“Stardock has released WindowBlinds 5.01. WindowBlinds is a program that enables users to completely change the look and feel of Microsoft Windows. With it, users can apply "skins" that change the existing Windows graphical user interface (GUI) across the entire system. Title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, the Start bar, and nearly every other part of the Windows interface is changed.”

I normally don't start with a quote, but froggles' description of his flagship app was spot-on.

“WindowBlinds 5.01 improves performance on X64 based systems, adds support for wallpaper management, taskbar blurring, IE 7 support, and various tweaks, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.”

A couple of bugfixes mainly, it seems. Are there actually people out there that run Windows on a 64-bit system? || craeonics | comments

Continuing our journey through iLand, remember what I just said about custom interfaces? Custom interfaces are just asking to get skinned. The iPod is the walkman of this era, people make socks for them and now you can (somewhat) skin it as well with iPodWizard.

According to its wiki, iPodWizard is:

“…a program for Microsoft Windows that allows you to change the fonts, graphics and text on your iPod. iPodWizard can also uncap the volume on any european iPod (excluding 1/2/5G). The program is safe and simple to use, and is completely free.“

The current stable version is 1.1, but there's also a 1.2 alpha version:

“Due to the long absence of Kingstone and the strong demand for 5G font modding I've made the decision to release v1.2 of iPodWizard in an early alpha state.

There aren't any known bugs at this moment in time but please note that this is may not be entirely stable or reliable.

As previously said the main change in this version is the ability to change the main font used on 5G iPods. The process of changing the font is almost identical to the previous method except you need to click on the OTF Fonts button when in the Fonts section in the 5G firmware. Once in the OTF Fonts section the main font is Index 4 (drop down menu).”

One can envision that in the future more and more products will sport an OS. OSes come with interfaces. And interfaces are just acheing to get skinned.

And remember, hormone invested males among us, that logic does not apply to girls in short skirts. || craeonics | comments

This whole skinning things once started with an app with a custom, non-standard interface and people changing it to suit their tastes. I know little (nor do I care) about iTunes, but it seems to have a non-standard interface and thus someone was bound to pop up and write an app that lets you skin it.

Enter the Multi-Plugin. It lets you skin, at least parts of, your iTunes interface. And it does much more.

“Changes:

• Skin colorizing!

  From now you can change the hue/saturation of skins.

  Note: This feature uses GDI+, and will be disabled if GDI+ is not found.

• Many skins included by default. The credits to the skinners are in the help file.

• The Mac OSX skin is closer to the real thing. Especially the Mini Player.

• The feature of hiding the menu will only hide it - it will still be usable.

• Button positions are now adjustable using SkinData.ini.

• A skin developer can now make skins compatible with both left side and right side buttons, and include a different version of the skin for the Equalizer / Mini Equalizer window. The included WMP11 skin is a good example for how to do this.

• Silent installation switches for the installer. See the help file for more info.

• The installer will notify you if a process is using iTunes.exe. Now I won't need to remind people they need to close Y'z Dock or such

• Multi-Plugin will reinitialize itself if you choose "No" in the scripting warning dialog.

• From now, it's possible to change ID3 tags of a playing track with Foobar2000 passthrough enabled.

• The "Don't create Unknown Album folders" feature has been fixed.

• New option added: If you enable the Foobar2000 passthrough, you will be able to listen to your music even after closing iTunes, and if you open iTunes again before the song has finished, iTunes will recognize that the song is playing and will continue playing it normally.

  That way, you can mess with iTunes and continue listening to your music

• Revamped hebrew support. I don't know if it applies to anyone here, but now Hebrew support using Multi-Plugin is 100% automatic and transparent.

• Another useful feature for skinners and people who mess with iTunes - Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S refreshes the current skin.”

Or at least, that's what I make of it. These siteless, forum dwelling apps are hard to trace and, more often than not, poorly documented. Thanks to sryo for hunting it down. || craeonics | comments (3)

QCD released a new development version on February 28, 2006. This latest version has 3 fixes, 8 updates, and 1 new feature added: a skin colorization engine.

QCD is a fully skinnable music player. It can play most formats, and has most of the features you would expect from a modern player, including ripping/encoding. It has had steady development and a cult following for years.

• “fixed Core - many bug fixes, potential crash fixups, code refactoring

• fixed Plug - tagging new encoded MP3 file fixes

• fixed ML - Playlist renaming in playlist manager

• updated Core - Input plugin management: all access by same independant thread

• updated Core - Playlist menu builds from library playlists

• updated Core - Shuffle order now remains intact on play queue changes/adds/deletes

• updated Core - Playback Pruning mode implemented

• updated Core - Playlist renamed to 'Play Queue'

• updated Plug - ReplayGain analyzes on playback, stores in ML

• updated Plug - updated Gracenote Controls to address Playlist and MusicID issues

• updated ML - performance enhancements

• added Core - skin colorization engine”

The most interesting item in this update would be the skin colorization engine. Being unable to test it at the moment, I can only speculate what it is. My best guess would be that it is a feature similar to color themes in winamp modern skins. Exactly how it works, and what it is capable of, I look forward to finding out. Feel free to post comments on your findings. || CutTheRedWire | comments (2)