Our issue 13 was a collection of old articles that had been gathering dust for the past year and a half. I figured that by posting the lot of them as one issue, we could get on with life and write some new material.

Doreen thought different and pulled this skeleton out of her closet two weeks ago. It's an interview with fenol Slawek Gruca, a Polish artist with a very distinct, powerfull, yet somewhat disturbing style.

It's also the first step on the path towards #14. Let's hope the path isn't as long and winding this time.

Edit: changed nick into real name at agents request (yes, the man has an agent). /me goes strangle Doreen for coming up with this after posting it. || craeonics | comments (5)

One might think Tek is the only ezine on skinning these days. Think again, for there is also Big Bad Bérubé and the Funkadelic Francophonics, with the second installment of their ezine Esthetika.

Prime topic this issue is ‘prêt-á-porter’, or in other words, drive-by skinning. The practice of assembling your ‘customised’ setup by clicking together various skins and suites, without even the slightest hint of personalness or creativity in it. The Esthetika crew isn't too hot on this and neither am I.

Quick overview of the contents of this issue:

• Prêt-à-porter — ext takes a stance against trendwhoring and consumerism, in favour of originality. What's so custom about downloading a suite 6000 others already grabbed?

• Esthetika et vous… — The results of the survey in #1, some user-submitted walls and excuses for the delay in publication. Tsk tsk.

• Tout le monde utilise Nobodyuse! — Brubbles interviews Nobodyuse, the admin of Trucs en Vrac.

• Perso Facile! — maarch shows how to go from plain old ‘My First Sony’ XP to your own, personalised XP is a mere six steps, without resorting to precompiled suites and stuff.

• N'oublions pas les débutants — Alain argues that a skin site should offer more than mere downloads, like documentation and an open, helpfull board, lest the newbies get scared off into shallowness.

• Longhorn Transformation Pack 9 — maarch, wondering why on Earth people would want to imitate other OSes, decides to compare the ‘real’ Longhorn to an XP-to-Longhorn makeover kit.

• Devenez styliste! — ext gives a quick overview of a couple of tools to customise your XP system with.

• Indispensable #2 — Essential app #2, fiz reckons its TClock2. I'd say, switch your shell and get it over with.

• La personnalisation sans risques? — This one's straight up froggy's alley: the risks of lazy transformation packs which replace .dlls (amongst others) and the recommended precautions to take.

This issue was published a week ago, but brubbles must think I'm psychic, 'cause he didn't tell me nothing.

Then again, knowing that it was originally planned for December, there is some ironic justice in this after all (/me carefully ignores the discussion on why Tek was eightteen months late). || craeonics | comments (3)

When DeskMod, one of the major skinsites, fell of the map, a year and a half ago, big kahuna gorman promised it would be back. However it became quieter and quieter and when co-owner iMike left to pursue more interesting avenues of distraction, the mythical Return seemed further away than ever.

Then, monday, the idleing DeskMod was turned into DeskBlog, with gorman announcing the imminent, but not just yet, return.

“After being dormant for nearly a year and a half, DeskMod is set to make a triumphant return to the desktop modification community!

For those that don't know, DeskMod launched in 1999 and quickly became the largest site dedicated to skins, themes, wallpapers, screenshots, and anything else you use for customization your desktop (aka mods). DeskMod grew to be a very large site, thanks to both a very strong and close-knit community as well as partnerships with Winamp, Sonique, DFX, Konfabulator, Mozilla, Geoshell, Shareaza, and several other applications. Even with the tens of thousands of incredible mods, it was DeskMod's incredible community that made the site such a special place. Finally, the site itself was constantly developed at a very fast rate to stay technically advanced and innovative. As you can probably tell, many of these principles carried over to ModBlog.”

Today, surveying the response, the man made a follow-up post, clarifying some things. Well, ‘clarifying’ in true gorman fashion, a lot of words and little content.

It will be back, it will be different, it will, ofcourse, be build upon a new engine and we'll just have to wait until it gets relaunched. In the meantime, the plan is to keep us occupied with news, interviews, reviews and what not. || craeonics | comments (3)

Carebear notes that one of the longest running dynamic duo in Skindom, WinStep's NextStart and WorkShelf, have gotten themselves some new clothes, sizes 3.3 and 1.7 respectively.

As ya'll should know, NextStart is a skinnable start menu replacement, while WorkShelf complements it by replacing the taskbar. In a fancier way ofcourse.

