it and it may seem to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. But as you use them, you start noticing that some icons aren't changed. I noticed this when running one of the best looking icon packages -- my .WMV files had the generic icon. Other common file formats didn't have custom icons.  Do these things matter? They do to me. How the judges of the GUI Olympics will consider these things I don't know (for the record, I'm not an official judge for the contest).

Anyway, getting back to the skins at hand. FlyOS is one I like because it's really usable. It's usable on many different levels. It has very good MDI buttons which manner a lot to me because I'm always dealing with child windows in my programs. It's bright and crisp and easily colorizeable which also makes a difference.   FlyOS also has a really nice set of toolbar icons and progress animations.  Again, some great skins were submitted that didn't replace the toolbar icons and progress animations. How much should that matter? I can't say. It would matter some to me if I were voting for "Best overall" because it is a matter of completeness.

With regards to the Pirate OS icons, it has 103 icons in there each with lots of different sizes.

Look at all the extra icons in here.

More here too.  When you open up your folders on your hard drive and you see that .PSD files get their own slick consistent icon you can really appreciate the effort that went into this.  It also supports both Windows XP and non XP platforms.

This is Mini-OS. It shares the toolbar icons and progress animations from FlyOS which is fine because it goes nicely here. This is a really really clean skin and it uses a couple of unique WindowBlinds features such as the one pixel borders and having a indention that is just where the title bar text is. As much as I like the look of one pixel borders, it does make resizing sometimes a bit tougher on apps that don't have a status bar. But if you're looking for a minimalistic skin this is one to seriously consider. I like it a lot.

This is FM by Gabriel. Gabriel has emerged as one of the power houses in the skinning community in the past year. He's moving close to reaching his zenith as a skinner in my view as his skins keep getting better an dbetter.  This skin has very good toolbar icons and a nice progress animation. The skin is both attractive and minimalistic.  I would probably prefer to have slightly more contrast in my skins but that's purely a matter of taste as many skins are garish and hard on the eyes. This skin is very easy on the eyes and very functional. Look at some of the subtleties in this skin closely -- look at the mouse over on the Start menu. Many skin authors tend to want to really make it obvious they skinned the mouse over. But Gabriel's subtle use of that feature helps give this skin a level of class that few others can compete with.

This is G-Pod (also by Gabriel) with the Flooter icons by DanilloOc. I really like both of these. G-pod has the best progress animation I've seen ever. The skin is very colorize able as well and I usually run it with green or blue tinting to it. It also has a fun use of sound in it where the buttons will say "Minimize" and such when you press them.

Flooter has 129 icons. Again I want to stress this: 129 ICONS! DanilloOc also took the time to tweak the icons at different resolutions.  Hopefully some of you can appreciate the level of effort involved here. So when the judging comes out and you think some icon package should have won, ask yourself this: 1) How many icons were in the icon package (i.e. how complete was it)  2) How many formats are included and 3) Did they tweak them at different resolutions or did they just scale from some huge image?

One of the things that frustrated me a bit was some people discounting the level of effort involved in making skins and icons.  129 icons means 128 different images that had to be imagined, put together as part of an overall theme, drawn, and then put together for different formats. Most of this work goes unappreciated. But I want those icon artists to know that the GUI Olympics judges do appreciate the level of effort being put in. I know that many of these icon packages have been talked about a great deal at Stardock and there's a lot of sadness that many of them won't get the kudos they deserve (there's talk about having Stardock "bonus prizes" to go to designers who we felt didn't get enough from their hard work).

Anyway, enough blubbering on Flooter. It's really well done. Probably the only thing going against it is that it's a bit monochrome but that's a matter of taste and DanilloOc uses color extremely well when he does.

This is Erik Holmer's Kewk visual style. It's quite complete with multiple styles for the Start menu. A very popular skin for those who like minimalist skins in particular.

