If I dare to ask..

Do you mean "rated" 10 out of 10 which you see by viewing the comments section to see the ratings? Or do you mean the top 10 downloads or the top 10 authors shown on the web page (which is determined by daily downloads, if I recall correctly)? Is there a listing of the top rated skins?

sig101, if you want to see the top 20 skins for the day, all you have to do isclick on the top downloads section. It will bring up the top 20 for everything.

WOM, yo buddy, learn something new every day, that's what I always say....

Hello Jam. Glad I could help. Click on the top ten and it will do the same.

I seriously cannot believe that I never noticed those links before......duh!
It never even occurred to me...

I guess I should have said top author. I am tired, been a long week.

Jam, a lot of people don't realize that you can do that. I didn't know for a while till I clicked on it, so then I went around and clicked on everything to see what would happen.

Sally, thats the 3rd nick. You going to keep this one?

Delicious...I have been known to even rate treetog 'low' [much to his chagrin]....I doubt there is any 'real' blind-adulation. If someone gives a '10' it is quite conceivable that they just really think that the skin works/looks really good for THEM.
It is not always a determination of whether all button states being different is the 'deciding criteria'....quite often it can be the author's intent that they are specifically NOT different as that suits their particular style and purpose...

I do agree that many of the best skins do seem to leave out certain components that I wish they would have, especially the checkbox, radio, and spinner buttons. However, if the skin is good overall, I'd give it a high score anyway, because those problems can be easily rectified in my opinion.

I asked this question once before and got no answer but a run around. It doesn't matter to me about ratings but appreciation is what matters.

Downloads don't seem to be accurate rate of appreciation because like someone said, they could be downloaded and deleted. The rating is a more reliable form of show of appreciation.

All my skins dropped 2 to 3 points the last few days and that upset me some. An example, my bottoms up cursors IMO are just as good as any and now just mediayoker.

I was looking at a top rated skin the other day and noticed that the vertical taskbars were all messed up. How can this be on a top rated skin.

I won't mention the skin name but it was featured at one time.

Tell me that is not favoritism.

"lazy graphics" what about excessive! some are just way too busy and unusable. seeing as we are not mentioning names of skins I won't. Minimal is sometimes better not only in looks but also resources.

True to the point, static

A past poll was done and simple skins were most popular.

My PC is 3 yrs old, 433 mhz celeron processor, with 191mg of ram. When windows and everything loads I have about 30mg of memory left. If a skin loads without a warning that I am out of memory then it will load on anyone's machine ok.

My tried and true method of testing!

Gee I'd rather people didn't alter their nicks...I have no idea who I'm talking to...or whether I'm just repeating myself to the same person...

I think that often the artist is not being lazy but frugal. In my case, I've created skins that have every, or very nearly every, bitmap made fresh. I've also created skins that have many repeated bitmaps. If the skin design really calls for it I design all new bitmaps for it. Sometimes, though, I will use the exact same bitmap for one thing. For example, my skin Spander uses one bitmap for all the titlebar buttons. My original upload to WC of this skin had one bitmap for each button, but I realized that it was a waste of Kb's. Remember, not all people have DSL connections. Most still have 56K dial-up. By changing my Spander skin the way I did, I was able to shave 60 Kb's off the size. To someone with dial-up, this is a plus.

Point is, I only create new bitmaps if they are essential to the design. Buttons, titlebars and borders with bitmaps showing their dormant/inactive states are superfluous in my opinion. Who cares what they look like when they're not being used? I don't!

If there are ways to make the skins file size smaller then why not?

Everyone should remember this, everything is made for the maker and uploaded to share with others. Note the word "share". If the artist was getting paid for their work, I'am sure it would be to the payers likes in every way. So if somethings are left out, I would guess the artist doesn't use, want or need it. SO if you downloaded it and it's not to your likeing, delete it and move on till you find one that suits you. If it's still a good or great piece of work then rate it as such. As for the rest of this topic.....

Listen, I think that's human nature. People have generally a favorable prejudice towards people who they know have done good stuff in the past.
I've heard crappy songs from popular singers that went #1.
Fans of artists are bound to like almost anything from that artist.

And the worse the song is to you the more it will be played.

No, it's just that if you really hate the song then it just seems like it gets to much air play, since even once is too much.

Yes, I change my on-line name a couple weeks ago. I figured if anyone was curious who was who they would look at the profile.

Ti-ss the season to be Jolly, fa la la la la la la la la!

Yep delicious, that's what happens when you have made good stuff. If you think the skin rating is too high, downgrade it...I also believe there is a biased look towards what is uploaded. I might start doing that too, so far I have given some constructive criticism and just left the ratings intact. What I also noticed, if you have some criticism your own work gets downgraded LMAO. I'd say don't worry about ratings (although I don't like the idea of visitors only seeing works rated 7 or higher), be pleased with what you have achieved. The top authors are the people that jave submitted the most works, the more you upload the sooner you will be in top authors section. It doen't say much though.

Well, at least non-members do not see a rating.