Cut'n'paste of Carebear's abridged version of the changelog (which curious enough is only about WorkShelf):

“Here's an abbreviated list of the new features:

New Modules:

• Net Meter

• RAM Meter

• Wanda

• CPU Meter

New Visual Effects:

• Dynamic width tabs

• 3D Item buttons

• Icon Labels

• Balloon Tooltips

• Clock

• Desktop Meters

Drag & Drop additions:

• Thumbnails

• Information Tooltips

• Automatic Check for Updates

• Tip of the Day”

NextStart and WorkShelf are shareware and available separate for $24.95 and $29.95 or the both of 'em bundled with FontBrowser for $39.90.

The spooky thing about WinStep is how little press it gets these days. The last time I heard about it was back in August when the preious version was released.

We Dutch bunnies have a saying: ‘Out of sight, out of heart’, which means as much as that things are easily forgotten when you never hear from them anymore.

I think it would be a good idea if the developer of NextStart and WorkShelf, our fellow bunny brother JCRabbit, or someone who cares, would put them on the map a bit more. || craeonics | comments (1)

Meanwhile, over at the frog pond, the amphibians have given the flies some rest to do some tinkering. The result is version 3 of the desktop beauty parlour, DesktopX.

Prime alteration here seems to be to make it less confusing for the technically challenged to use this, by separating minor modifications from the nitty-gritty developer mode.

“DesktopX 3 is a major improvement over previous versions. Not only does it have vastly more features than previous versions, it has been re-designed to separate the user portions from the content creation portions. Previously, someone who wanted to simply add "widgets" to their Windows desktop also had to interact with DesktopX's powerful, yet easy to use, developer environment which tended to overwhelm new users. With DesktopX 3, the features of the program have been streamlined.”

Nowadays, it comes in three flavours:

“DesktopX 3.0 comes in 3 flavors: DesktopX Client which is for end users who just want to run widgets, objects, and desktops created by others. DesktopX Standard which adds the development environment for creating/modifying widgets, objects, and desktops. And DesktopX Pro which enables developers to export their widgets as gadgets. Unlike widgets, gadgets can run on any Windows 2000/XP system without requiring DesktopX (or any other special software) to already be installed.”

See froggy's release post for more details, screenshots (like the one above) and links || craeonics | comments (3)

Just when you think the market for skinnable apps has collapsed and that you'll only be seeing payware apps from now on, a new skinnable note app appears: NexNote.

Yes, it says ‘0.58’. That's the first public release.

“NexNote is a fully skinnable desktop note program that is perfect for the home user, but has those features that some power users can't live without. It has the ability to share notes via ftp, set yourself reminders, make notes transparent (2k/XP only), apply a wide variety of skins, easily create your own skins, and customize the functionality of the program to your liking.

NexNote has been my pet project for years now. When I first learned how to pop up a window saying ‘Hello, World’, I immediately started working on NexNote, then called D Note. It's been quite a long road and, while the application is not perfect, it meets my needs and, I hope, the needs of a few other users out there.

NexNote, on the whole, is a skinnable sticky note application. It offers very simple skinning (literally almost anyone could make a skin), the ability to set an alarm for each note (reminders), the ability to import/export note files locally or via ftp, customization of mouse clicks and, most importantly, ease of use. I have worked diligently in an attempt to make the UI as straight forward and easy to grasp as possible. ”

Sounds good so far, but the man has some notes:

“A few notes regarding useage:

• requires .Net Framework 1.1

• the help image is from an old version, sorry

• if you find a bug, please report it

• only use NexNote if it meets your needs. There are plenty of other sticky notes apps out there, too.”

…to which I respond: 1) Nooooooo! Et tu, Brutus; 2) Mmkay; 3) The man shows dedication, so help him out here; and 4) Now there's an interesting remark. I suspect he means “if you don't like it, use something else, but don't go bitching about it”.

I like his style. || craeonics | comments (2)

The favourite passtime of hardworking janitors and eagle-eyed security personnel all over the globe: playing card games on their PCs. Yazzle takes this honourable mental fitness one step further. It's skinnable. Now more than ever. And it'll get even more skinnable in the future.

Or as polymere man put it:

“Yazzle v2 is a skinnable solitaire game developed by redllar. While v1 had skinnable carddecks, version 2 allows skinning whole game (resizing options, option to display whatever function you (don't) want, tooltip and menu color options). It still allows for old carddecks, but there's a new carddeck v2 specification too (resizable cards). It also enables you to create your own games.”

“Basically, while dubbed ‘alpha’, this is a stable interim release (ok, so development is a bit slow ;)). Skinning engine is mature, yet v3 will have more dialogs skinnable. Carddecks v3 will offer real skinnability for cards (like with poweryoga, stretching ain't everything), this is not done fully yet. Game format is mature also, will have additions, but basics are done.

