Windows Vista officially sucks for skinning
Friday, May 14, 2010 by Kevin_Walter | Discussion: Windows Vista
I'm not sure how much of this is Stardock's fault. (very little, I'm sure, though there do seem to be some really strange skin studio design decisions...)
I've come to the conclusion that Windows Vista is absolutely TERRIBLE as a platform when it comes to skinning. I don't have the money for it right now but I'm thinking about removing Vista from my laptop entirely and either installing XP or Win7. Or even both.
There are just SO MANY parts of Vista that are either unskinnable, or they seem to have very limited skinning options. And yes, I'm going to list some examples...
First of all, there's the command bar...
This monstrosity isn't content with having annoying icons that you can't change (or at least, I don't think it's possible), but you are also unable to edit the font. I could put up with that if the font didn't have that God-awful blurry outer glow on it. It makes it very hard for skinning. Not only that, but the color of the font itself is tied directly to your active window background color. So if you want a truly dark skin that includes dark window tables, you are practically forced to create the lightest command bar possible, and as you should be able to see from the above image, even that doesn't always work.
The next evil little section of the GUI that limits your creativity is the navigation pain.
No, that wasn't a typo. It really is a pain. As far as I can tell, you are unable to change the color of the text for this pane (though I could have overlooked it somewhere). Not only that, but you also are restricted from changing the text on the folders button. As if this weren't bad enough, there is absolutely no way to change the color or design of the grabber bars on the right side of this pane, and apparently even background behind "Favorite Links". It makes this particular panel so ugly, I've been forced to keep it out of sight and out of mind. It may be a non-issue for lighter skins but for those of us who like a darker feel, it's a nightmare!
Those two alone would be enough for me to give Vista the "Official Skillet Stamp of Disapproval" but Vista (and probably the other OSs but I haven't really skinned for those) go on to make changing the system colors almost impossible. This is the part where I don't know how much of it is Stardock's fault. There are tons of colors for text and borders and tables and half of the are allocated to the same one color. As an example, I can go back to the Command bar example.
As you can see in the picture of the Command Bar above, the text is black. Fixing that is simple enough... you just change the active window background color! Oh... but look what happens then...
Oh look. The Command bar is fixed. But something is terribly wrong with that sound menu now. And that isn't even half of the things that get changed when you edit the window backgrounds. Even the color of some of the text in Photoshop was changed.
This particular problem makes me wonder why more of the colors in Skin Studio aren't able capable of being changed separately. I mean, there's no reason for the command bar text and the window backgrounds to be linked together in any way. The only reason I could see for this being so is that they're somehow linked in Vista. But if you can change them at all in Skin Studio, should you not be able to change them separately as well?
It's a quandary. One that I've been pondering a lot and getting increasingly baffled by. I don't really want to live in a world where it makes sense. Because if it makes sense in that world.. what else would make sense? A picture of Darth Vader standing in the ocean pouring water from a pitcher into a jug?
I should hope not.
Reply #2 Saturday, May 15, 2010 1:36 AM
Windows 7 isn't any better, the only way to get just about everything skinned is to hack a bunch of resources and use an app called "Windows Style Builder"(in which I have) it to has some limitations, but not as many as Skinstudio does! Most of the limitations in WSB ( mainly font color) that I have run into are not the fault of the app, but are hard coded in the OS itself.
Reply #3 Saturday, May 15, 2010 2:14 AM
I agree with this post 200%. Vista/7 skinning is a pain in the ass.
Reply #4 Saturday, May 15, 2010 4:27 AM
Change skin colors > Edit Vista/Win7 part colours > Common Places text in explorer
true
That is also in the color section. Button face or one of the shadow colors......Sorry I don't remember at the moment. I'm sure someone else could tell you. I do remember that when you change it it will screw up another section, however 
I agree with you. Vista skins like ass!
Reply #5 Saturday, May 15, 2010 5:12 AM
Yeah, seriously. It's starting to annoy me so much, I almost want to give up on skinning until I can afford to buy XP.
BTW, IS THERE a way to remove the icons in the command bar? Or is that some kind of Win7 only feature?
Reply #6 Saturday, May 15, 2010 6:12 AM
sometimes as a skinner you have to learn to live with it.........some stuff is hard coded.
Reply #7 Saturday, May 15, 2010 1:28 PM
BTW, IS THERE a way to remove the icons in the command bar? Or is that some kind of Win7 only feature?
There probably is a way, but it will involve editing a UIfile in a .EXE or .DLL file and I really haven't tried it in Vista so I really don't know for sure.
I do know you can remove the help icon(if you want to remove that also), but don't remember what file it is in seeing I haven't had Vista on my machine for quite some time now.
In windows 7 I removed the help button from the command module in the shellstyle.dll UIfile 1 by:
changing the text:
<if id="atom(help)">
<Button3d
background="dtb(CommandModule, 3, 1)"
to this:
<if id="atom(search)">
<Button3d
background="dtb(CommandModule, 3, 1)"
Skinstudio and Windowblinds are great programs, but like I said before if you want to be able to skin every nook and cranny you need to edit the .msstyle, shellstyle.dll, Explorer.exe, shell32.dll, ExplorerFrame.dll and others which can be more of a pain in the ass than dealing with limitations in SKS and Windowblinds. If something is hard coded in the OS it doesn't matter what you do it can not be edited.
I probably could do some editing in Vista to see if the icon removal is possible so give me a little time as to I will need to install Vista in a Virtual machine and dig around a little..
Reply #8 Saturday, May 15, 2010 7:11 PM
Yeah, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. "Living with it" just isn't in my available actions sometimes. 
It wouldn't be so bad if I could independently change the command bar text color in Vista like you can in Windows 7. It's a major speed bump for me at the moment. I can live without skinning the navigation panel, I never use it anyway.
Quoting Skillet98, reply 5
BTW, IS THERE a way to remove the icons in the command bar? Or is that some kind of Win7 only feature?
There probably is a way, but it will involve editing a UIfile in a .EXE or .DLL file and I really haven't tried it in Vista so I really don't know for sure.
I do know you can remove the help icon(if you want to remove that also), but don't remember what file it is in seeing I haven't had Vista on my machine for quite some time now.
In windows 7 I removed the help button from the command module in the shellstyle.dll UIfile 1 by:
changing the text:
<if id="atom(help)">
<Button3d
background="dtb(CommandModule, 3, 1)"
to this:
<if id="atom(search)">
<Button3d
background="dtb(CommandModule, 3, 1)"
Skinstudio and Windowblinds are great programs, but like I said before if you want to be able to skin every nook and cranny you need to edit the .msstyle, shellstyle.dll, Explorer.exe, shell32.dll, ExplorerFrame.dll and others which can be more of a pain in the ass than dealing with limitations in SKS and Windowblinds. If something is hard coded in the OS it doesn't matter what you do it can not be edited.
I probably could do some editing in Vista to see if the icon removal is possible so give me a little time as to I will need to install Vista in a Virtual machine and dig around a little..
I'm going to work up some extra cash and remove Vista entirely. I'd like to load both XP and Windows 7. I'm just tired of Vista all together.
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Reply #1 Saturday, May 15, 2010 12:06 AM
Ok...