This is Sektor. It is also by DanilloOc who made those fantastic icons. It's one of the best skins in many ways but has many things going against it as well. First, it's a dark skin which are harder to make than the lighter ones, especially in terms of usability because Windows developers tend to assume they're dealing with light colors. Secondly, the title bar, while animated with a pump (very cool) has its buttons pretty close together relative to their size.  And yet with those minor foibles this skin has the best use of sound in the contest. Most WindowBlinds skins don't make use of sound which is a real pity because sound can add a little extra class to a skin. Of course, poorly used, sound can be obnoxious. In this case it adds fun and doesn't get annoying.

The screenshot though doesn't do it justice. This skin has the best Start menu in the contest IMO. Outstanding use of animation doesn't slow it down but instead reminds people why they're using WindowBlinds in the first place. It's just so well done. Also, the progress animation is amongst the best in the contest.  Very well animated and fits in extremely well into the overall theme.

The icons, D3A, were done by Milosz Wlazlo, a heavy favorite because of the very high quality of the icons. These icons are so good that it's hard to deny their inevitable high standing in the contest.  On the other hand, there's only 71 of them.

D3A is quality all the way through but with  some of the competition having nearly twice as many it may be a close call. I have to say these icons are amongst my favorites (which is why I'm talking about it at all).  BTW, the skin in this screenshot is Boxxi's Vector 4 which was really a creative design that I liked a lot. A lot of the really innovative skins this year came from Boxxi but the creative event was extremely competitive this year which kept his outstanding skins from placing in the top 3 (and yet Boxxi's probably gathered the most overall points from judges from all his high value entries).

This is B0se's Opulence. A fan favorite and definitely a very clean skin. Probably one of the most usable skins in the contest. It doesn't have toolbar icons or progress animations which put it at a significant disadvantage in the "best overall" area. But its clean design, high quality, and good design put it up near the top.

Not in the contest but Judge's Milk, designed by Max Rudberg and ported to Windows by Kol and D'Blade shares a lot in common with Opulence. Opulence is clearly an original work and has done very well in the contest. For those who like this style of skin, Milk is one that you may like also.

This is Essorant's Pixel 8 skin. Doing an informal poll around the office, this is probably the most used skin in the contest. This screenshot doesn't really do it justice. It's an incredibly usable skin with good use of color and contrast that makes it more usable at multiple resolutions than Luna. It has a clean progress animation and very nice toolbar icons. It's really got everything going for it.

This is B0se's other entry in the GUI Olympics. VectorCell has been, in many respects, the star of the show. It won the best pseudo-OS skin and narrowly lost the best usable skin (it doesn't have a system menu icon on the title bar). B0se has won 3 medals already with 2 entries, an impressive feat.  I'd venture that this skin would be a sure thing for one of the top 3 spots in the overall category if it had progress animations and toolbar icons. Even without those things, it's magnificent design, good use of color, high usability, and originality put it in the running still.  In fact, this particular visual style is likely causing quite a stir with judges.  How much do progress animations and toolbar icons matter overall? Each judge will weigh things based on their own opinion. It is hard to ignore the effort involved in creating toolbar icons and progress animations too. No matter what happens, there will likely be riot no matter who wins. Next to Pixel 8, this is the skin I see most often used in the office. It is also, btw, the most popular skin in the GUI Olympics in download count.

Storm from Treetog is a good example of Pixtudio design in visual styles. Bold design, high usability, very good polish. It makes use of some animation. Has some sound in it. It also excels in areas that do matter but few users can appreciate.  One of the things that Treetog skins tend to do is not have "glitches". Lots of great skins look and run great but will have some bug or other in there that causes flakey behavior on some app. When someone says "WindowBlinds is buggy" what they should really be saying is "WindowBlinds running <skin N> is buggy" because it's usually some minor glitch in the skin that can wreak havoc with some obscure app. After all, when the format allows you to move the buttons anywhere, have borders any size you want, have title bars any size you want, if some parameter isn't set right problems can ensue.  The GUI Olympics skins have prompted Stardock to put a host of error checking features into SkinStudio 4.3 (to be released next week) to help notify the skinner of any potential issues.

