It is our sad duty to report the passing of well-known and greatly-beloved skinner Graypony. Graypony (AKA Charles Lee) departed us on April 6th. He was an early adopter of the skinning scene, and his footsteps are still visible all over the net. A guestbook for Graypony is online at the Washington Post until mid-May. His friends and family would be greatly comforted to see the kind words of just a few of the many lives he touched with his work.

Published in The Washington Post on 4/26/2006:

“Charles Allen Lee, our beloved Graypony, departed us this April 6, 2006. Charlie is survived by Marc Wagner, long time friend and companion, their families in Norfolk, VA, Eugene, OR, Ronan, MT and Athol, MA and many close friends in the Washington, D.C. area. A Memorial celebration of his life will be held for Graypony at Little Pub, 655 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. on April 30, at 12:30 p.m.”

Graypony claimed membership to the smallest club in all of skindom — those who have successfully created a new interface for the ever-vexing, yet wildly popular program called ‘Music Match Jukebox’. That is how I met him. Over the years, we shared tips-and-tricks, created a few skins together, and actually shared a few visits IRW (in the real world).

At one point, he had written a program to convert Windowblinds skins to the MMJB format — no small trick. At another time, he set an all-time record by posting three MMJB skins in one week — a feat that will, most likely, stand unchallenged forever.

The skinning scene is too young to have suffered many losses. Graypony is one of a very few who have passed from our ranks, and we will miss him dearly. Charlie was a fun guy, quick to laugh and sharp as a tack. It was a great joy for Lisa and I to hang out for a few days with him and Marc. I will treasure that time in ways I can't express to you here.

Graypony's friends and family have no idea how many lives he touched our here on the internet — it would be a blessing if we could show them how much he meant to us. If you have a moment, please drop by the Washington Post website and leave a note on the guestbook.

Thanks for your time reading this note. || kenray | comments (1)

StarDock's dock application ObjectDock has had its 1.3rd release. This build adds offset positioning and mouse activation.

“ObjectDock 1.3 adds:

• Ability to offset the docks from the edge of a screen

• Mouse activation (ObjectDock also supports hot spots). Mouse Activation allows docks to be totally hidden and then when the mouse hits the edge near where the dock is, the dock will pop on top.

• Docks can now reserve the edge of a screen so that windows cannot cover them.

• A ton of user-requested tweaks and changes to improve usability”

ObjectDock is freeware. There's also a shareware plus version ($19.95) which adds tabs, multiple docks and tray integration. || craeonics | comments

QCD is a excellent, fully skinnable, freeware music player. I can play most formats, and has all of the features you would expect from a modern player, including ripping/encoding. It has had steady development and a cult following for years. When the next stable release is made, it will officially be QMP (Quintessential Media Player). The development builds can already play movies.

“Changes:

• fixed Core - play queue logic fixups

• fixed Core - Pruning Mode delayed in removing previous track

• fixed Core - streamed playlist loading fix (bug# 1420)

• fixed Core - vis plugin config access (bug# 1407)

• fixed Core - skin extNdefaultsize setting fix

• fixed Core - playlist folder being set to root fails (bug #1355)

• fixed Core - screensaver not starting when QMP running (bugs #1189, #1430)

• fixed Core - player initialization issue that causes CDRoms to not initialize (bug #1363)

• fixed Core - play queue tracks not being updated on tag edits (bug #1438)

• fixed Plug - mono MP3 encoding fix (bug #1159)

• fixed Plug - encoded mp3 tagging issues

• fixed Plug - ID3 tag parsing crash fix (bug #1380)

• updated Core - moved CD insert action settings out of CD plugin and into player

• updated Core - play queue loading speed-ups

• updated Core - lots more fixes and tweaks

• updated ML - lots more fixes and tweaks

• added Core - Pruning Mode 'keep N previous tracks' setting

• added ML - TreeView auto-expand option”

This release has a variety of fixes and updates, particularly in the Core and Media Library (often referred to as ML in the change list). Nothing too exciting about this release. The two additions are a Pruning Mode "keeping a set number of tracks" setting, and a TreeView auto-expand option. Quite handy features, but nothing huge. Bug squishing seems to be progressing wonderfully. The coder has always been good at releasing regular development builds to address issues. If you run into any problems using the app, be sure to report it to the coder. The sooner they are fixed, the better. || cuttheredwire | comments

If you can see this message, you've stumbled across our brand spanking new server. Yup, we've moved again.

The last two or so years, Tek has been residing on panda's skinnables' server. But the man got married and is expecting twins (I'm always suspicious when these two events happen within a year) and skindom really isn't what it used to be, so he's ‘retiring’, and with him is his server.

But he is a sentimental man, so while his last few days of what was once the free life, but is soon to turn into at least twenty years of hell called ‘children’ remain, he asked his partner in crime, rubberdude, to take care of those loveable bunnies and their little, somewhat comatose, e-zine.

