![]() 3 years later, the second program of the new genre arrived – Konfabulator.ĭesktopX was more powerful – it supported C++ plugins and could build desktops and create (with the Pro version) stand-alone programs. The decade saw the release of DesktopX which allowed users to build their own desktops through objects which could also be exported as stand alone mini-applications (later called widgets). Widgets, Gadgets, Objects = cool technologies looking for a practical use. In 2007, Winamp 5.5 was released which helped make it feature competitive with other players. Unfortunately, it’s fate has been largely tied to its popularity as a media player which has seen a decline as iTunes slowly took over and Windows Media player finally got to be “good enough”. Winamp is a media player that became very popular in the late 90s and helped popularize the term “skinning” in the first place. You can’t seriously do one of these skinning lists without mentioning Winamp. This strategy has led to its continued popularity to this day. WinStep isn’t a replacement shell as much as it is a way to extend Explorer. Hoverdesk became popular for a time but ceased development in 2003. Its popularity has declined as Windows explorer improved and system memory has increased but it remains in active development to this date. The Windows shell was, for the time, bloated, slow, and feature poor. Back in 2000, Litestep had a significant following. No list would be complete without talking about Litestep, the shell that let users replace Explorer. Without uxtheme and msstyles, I think it’s safe to say that skinning would never have gotten as popular as it did. What can be said is that msstyle skinners helped enrich the skinning community with some great designs. Many flame wars ensued over whether it was a good idea to patch system files. It didn’t take long before uxtheme was cracked to allow for additional skins which paved the way for programs like Style XP and a cottage industry of third-party msstyles. Unexpectedly, having created an engine that could do skinning, Microsoft never went beyond the Luna skin and locked the file format. Where WindowBlinds used wblind.dll Microsoft went with uxtheme.dll. One presumes Microsoft has access to the Windows source but instead chose to implement skinning the same way Stardock did – by creating a DLL that hooks to every process and intercepts paint calls to draw a skin for a file. Unfortunately, the method WindowBlinds used was done because developer Stardock didn’t have access to the Windows source code. In 2000, Microsoft liked the idea of WindowBlinds so much that they decided to use its implementation as the basis for a new skinning system in Windows XP. The success of WindowBlinds sparked a cottage industry of skinning programs but none (so far) have rivaled WindowBlinds in terms of sheer popularity.Īs WindowBlinds reached the end of the decade, it had seen the release of 4 new operating systems – Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and it’s still going strong.Īs much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, GUI skinning can’t be discussed without talking about uxtheme patching. WindowBlinds demonstrated both the marvels of skinning and its occasional depravity by letting users completely change the look and feel of the Windows GUI. ![]() No discussion of skinning would be complete without WindowBlinds. ![]() Let’s take a look at some of the highs and lows of skinning for the past decade. In that time, we’ve seen skinning rise from being a power user niche to being mainstream and now returning to being a power user niche again. I could possibly understand why it may get cut off at the top, but moving up off the ground?Īnyone else have this problem, or ever see anything like this or have any suggestions?Ĭhanging the jdeskworkarea so far has proved to be futile as the changes i make only just seem to cut things off further.The decade is just about over. not only that but now the maximized window comes off the ground, whereas before if the window were maximized it would have extended all the way to the bottom of the screen. When i run windowblinds with any skin, when the window becomes maximized it's hard to explain so i'll have to show this in a a screenshot.īasically, the window goes above where the workarea is, but gets cutoff at the point where the workarea border is. I created a nice desktop setup with litestep which you can see here if ya want.Īnyways, my jdeskwork area is set so that when windows are maximized they don't overtake my taskbar up top, so my only setting is for the top
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