What is Digg?58 Comments
- lhnz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19The msstyles skins (which you don't have to pay for) are the nicest though.
- TychoQuad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I don't mean to be rude to the authors, but if that's the best of the best from 2006, I'm afraid I'm not very pleased with the result.
- ImWatchingYou, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14@Phyltre
Window Blinds, which is what they are using, is not free. - tnvwboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I'm a fan of skins and some of these are pretty decent, but this is just one dudes opinion and I don't agree on a few of those. It IS nice however to have a round up of quality skins. So often you go looking for skins and there are 100 crap ones for every 1 that is worth using.
- hokkos, on 10/12/2007, -11/+18The definition of UGLY, and thanks for the spam, I won't buy it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Rosco:
WindowBlinds themes require LESS system resources than the built-in skinning API used by Windows XP (not counting the themes that use heavy transparency, but you can disable that). Your argument about it being a system hog is ignorant ***** and FUD. - se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Is this SFW? ;-)
- clemsontiger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8not all of them use window blinds. some use a patch on your computer that can let you install custom skins on your rig. don't be so hasty in your conclusions.
- mbup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5foobar2k
http://www.foobar2000.org/ - Draginol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What OS doesn't require third party tools for advanced customization? Mac does. And Linux is, by its nature, 100% "third-party".
- renegadeafk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Foobar 2000
- se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't know why you're getting dug down. You make a very valid point.
I've got a few machines under 1Ghz running XP and if you turn off the styles and just use the good ole` Win98 theme, it will make a huge difference. Even if you've got a faster machine and you do that, you'll notice a huge performance increase. - tigreblanco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7For some reason I thought this would be about porn....
- jasz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ah, didnt have time to edit my previous post.. just wanted to say that I think it is funny that some XP themes are very similar to some themes I've seen in default GNOME, KDE and even Xfce environments... And I've seen gnome/kde/xfce themes that look like MacOSX and Vista... so it seems like the only winners are us, the users who are able to choose the look n' feel we like the most :)
- sdyson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sorry, didn't make myself clear. Microsoft have deliberately made it so that out of the box the most you can do to XP is change the colours of their default OS theme. Since they have built in support for skinning XP why can't different skins be applied to the OS without buying a third party tool to "unlock" this capability?
- GreenReaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, it's a question of what "best" is. If you define "best" as "most popular", you can just just search by total downloads ( http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=1&sort=dlall ). I personally think this is a poor method. If you think it's "highest rated", then you can search on rating ( http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=1&sort=rating ). Or, you can just have a look at the personal picks of someone who's been in the skinning community for a long time.
In all of these cases, you are probably going to disagree with some of the choices - maybe even most of them. But they're all significantly better than just a random pick. - cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@whiteguysamurai - Behind the times? WTF are you smoking? I don't see Windows or OSX using 3D effects (other than transparency) or even capable of it. Beryl is my default WM on Ubuntu and hasn't crashed once on me unless I did something to ***** it up, and even then it just falls back to Metacity.
- vagarach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I must say, Thallos is really good. All very subtle and softly hued. Finally I've found a visual styles theme better than luna!
- Rosco, on 10/12/2007, -11/+13WindowBlinds is crap, costs to much and hogs way to much memory. Why can't they have the same skinning contest for StyleXP or the FREE release of their uxtheme.dll? Until then I'll consider Wincustomize as spam.
- GreenReaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Good question. My bet - partly they wanted to control the brand, but mostly they didn't want the hassle. I believe the product manager even posted something specific about this once - along the lines of "we wanted to, but it was too damn buggy with anything but the one we'd set it up to work with." Menu support, for example, was taken out, probably because it's technically hard to do without messing up programs
Remember, if something in Windows crashes, Microsoft tends to get the blame. I imagine they don't want their support system to be used for finding out that the problem was caused by third-party modifications. There is a significant cost to making any type of interface that is meant to be used by the public. - IslandDog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Then what theme do you consider some of the best from 2006?
- GreenReaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You're thinking of the "premium" skins . . .
- sdyson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The non Windowsblinds skins don't look as good though.
- tankexmortis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2All I want is a nice, low-memory, minimalistic, space-saving skin for XP that lets me use my Quick Launch bar. I could care less about shininess. I have yet to see one better in those regards than Windows Classic, so I'd love it if some kind Digger could point me toward one.
My favorite skins are ones like 16Bit Amp for Winamp (http://www.winampskins.info/71/16Bit-Amp.html) or miniFox Flat for Firefox (http://membres.lycos.fr/sethnakht/#miniFoxFlat). Simple and efficient. Seems like that's an unpopular preference though. - GreenReaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No base OS provider provides such advanced customization of the user interface because it is not in their best interests or in the interests of the people who pay the most money for their software (corporations). They also have to support it for everyone, when it is only of interest to a relatively minor number of users. You could as easily say "why doesn't Windows have more games?"
