Back in the days of yore when skinning was still underground and Microsoft had not yet scarred our eyes with an OS sporting a My First Sony design, I envisioned the future of Skindom trifold: 1) layered skinning; 2) scriptability; and 3) alpha transparency. WinAmp was the first, and, as far as I know, the only program that took this next step.

Unfortunately, it was a step too far, for WinAmp 3 wasn't much of a success.

StarDock takes smaller steps. The only competition WindowBlinds has these days is the aforementioned visual styles in XP. And it is almost as if the main new major feature of the new WindowBlinds 5 was implemented because Vista, Microsoft's next OS, has something similar.

It is almost as if imitation and business instinct have triumphed over those most fundamental elements of Skindom (and if they aren't, they bloody well should be): innovation and originality.

With that said though, rejoice! For WindowBlinds finally has alpha transparency!

“The major new features of WindowBlinds 5.0 over 4.0 can be boiled down to this:

• Per-pixel alpha blended support for nearly all elements of the GUI such as title bars, borders, buttons, menus, special dialogs, start menu, etc. This means that the graphics can be seamlessly be blended into whatever is behind the graphic. This makes possible spectacular looking user interfaces previously not possible on Windows.

• No Dedicated Process. WindowBlinds now works as an extension of the OS itself. It requires no special process to be running to work.

• Newer, easier to use Configuration program.

• Enhanced hardware acceleration support. WindowBlinds 5 makes use hardware acceleration to a much greater degree to speed up repainting, resizing, and moving of windows. It should be noticeably faster, particularly on slower machines, than Windows by default.

• Animated per-pixel title bars and frames. Title bars and frames can be animated. The animation in most cases is hardware accelerated meaning it should use no CPU for the animation.

• Toolbar icon changing. WindowBlinds can change your toolbar icons for Internet Explorer and Explorer.

• Progress Animation changing. WindowBlinds can change progress animations (copy, move, etc.). The ones in Windows XP by default are over 10 years old. ”

Froggles also mentions a number of other modifications and enhancements, like the ability to recolour skins and a number of other controls that are now also skinned by WindowBlinds.

The previous version (4) was released in 2003, so this is a major update. As always, WindowBlinds is shareware. The full version is $19.95 if you're new to it and $15 if you have version 4. || craeonics | comments (7)

I mentioned Frogboy's Skinning Primer the other day and stated, as froggles himself thought as well, that this was just about the only current primer around. It didn't take long for sryo to point out (and two weeks for me to pick it up) the existence of an alternative, somewhat more unbiased primer on this subject.

Apurva Roy Choudhury's A Beginner's Guide to Customisation, Skinning and Shell Replacements over on uZable.com was written in July, so it isn't that fresh, but it certainly isn't spoiled just yet.

“I have modded and customized things around me forever, from my BMX to my torch lights. Obviously, I wouldn't leave the thing I use the most in its default form would I? Well, obviously I am talking about my computer(s). […] So I thought it would make a lot of sense to pen down some of the stuff that I do with my PC and its user interface. I am not going to talk about application skinning here as nowadays every second application to hit the Internet is skinnable. I am going to talk about customizing the UI of the entire OS (the shell). So this can be considered as a beginners guide to shell replacements and desktop customization for Windows.”

He covers a lot of territory, starting out with some of the motives behind customisation. He then continues with an overview on what to do with various parts of the GUI. First up are application launchers, followed by the inevitable widgets, a long story on shell replacements (and a small bit on shell switchers) and finally a look at window skinners. He then concludes his article with some considerations to take into account (I think we have struck a pleonasm here, capt'n) on deciding what app to try.

This primer is aimed at the novice user who knows a little bit about his or her machine and wants to change the scenery. The author is more or less unbiased and does his best to characterise each app, although he slips here and there and goes through a lot of software. Perhaps too much software, as the paragraphs are a little short at times. Also, it could have done with at least one screenshot per app mentioned. But other than that, it's quite a nice write-up.

He does deserve a right good kicking for calling skinners ‘geeks’ though. If I were a geek, I would be running *nix and bitch about resource usage. || craeonics | comments (5)