Now, on the icon size, Mindless Puppet's insanely named icons are easily the most original in the contest. And the effort put into them is not obvious until you look closer.  Look at the screenshot closely.  Look at how the icons are different for different resolutions.  The 72x72 icon is not scaled down to 48x48 but instead is a differently drawn icon. And at 16x16 a different icon is used. That's attention to detail and quality that Mindless Puppet is renowned for.  And with over 103 total icons (not 98) pretty much everything is covered.

There are other icon design contests on the net but if you look at them, most of those icons only have a dozen or two icons in them. Try drawing one icon sometime. Now imagine doing 100 of those! For the GUI Olympics over 3000 icons.  For example, on one of our favorite contests, PixelPalooza, the typical icon set has only 10 to 30 icons compared to the 100+ you regularly see here.

MikeB's Airlock has two styles. One style won the most creative contest with the BeOS style title bar that appeared on the BOTTOM of the window.  This is the more conventional style shown here. This skin has all the major features going for it. Very clean, good progress animations, good toolbar icons. If I were to make any suggestions to this it would be in the area of color choices. I like my whites to be white. Anything that makes my actual windows not perfectly white can be distracting. On my computer, I've tweaked this skin to have slightly different colors. I'm not a big fan of this shade of blue. But it's overall outstanding design puts it in the running.

Rokey's The Last Order, are a front runner to win one of the top spots in the overall best icons. But the judges face a similar a challenge even here.  A casual user loads up these outstanding icons and can say "These are the best icons out there, it's no contest". They are so well done after all. And they are outstanding. But there's only 66 of them and they are all large images (very high quality ones mind you) rescaled and XP-only. Makes things for the judge.  The sheer quality of Rokey's icons will create a riot if it doesn't come in 1st (let alone the top 3). On the other hand, what do you say to the icon designer who created a brilliant set of icons in which there's over 100 of them, they support every version of Windows, and the author created by hand different icons for different resolutions?

Rokey's incredible The Last Order is a favorite amongst both artists and users alike. On the other hand, it only supports Windows XP and all images are high resolution images rescaled down. How do you vote? Wouldn't want to be a judge on that one! Talk about a tough call.

And then there's Treetog's Antares. It's an animation extravaganza. Incredible animation. Good use of sound. Multiple styles included so that those with lower end hardware can scale how much animation is in there. And on top of it all, it's a power user skin that's also immensely usable.

The icons, by vf, are the Megaton icons.  144 icons. That's over twice as many as are in The Last Order and these icons are of outstanding quality as well. Look at the attention to detail.  He also has individual icons for file formats like .BootSkin in there.

TIFF and JPEG get their own icons. No generic media icons. When you've got 144 icons, you're covering a lot of formats. And they're not done generically, they're done with attentionn to detail on every one.  It has only one major thing going against them which is also its greatest strength - they're black. Dark icons tend to be less popular than the traditional light colored icons most people use.  But again, make yourself the judge, how do choose between an icon package of this quality, with 144 icons in them that are all individually set up? One other downside is that they're Windows XP only. 

So here is a handful of some of my favorite skins and themes I've seen that are also favorites of other people based on what I've read on-line. This is by no means comprehensive but just writing this up has taken 4+ hours today so I'll have to stop here.

But you can see the challenge for the judges. How much do you weigh these different aspects? What hopefully comes across is that the judges do look a lot closer at these things than most users realize. And for the designers out there, we want you to know how much we appreciate the level of effort that you guys have put into this.  And we want you to know that we look at that. We understand what is involved and look for those things in the skins and themes.  Does that skin work on Windows ME? Does that icon package include icons for Adobe Acrobat files? Does the icon include separate images for 16x17 icons or was it a high resolution image rescaled down? Do the icons support Windows 2000? How understandable are they? How close are the title bar buttons together? Does the skin make it hard to resize? How well does the skin work at 1600x1200? What about 800x600? And so on.

More to come. Soon we'll have the user choice awards. And if I have time, I'll include some other favorites. And we want to thank everyone who has participated. Hopefully everyone will remember to keep in mind that while they may feel that their skin of choice should have one 1st instead of 3rd, that with over 150 entries, most designers didn't win any medals at all and every skin and icon package in the contest took a great deal of work (weeks and weeks of work). We thank everyone for participating and helping make our community a better place.

-Brad