Now, there are people who _do_ want more games, and they are often even willing to pay money for it, if it's a good game. Same for desktop customization. What OS providers need to do is to help ensure that such customization *can* be added. That's all you can really expect. - lifeinanalog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does anyone know what music player is being shown in Schluepfer's Klarheit style?
http://www.stardock.com/brad/img58.jpg (link to the styles screen shot) - ZingMan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here is the Free way to skin your Windows PC:
Get Uxtheme Multi-patcher if you are using Windows XP.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml
Or use VistaGlazz Theme patcher if you are using Windows Vista
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12767
There are thousands custom visual styles (.msstyles) online. - Pertuberant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Another interpretation - Skins are for those constantly changing.
- Draginol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Rosco apparently didn't bother to look and notice that uxtheme skins (msstyles) are in there and Winamp skins are in there.
- KayIslandDrunk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Which is great for us with ATI cards.... doh!
- GreenReaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's not going to format your computer, if that's what you mean. We cannot 100% guarantee that it will work perfectly with every application, but this sort of thing has improved over time (in part because those applications which had problems with WindowBlinds also had problems with XP or Vista when *they* started skinning).
- SuperFarStucker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They're garish. Creating a good skin is basically witchcraft, the only hope people doing it in their freetime have is biting off of the success of the professionals. I think I'd actually prefer classic to any of those. Apple has a leg up on everyone in this department IMO but Aero is also quite respectable.
It would be much better if they completely abandoned legacy fonts though. Calibri/Candara/Cambria/Segoe UI/Consolas are vastly superior to Arial/Tahoma/Times New Roman/Tahoma/Courier New. Helvetica is also a righteous font family. - onidraky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Windowblinds does use less system resources, yes, but I've stopped using it because it isn't very stable, and isn't worth the headache every few days when something goes wrong just to have transparencies. I've found not many of Stardock's programs are very stable. I just use LogonStudio and IconPackager. But I'm up to switching back to Windowblinds if I see a skin I really really like, which there haven't been many of.
- Dycacian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I like some of these. I wonder if the free windowBlinds is safe.
- Alfdog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Can I vote Jessica Alba? Oh wait, this is Digg... I mean GUI's are 1337
- violentvinyl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Skins will always have their place. I try to add as much flair to my laptop as possible without affecting performance. I use mine for DJing though, so the impact I make visually is almost as important as the impact I make aurally. I have a Dell XPS with the LEDs in it and the front panel that I can put custom graphics into, and people notice it, and often compliment on how amazing my setup is. For most people, bright flashing lights and a slick interface are more than enough. For some of us, it's our job to impress those people. The PC is a tool, but like any other tool, not everyone uses it the same way.
(I don't use skins, all of my screen real estate is dedicated to software when I'm gigging. Windows isn't even visible unless I minimize whatever I'm working in.) - strabes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@whiteguysamurai: For free.
- questionable, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@whiteguysamurai
Actually, Aqua and Aero would be a better term, since they're the names for the GUI/Visual Themes for OSX and Vista, respectively.Quartz is the actual graphics layer for OSX.
One of the themes looks like some tried to paste GNOME onto windows.. - jasz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@whiteguysamurai: what are Quartz and Fiji?
- trylleklovn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1http://www.stardock.com/brad/bestof2.jpg
- se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Perhaps it should have been based on the number of downloads rather than his opinion.
- Robin12, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Draginol is Brad Wardell, the guy who wrote the article. Island Dog is his employee who is nothing more then an astroturfer that posts these same advertisement "stories" on a whole collection of websites like Neowin and Customize.
- crypticone, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Great Find, thanks a lot
- clemsontiger, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2kol, the one who made the second one on there, is amazing in my opinion. I get all my stuff from his website www.studiotwentyeight.com . he has some impressive wallpapers as well.
- OneAMCoffee, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Look at the only stores Draginol has dugg, they are from someone called IslandDog, same account? I think so! Dugg down for spam.
- Rosco, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4From the article:
"WindowBlinds is a 3rd party program developed by Stardock (whom I work for)"
Yep, spam. - denacem, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1take a look at the one called "Aquanox VS", seems like it was very hot in london these days.
http://www.stardock.com/brad/Aquanox_VS_by_cyberchaos05%5B1%5D.jpg - lhnz, on 10/12/2007, -10/+8Looks pretty pointless and unusable to me.
- hadak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1that's very....gnome of you.
I much prefer this (other gnome looking) theme.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/27877459/ - minolium, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1some of those are horrible! others are just Vista knockoffs.
here are some nice simple suites http://www.4impressions.net -
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