Yeah, I'm talking about Tek.

Rubberdude was not convinced. But when panda promised him his hovercraft (what good is a hovercraft when you have to spend the next decade changing diapers?) and gave him his Teknishirt ('cause we don't want diaper residu on our Teknishirts), he took the bait and set us up with this new server.

Truth be told, rubberdude's also taking over Skinnables. Let's hope he doesn't bite off more than he can chew.

So bamboo for Integer for keeping up with us for so long and carrots for plastic for taking over. And if the server goes down, blame me, for I told him to go with this provider.

Speaking of Tek, there are three interviews by Doreen in my fridge. I just need to find the time to do some proper defrosting. || craeonics | comments (2)

Alessandro/Allelimo of alphaSoft gave me a shout about the Explorer (the shell) enhancement package he's put together, alphaShellEx. It's a collection of homebrew and third party tools to make Explorer-usage a bit more user friendly.

“alphaSoft is back on line after years… The new project is alphaShellEx.

I've used (and I've been involved in) alternative shells for years, from Litestep (indiestep times…) to Emerge Desktop. I think I tried almost every shell for Windows, until I was forced to use explorer and XP for some time on my office computer — and, well, I kinda liked it… It was stabler and faster than 9x and NT/2K, but of course there was much things I missed from alt shells: the right-click menu, the vwm, some more customization ability. So I started working on what now is alphaDB and then I started using some very good free tools, and in the end I've put togheter a mix of custom-made tools and free available tools that I use to build my desktop.

Please feel free to try alphaShellEx, and provide feedback!”

alphaShellEx consists of the following homebrew tools which can be configured via a central control panel:

• alphaDB: a toolbar that can show the usual system statistics

• alphaDB vwm: like the name suggests, a virtual window manager

• alphaDesktop: utitily to display the desktop icons small(er)

• alphaMenu: this hooks into your desktop context menu and adds a customisable submenu

• alphaInfo: displays systems stats in a transparent window

• mouseX: a small mouse enhancement that lets you move windows with an Alt-left click anywhere in the window and resize with Alt-right click

Aside from those, it also contains the following (more or less) freeware utilities:

• ContextAware: grigri's highly versatile shell menu enhancer, that can add elements to the context menu of arbitrary files, is used here to extend the desktop menu

• MenuApp: a utility by DesktopApps to build custom context menus

• mmm: a tool by Hace that can trim unneccessary items out of context menus (yeah, context menus are a big deal in Shell Land). This app is mentioned in the alphaShellEx documentation, but the files are not there. So perhaps it's been left out because of license issues.

• Tclock light: which does much more than just alter your tray clock

I say it's heresy to proclaim Explorer superior over the likes of LiteStep, but whatever floats you boat. Best thing is that all the alphaSoft tools are open source. || craeonics | comments

QCD released a new development version on March 17th, 2006. This latest version has 10 fixes, 5 updates, and 2 additions to the Media Library: Library UI manager & View Chooser toggle.

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.

This version adds some features to the Media Library. Seems like all interface stuff. Library UI manager lets you select preferred library layout in preferences, and there is a new View Chooser that I'm guessing relates to that. I haven't tested the app out yet, so I'm in the dark.

• “fixed Plug - linein stopping playback (bug #1350)

• fixed Plug - ReplayGain properly analyzes multiple files at same time (bugs #1367, #1371)

• fixed Plug - Removed GDI+ dependancy on tageditor (bug #1333)

• fixed Core - lost filename case when loading from Explorer (bug #1349)

• fixed Core - Play Queue issues (bugs #1366, #1368, #1372, #1361)

• fixed Core - Win9x compatibility layer fixes

• fixed Core - loading skin ini from subfolder of loose skins

• fixed Core - external browser sizing issues (bugs #1299, #1300)

• fixed Core - restores play queue to last played track on startup

• fixed Core - autoplay settings fix (bug #1381)

• updated Core - Pruning mode now removes skipped tracks

• updated Core - added option to load playlists from ML or not

• updated ML - added 'Only update empty fields' option to MusicID

• updated ML - 'find in files' columnset matches audio/video columnset's layout (bug #1214)

• updated ML - updated Portable Device plugin

• added ML - Library UI manager: select preferred library layout in prefs

• added ML - View Chooser toggle”

I didn't notice this last time, but if you look closely, the update isn't to CQD###.exe anymore. Now it is to QMP###.exe, which stands for Quintessential Media Player. So, yes, it plays movies now. I'm not sure if I should being using that name or keep the old one, but there is no stable/official/non-development build of QMP. That change is probably coming, but until then, I'll be sticking with QCD for consistency purposes. || cuttheredwire | comments (3)