Frogboy has updated his skinning primer. He even gazed into his crystal ball, because this is the 2006 edition. I'm not that ahead of time just yet.

“So you want to turbo-charge your Windows PC eh? Where do you start? What programs are available?

I've gone through virtually all the programs I'm familiar with and tried to put together a reasonably comprehensive guide to customization. It's by no means complete, there are hundreds and hundreds of different programs available. [...]

If you're interested in spreading the word on customizing your PC, you may find this to be a useful compendium to pass the word on.”

This guide covers terminlogy, the history of skinning, icons, window skinning, desktop extenders, ‘super desktop extenders’, shells, cursors, media players, logon screens, instant messengers, boot screens, suites, and finally, *gasp* sites where you can get your daily fix of skins (with skinz.org still listed for some reason).

The range of apps covered is broad, sometimes dubious and my eyes went blurry during the sections that were more marketing hype than factual content. But as froggles says himself:

“This is by no means the definitive answer to skinning, theming or customization in general. Heck, as a Stardockian, it would be best if someone else wrote this, but no one has and I get so many email from people asking for help and information on what is what that it was time for someone to write something on this to get people started.”

It's a decent guide and as long as nobody else writes one, it's the best one out there. || craeonics | comments (7)