Styles XP WindowBlinds Themess and Time

Eeek! Am I reading this backwards?

As far as I can recall, in my version of history, there are many more WB skins than StyleXP ones....porting happened in the other direction, and the comment regarding copyrights, etc was almost hilarious if it wasn't so damn annoying, seeing that the StylesXP 'skins' were so often stolen from WB artists.

I guess I must be in an odd parallel universe....

Lessee...

Almost 1500 unique WB skins...

Roughly 100 StylesXP themes, several of which are rips of well-known WB skins.

What's the point of this thread again?

I mean, XP based, with the full taskbar, start menu and all the other XP based features... WindowBlinds by far has more skins no doubt, but XP wise, somewhere Styles XP and the other programs got ahead on the XP based skinning.

ChrisNYC99,

I disagree entirely with the "got ahead" part of your last comment. I can't see (and yes, I have tried StylesXP) how StylesXP is ahead of Windowblinds 3.x in any way, shape, or form. Have you actually tried the latest version of Windowblinds?

I agree with Jafo. Although I have seen a few very good "original" themes for StylesXP, the vast majority appear to be "rips" of Windowblinds themes created by some great skinners.

I've gone through the themexp library over the holidays:

220 skins (when I did the count)

Luna with different colors: 165
Aqua or some other OS : 22
Couldn't tell: 15
Original: 18 (some of which would get rejected here on quality issues).

You can go through them yourself as it's not really a judgement call.

So there are really only 18 actual skins. 40 if you count Aqua ones. There are 51 WindowBlinds skins optimized for XP, none of which are Luna recolored.

WB can colorize Luna on the fly so you don't need 165 colorizations.

If you click on the "Advanced" button in the appearance tab you can assign the Start bar of any skin to be your Start bar always so you can always have an XP Start bar.

All I have to ask is when WB is going to actually going to be able to skin the left side option area on XP (in folders and such). Compared to the skinning capabilities of Styles XP, I think WB is down on just that note. As far as skins go, there is no doubt WB is on top. But come on XP has a nice look, and when you apply a skin and it is just bright white on the left side area, that kinda ruins it.

Windows XP without WindowBlinds:
https://www.stardock.com/temp/xpnotskinning.gif

Add WindowBlinds:
https://www.stardock.com/temp/wbskinned.gif

OK. That is wonderful and all, but why don't you show the regular folders (i.e. my docs, my computer, or something like those). I'm not disagreeing that WB is better than StyleXP, however I'm just wondering why on StyleXP you can skin the left options area really nicely, and on WB you can't yet?

Rick-o, what do you mean the left panel is white? The left panel takes the colors of your display properties. I only made one XP skin so far for WB, but if you look at the screenshot: https://www.wincustomize.com/library/accounts/paxx/winxp/Stronghold_SS.jpg you will see the left panel is the correct color.
Only things that would be nice to get skinned are the scrollbar and the little arrow thingies.

Style XP doesn't "skin" anything. It just patches out the security in Windows XP so you can use any third party made msstyle. Secondly, XP's "engine" doesn't skin Explorer or Internet Explorer. Instead, Internet Explorer and Explorer are in themselves skinnable programs (partly) that detect when you've applied a new style and grab the appropriate pieces.

Why doesn't Windows XP skin WinAmp and Trillian? Because those two programs skin themselves. We'll eventually skin those two apps (explorer.exe and iexplorer.exe) but it's down the list.

ROFLMAO

You know when I heard that StylesXP was available I thought great - at last Stardock get some competition, because with competition you have even more reason to make your product better than your competitor. I could ignore the sad excuse for a theme TGT provided because others were bound to bring out some really great work that would make the app a viable one that was worth using.

Unfortunatly so far nobody doing themes with StylesXP shows the least sign of coming up with something that I would want to use to skin my Windows> If I was to be honest - dammit I will be - the only thing I have seen so far is just plain butt ugly showing little skill and even less imagination ... sorry StylesXP people but unfortunatly there ain't a treetog or Alexandria amongst you period.

Even more depressing is seeing the hard work of others being ripped, or seemingly endless attempts to create yet another Aqua-like theme when there are already enough. If I wanted a variation on Luna then I would sooner get the crayons out and do it myself and how many more are going to throw up another shot at Longhorn.

