No. I seen her first. So there...nyah!

I could go on with screenshots of old here. There are so many that could use an update to Vista/7 and still would shine. Both artistic and the ones with usibility in mind.

What we did with Sountox or Synapse in 2001 for example was never meant for the corporate desktop. We just did that for fun and because we could. Funny thing, working with DesktopX was much more relaxed back that than it is now. Of course with Vista or 7 doing a WB skin nowadays takes much more time.

Heck, see what we could do over 10 years ago :

I mean without anybody shouting 'Bloated !' all over the place. But Neowin was not there those times. *whistle* The shout 'Bloated !' was invented there, it seems to me.

Synapse..... [e digicons]:')[/e]
Those were the days!

The WB needs some serious TLC!

Snowman pokes Carl with a very large stick! Get the message?

Snowy, I really doubt I would have the skills and/or the patience nowadays to bring that one to Vista/7. Converting WBs to XP has been difficult for me already.

The usable vs. artistic thing will even get worse with everyone and his grandma agreeing the Metro look is the next big thing.

Yeah, right, we have so much graphical and cpu-power in our machines nowadays to look at plain boring pastel colored rectangles everywhere...

I mean it is okay for mobile apps, but please not all over the PC world...

Yeah but Win8 allows you to switch to a conventional desktop according to what's in the thread on Win8. https://forums.wincustomize.com/409181

Hopefully MS will stick to it and we'll be able to skin it. If not lets all go to Redmond with a brown paper bag full of shit, put it on their doorstep, set in on fire, ring the bell and run away really fast.

Since getting my new laptop, I haven't installed one Stardock product on it.  Blasphemy I know, but Win7 has pretty much all I need.  All this other stuff from Stardock is add-on junk anymore.  Sure, I like to come out and see what's being created still, but it's mostly lame.  And I haven't been into skinning that long but from when I started to now...it's gone down hill fast.

What really gets to me is seeing people never progress.  They started out with horrible graphics and design skills and they've been pumping out skins but not gotten any better AT ALL.  That's kind of been mentioned already (the quantity vs quality).  Problem is, nobody says anything.  It's always "That's great!", "That's super-duper!".  That's bullshit is what it is.  Those types of comments only serve to puff up the head of the shitty skinner.  But most people on here can't take constructive criticism. 

And then you have others who preach "Skin for yourself..."  News flash, if they were truly skinning for themselves...they wouldn't be sharing it on WC.  People come here and share because they want people to like their stuff.  Nobody likes rejection, but it serves to make some people strive for better results.  Others just get pissed off and say "fock you, let's see you skin something."  Look, I don't have to be a skinner to know something looks like shit.  I've got enough design experience to know if it looks like shit, it's because it's shitty looking.  Not because I don't know how to skin.

Bottom line, 10-15% of the current skinners around here are really striving to better themselves.  The rest are attention whores and download count sluts.  A perfect example of someone striving to be better and making it...Xiandi.  Look at her gallery from beginning to end up to her current WIP.  Now that's a skinner.

Ain't goin' there. Nope.

Guess I'll have to dust off SKS (after 4 years in hibernation), and give it another go....

Nice!

dust? don't you mean snow? i'm thinking there's certainly more snow than dust around your place. correct me if i'm wrong but ....

although, saying "I'll have to snow off SKS" just doesn't seem right.

I am not a skinner, however I do use SKS 7 to change items on skins around, I usually change the look of the menu bar in IE by framing it and also changing the font colors if they are to light, I also some times change the look of progress bar. If I like a certain please wait from one skin I might import into the current skin I am using. To simplify it I mix and match items from other skins into a current skin to get a skin of my preference. I also put colour in the folders panel in explorer which most skinners neglect or the make it gray or blue which are two colors that suck as primary colors in a skin IMHO. Blue and gray are fine as accent colors in a skin the electric Blur or plastic blue can be tolerable as a primary skin colour. To bad there is not a metal flake like in car colors in skins. I usually end up modifying scroll bars and tool tip also sometimes the buttons

While we are at it, Skins I would dream of to see for 7:

Copperdeck II, Sputnik, Universe Metal, Synchronus, Marinara, Synapse, Thredz, Atomic, Dynamo (anyone remember Aleksyandr ?), Audiophile, Micron2, Envision, Systronic 14, Colony, Logika, Spectre, Skinplant, Vienna, Naked, Azenis 2, Multipas Carbon, Tronnix, Avenger, Last Cobalt, Toon XP, Transilvania, Vox, Opus OS, Thunderstorm, Codename Opus, Cabal, Aura, Antares, Beacon..........................................................

Heck...I remember all of those.....

Ya forgot Heavy Equipment, though ...[still a significant skin suite]...

That's what the dots stand for But You are right of course. I have all these still on my Archive-Harddisk, never could trash any of these. All my favorite Skins since 2000... And the there is the 'Wincustomize CD Summer 2001' still in my shelf, even after a move last year. 

To be honest, one of the reasons that new stuff doesn't look like the "good old stuff" is that it's all be done before - there not much 'new' to do! And I use my own WindowBlinds, so I want them to be usable - every day usable - so if I do something fancy and exciting (I did the Savannah skin which had some great animal print textures) I usually end up using it for a day (or an hour, or minute...) then just switching to something that looks cool but lets me work!

I'd hate to think that the second skin in the screenshot (Primavera) was an example of the decline of WB skins - just getting the hatching line textures on all the elements of the Primavera skin took literally hours of work. And I also hope that the clean lines and colours apeal to those with a more minimal aesthetic, as that was the intention. Spikes and glassy blobs are great! - but for me, only for a short while, and to be honest they've been done so many times before (...and yes, so have minimal stuff, I agree).

I say, each to his or her own.

Skin on!

(Treetog, MikeB, Hippy - I taught them everything I knew....  )

Tim : As for the initial shots, I like both. You are nearly the only skinner that can do minimal and usable skins with unique style. One can tell an Essorant skin out of hundreds.