It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets. My brooding upon the essence f being was interrupted by an unexpected visitor. In from the cold came not the gorgeous redhead I was expecting, but Andrew Powell, developer of widget app Kapsules and addict of .NET. Lord, have mercy.

“Heya Crae,

I've kind of returned to developing again. I'm pimping Rumshot for a while, while I take a break from Kapsules. Behold ;)

See this post, because I'm too lazy to type it again… hehe…

Peace!”

“This sounds like a mystery”, the redhead excitedly whispered in my ear. Meanwhile, Andrew had collapsed in the corner and was heading straight for La La Land. I got up, slit on my jacket and went into town to track down this enigmatic message A-man had so cryptically spoken of and at the same time escape the foul odour of alcohol that seemed to suddenly fill my office.

Finally, in a joint you'd never find gorgeous redheads in, but which smelled just as bad, I came across the message scribbled on the bathroom wall.

“Rumshot is an application for Windows similar to SnapShooter (Mac OS X) . Rumshot is designed to create a beautifully framed preview in a few seconds, as well as taking screenshots of your desktop. Rumshot supports themes for its previews. While Rumshot ships with only one default theme, you can download the extra Theme Packs, or easily create one.

Rumshot makes it a snap to generate a stylish preview image for posting your screenshot on the web with no need to have or use Photoshop or any other image editing application. Have an FTP account or site somewhere on the internet? Rumshot can even upload your preview and screenshot for you.”

“Yeah”, I said to myself, “that all sounds swell and what not, but you still need to inject yourself with .NET before you see the pretty colours”. Then all went black and the next thing I knew I woke up in the alley behind the Chinese take-away restaurant, with a dog sniffing my face.

Sans redhead. || craeonics | comments (7)

Aside from the fact that it's SkinBase's 6th birthday, the 2006 GUI Championships, formerly known as the GUI Olympics, kicks off today.

“The GUI's is the ultimate Graphical User Interface (GUI) competition. Graphics designers from around the world will be competing in three primary GUI categories; Icons, Visual Styles and Wallpapers. This years' competition has a prize pool totaling near $12,000!

Starting Tuesday, September 12th, skinners will be able to submit their work to the competition website, with the first events being judged in early October, and the overall "Best Skinner" crowned the second week of November.”

There's been a simplification compared to the previous two competitions, as there are only three categories remaining. Interesting to note that all three deal with core OS customisation aspects and that there are no categories for skinnable apps.

Sign of the times? || craeonics | comments (17)

The eternally beta, freeware, skinnable shell, SharpE, has another release out.

Some words from the developer:

“This release contains the first public release of the new CPU Monitor and Volume Control modules. The CPU Monitor has been rewritten completely and now features 3 different drawing modes and the Volume Control module makes it possible to change the sound volume for any input or output sound mixer of your system.

Besides this more improvements have been on made on the System Tray service. The whole system how tray icons are handled has changed (again) and now the system tray should work much more like the original tray of the explorer shell.

Also many refreshing and flickering bugs in the SharpBar should be fixed now. SharpBar startup and Theme loading has been improved by blend in/out effects.

And last but not least - two new skins are included in this release!”

For those that don't know what SharpE is, it's an alternative shell noteworthy for its powerful module bar. If this is either news to you, you shouldn't use this beta. The coders have actually asked news posters to warn people the product is a beta. || cuttheredwire | comments (2)

8start launcher is an interesting program launcher that focuses more on easy of access and configuration than anything else. It also has an impressive button configuration. This version adds access to folders rather than just programs. The coder is very interested is user suggestions and feedback, so please give this one a try.

At first glance, it may seem like it's an average "bunch of icons" program launcher, but that's no the case. Icons can be sorted into categories and groups. Select a different category, and you get totally different groups of icons showing. It also can show drive space usage (although it only worked for my c: drive). This is fit into the app as if it were an icon. The number of icons in a row, and the drives show, are controlled in the settings.

This version adds access to folders rather than just programs. Hit "Open File Explorer" to add them.

Installing the new version is a snap. Just be sure to let the installer overwrite the old stuff. All your settings will be there.

I may have missed this last time, or it might be an undocumented new feature, but you can do some crazy stuff with the buttons. There are a myriad of settings for text positioning, button size, icon size/placement. However you want the icons, you can have them. || cuttheredwire | comments

LaunchBar Commander is a skinnable program launcher that is aiming to be flexible, light on resources, and easy to configure.

“Changes:

• Now .lnk extensions are not shown in virtual folder menus

• Better sorting in virtual folder menus

• New option in virtual folder menus to use dividers between letter groups

• Virtual folder menu item names were being displayed incorrectly when filtering was applied

• Added automatic backup process that backs up config tree files whenever saving new versions

• Icons can now use environmental variables in paths

• Better support for old fashioned folder nodes (click to open in file explorer)

• Loads default Launch Bar on first use

• Fixed broken help file shortcut.

• Option to Hide missing items on a dock.”

It is designed so that you can make extensive use of menus, rather than just have a few buttons. It also can have multiple docks in a variety or configurations. Configuration can be done through a complete tree view editor or by the "drag-n-drop" method. It also can handle some system folders, with more being planned. || cuttheredwire | comments

Rainlender, the skinnable calendar program, has a new beta out for its 2.0 release. If you don't know what rainlender is, look around at some screen shots. You'll see it used often. The app has an excellent reputation. It also works as a LiteStep plugin, impressively. Here is a blurb from the help file:

“Rainlendar is a full featured calendar application. It can store your daily events and task and keep them visible on your desktop all the time. The appearance of the calendar can be changed with skins to make it match your desktop. The application is very customizable so you can configure it for your liking.”

The 2.0 version will work on windows and linux, and will have a pro version. Here is how Rainy, himself, put it, and I don't think it could be stated better:

“The beta is the pro version of Rainlendar2 which means that also the Outlook and network calendar support is included. However since most of you don't have a license file, the calendar displays "[Unregistered]" text in events that originate from Outlook or from a network calendar. Licenses are not available yet.”

Special thanks to sryo of Blizzle for pointing this out. || cuttheredwire | comments

Dana is a simple, skinnable IRC client. It's actually been around for a fair amount of time, but not many have heard of it.

There isn't too much to say about Dana. It's a basic IRC client. It just connects and works. No file transfer or anything fancy. Between that, and ~300k file size, it's blazing fast. It does let you store a number of servers, and even has a favorites list. It also connects to you favorite channel on launch, and the icon blinks if there is not connection. Naturally, it keeps a log file. Simple features, but everything you need.

The skinning format is pretty simple and straight forward. One odd thing is that the images have to be in a folder with a .dcs extension. Another odd thing is that the site lists skins in a single .dcs file. They aren't renamed zip files (I tried). They might be another archive type, but it's hard to say with that part of the site being only in German (despite a link that claims to be in English).

If you want something simple and skinnable, this may be perfect for you. Those used to more robust clients will find it lacking in many features. If those kinds of apps are too much for you, then you many have found yourself an IRC client. It won't steal away any mIRC users, but it is fun to play with. || cuttheredwire | comments (7)