So, as things stand, Stardock have no competition - however I hope Stardock and Brad ain't going to use that as a excuse not to make WB even better than it is now.

I was just talking about skinning in the folders and such how the left "pane" area can be a different color or scheme than the actual folder background itself. I like that look a lot and think it distinguishes XP from the previous OS's. In WB, the left "pane"(for heaven's sake, I can't think of what that area is called in XP:() is just the color of the theme (i.e. the whole folder background) rather than looking as a separate entity, which is sometimes overwhelming if you have a skin that has a white folder background. Sorry if my explanation is misleading.

Very jumpy crowd... Anyway, I love WindowBlinds, I would never switch to Styles XP, for all the features mentioned above below, the speed of WindowBlinds, and the security issues the other programs have. But I did like a few themes from StylesXP. I'm still hoping a few people will turn those into WindowBlinds XP skins, like the Windows.Net skin, and yes add a few more Aqua skins. I hate Macs, but I like Aqua. I know Brad and Stardock will continue making all their programs better because they are a good company and are committed to their users.

There are more than enough Aqua skins as it is, including an XP-optimized one.

How about actually MAKING a skin instead of asking these people to lower their standards and port a bunch of half-baked StylesXP themes?

dude chill out. some of the StylesXP themes do look tight though, but WB is the better of the two. I think you may have had a bad day. Cheer up.

With a post like that you might as well cover yourself with blood and run into a pack of hungry wolves. These people have no time or tolerance for anything StylesXP. WindowBlinds users have a kind of cult mentality. Hey FIrestorm, sit boy!

Window Blinds users do NOT have a cult mentality, they just recognise quality. And why should we have time or tolerance for a substandard product?

Grrinder, you may be right for certain people but it's not true for most people. I'm sure most people here tried Style XP, but most found that Windowblinds was better. And since they are both pretty much the same price why not go for the better of the two?
But that's besides the point. The original question was related to the skins available for StyleXP and those available for Windowblinds. 95% of the themes made for MSSTYLES are pretty crappy, but Hey! To each his own thing. I had a friend who thought that Windows 3.1 had a prettier interface than 95...

I still wonder why people think that StyleXP is a skinning program. Its not. Its just a dll patch to remove Microsoft's security.

So all the skinning you see, when using StyleXP, is actually MicroSoft's skinning engine.

I still don't have XP.......

Rick-o, go to the folder you want to have the "Left Pane" look different. Open the folder.htt document for that folder in notepad. Make any changes you want and save, then refresh the folder. Every folder can be customized individually. Have fun.

please, oh please, when will the left task pane in windows explorer be able to be "skinned". i know how it's seperate from the rest of the skinnable parts of the OS and all that jazz...i'm just want to know when that part will be customizable without a hack. to me, the fact that it defaults to the "unskinned" (or whatever it is) version is the biggest drawback WB has got going for it. yes, yes...it's not WB's fault, it's MS, but i've gotta believe the good folks at stardock can come up with an easy solution down the line.

wow, say "StylesXP" and grrinder slimes his way out of the woodwork... Ten bucks to the person who guesses the analogy I'm thinking of

Firestorm:
My question is are you sitting?

The left pane part will get skinned, we have it skinned internally but have to put together a format. That's where a lot of the work comes into play. We haven't even documented the Smart buttons adequately yet. Microsoft has legions of technical writers who can document this stuff but we have to document and create our format ourselves (That's why we get very defensive when people talk of making a "converter" or using our skin languages or formats without our permission - it's tedious work that gets little credit in how hard it is to do).

As for Grinnder, indeed, for a guy who has put a lot of energy over the months being a Style XP cult member, it's pretty ironic he'd make that charge. You don't see WindowBlinds users making posts like "Style XP sucks" or "Msstyles are lame!" WB advocates usually actually express concrete reasons for their choice.

Consider these posts:
http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9513
http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9514

These are from this week. One has to wonder where the "cult" it. It takes a certain type of mentality to advocate something that is demonstratably inferior made by a multi billion dollar corporation. "From the people who brought you Active Desktop comes MSSTYLES!"