Foremost, this is sharing the fun for solitaire players. Multiple skins, tutorial and carddecks are available.”

Good to see redllar is still working on this one. There aren't that many skinnable games around. Although, there are plenty of mods of shooters and their ilk and those could be considered skins.

Solitaire or card games really isn't my thing though. Now if it could do Magic the Gathering or tarot… || craeonics | comments (15)

For those that dig OSX' dock but aren't planning on buying a Mac just yet or just want to have a dock on their win32 setup, there's always ObjectDock.

Or to completely copy/paste the newspost over at WinCustomize:

“Stardock has released ObjectDock v1.11. ObjectDock is a program that enables users to add a "dock" to their Windows desktop that contains short-cuts, running tasks, and "docklets". It is highly configurable, easy to use, and very useful. You can learn more about it here.

New in version 1.11 includes:

• New included Search docklet that can search Google, MSN, Yahoo, or elsewhere.

• Improved system tray support in Plus version.

• New languages supported

• Fixes to the per tray icon feature and sysstats integration

• Better Unicode support

• New ‘/settingsfolder’ switch

• Separators supported in tabbed docks

• Zooming icons in tabbed docks

• Full listing here.

ObjectDock is freeware. A plus version is also available that adds tabs, system tray support, task grouping, and hotspot support. Its home page is www.objectdock.com.”

ObjectDock is an 8 meg (ugh!) download. The Plus version will set you back $20 (or $15 if you have ObjectDesktop). || craeonics | comments (1)

Andrew Powell, creator of Kapsules knows how to handle news syndication. The man sends out bite-size news blurbs with just the right details: what's new, what it is and where to get more info.

“Version 0.9.8.40 is the next step towards version 1.0 of Kapsules. Much effort was put into this version of Kapsules over the past month. This version is by far the biggest improvement on speed and stability as compared to any other version.

Resource usage was also given special attention for .40, and memory use is back down around what it was for some of the early versions of Kapsules. While Kapsules is still not for the ‘memory (RAM) challenged’ it is by far the most memory efficient version.

If you're not familiar with Kapsules; Kapsules is a premier desktop widget engine software. A widget is a mini-program designed to be, well, what you want it to be!

Kapsules makes use of the Windows Scripting Host, which allows it to use any language which is availible with an Active Script Engine. That means you can use anything from VBScript to PHP to write a widget. Yeah! Even RubyScript or Perl! At current there are widgets being written in 8 different scripting languages!

Kapsules is free to download and free to use, so go ahead and give it a try.

• Getting Started Guide for New Users

• Kapsules IRC Chat — irc.freenode.net #kapsules

• The User Guide.

• Version History and Change List.

• Download”

Ruby, yeah! .NET, booh! I'm sounding like a broken record. What we really want to see is screenshots. || craeonics | comments

One of the early skinnable ‘apps’ was the tool called ICQPlus, which allowed people to ‘skin’ their ICQ. One of the first universally loathed ‘apps’ was this self-same ICQPlus, for it brought with it the plague known as ‘photoskins’.

Regardless, as ICQ proved popular and ICQPlus got dragged along in its wake.

This did not take long. First AOL jumped on the messaging bandwagon with their AIM client, soon followed by the behemoth from Redmond with their MSN Messenger. Microsoft, repeating the same steps they took to nuke Netscape, decided to integrate it into XP and that was the end of ICQ.

Some time ago, em released aiMutation. An app that, like ICQPlus in its days, allowed you to skin AIM (and spice it up in a number of other ways). And now here is its follow-up, Messenger:Mate, which comes in two flavours, one version that takes care of AIM and another to handle MSN.

“Messenger:Mate is feature enhancing software for the two most popular Instant Messaging clients in the world; AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger. Messenger:Mate integrates seamlessly to add useful and highly requested features that enhance your daily experience using either client. Messenger:Mate for MSN Messenger contains features such as a fully featured Tab Manager, real contact list docking and rich HTML conversation logging that records everything as you see it, while Messenger:Mate for AIM contains features such as Buddy Screen Name Aliasing, countless new smileys enabled and the ever popular talking while away option.”

So far so good. Although…

“With all these features and more, you'll wonder how you ever did without Messenger:Mate.”

Seeing that I despise messaging, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how I could do without this app. But let's not spoil things for those that do message. “You shouldn't take everything literally, crae!”

“Messenger:Mate has a complete feature set and comes with free updates for 1 year, all available for the value price of $4.99 USD each. Head on over to the features page to see just how Messenger:Mate can enhance your instant messaging experience.”

Thanks to sryo for the plug. || craeonics | comments