SkinStudio needs modernisation
Friday, May 8, 2020 by 2of3 | Discussion: SkinStudio
First of all, I LOVE SkinStudio! I've been using it since version 4!
Sks 6 saw a complete revamp of the interface which had a lot of people up in arms complaining about the new interface (anyone remember the clickable preview funtion we lost?) We finally got used to it and didn't look back.
SkinStudio has stayed more or less the same since v6 with some major and minor updates as we have traveled through xp, vista, 7, 8.1 and finally 10.
I have no problem with the interface at all. That's fine. Here's my problem:
How does Sks expect you to start a new skin? Well simple. Open the program and select "new skin" Great! Next? Select skin to base it on.....hmmm Diamond? Oh there's a dropdown. Hmmm....Diamond vista or xp?
OK. I choose Diamond since I'm not skinning for vista or xp. Great! Good to go! Oh, wait! Why does this skin have vista and xp substyles? NO ONE would like to start a new skin with complete substyles already there! I never make a substyle until the first style is 100% complete. I create my first substyle based on the finished style, I don't go hopping back and forth between. So ok. Gotta delete those finished subbys.
Now, I'm left with a clean base skin to start adding my images to.
Ok, skin's done. Time to make the .wba and upload. Let's use the clean skin funtion. Wow, lots of non referenced images there to delete. Makes sense, since there were many xp and vista images when I started. Let's go into the skin folder to delete the folder where the images went. Hey! there's still a TON of extra images here!
Ok, gotta go through and start deleting extra images. Oh crap! I broke my skin! I must have deleted something relevant. The whole shutdown section is gone on my skin because I deleted the xp and vista images for that section??? Can I go into sks and find those vista and xp sections and safely delete the code from there? Hmmm... no. Those sections no longer exist in sks. No way to get to these sections that are somehow referencing old images thus keeping them in the skin.
Anyway, I've deleted as much as I can without breaking the skin. I'm happy now.
That was a long winded way of saying that I would like:
1. The option to choose any installed skin from the dropdown menu.
and/or
2. Please give us a better template skin. One that's free of old unused, unsupported sections. And no finished substyles.
Now. I'm certainly capable of starting a skin differently. I can just open a skin of mine which has a similar color palette and re save it in sks as a different skin. I do, in fact have a template skin on my system called "Basic" for just that purpose. But I, as I stated in the intro, have been using sks for a while.
Think of the person just starting out in skinning. Sks is a puzzle to new people as it is. I think we owe it to them to give them a clean simple starting skin to make the process slightly easier.
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Reply #22 Saturday, May 9, 2020 4:16 PM
It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.
Nope. I'm asking about Skinstudio for Windowblinds. 
My thinking was to see if there was anything about how the editing worked that you might like. For example the advanced properties being a list, or allowing colours to be entered as hex which I know was very much appreciated by Dani (though there is a bug in beta 2 that it doesn't save manually entered text for colours)
Reply #23 Saturday, May 9, 2020 4:27 PM
My thinking was to see if there was anything about how the editing worked that you might like. For example the advanced properties being a list, or allowing colours to be entered as hex which I know was very much appreciated by Dani (though there is a bug in beta 2 that it doesn't save manually entered text for colours)
Sorry. Me so snappy. 
Since I took a 4 year hiatus, I've unfortunately let my Object Desktop sub lapse. I currently only have WB and OD2 installed on my computer. Both are bought as stand alone programs. I therefor don't have any access to Curtains.
Reply #24 Saturday, May 9, 2020 9:18 PM
If by chance sks ever got an update, I love to see some changes to the interface:
No more "window in window" and tabbed navigation in the different sections. Here's a quick and dirty screeny of what I mean:
I am impressed Tim!
Does anybody remember a company called TGTSoft from the old says, they had an application called StyleBuilder that was super easy to use, wish SkinStudio was. StyleBulder had a fantastic interface! 
Reply #25 Saturday, May 9, 2020 9:20 PM
I don't know Neil, personally I prefer the RGB for colors, but, that's just me. I'll have to re-install Curtains, to take a look at the Advanced properties.....I do like the example that Tim (2of3) used for a new GUI for SKS. 
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Reply #21 Saturday, May 9, 2020 4:06 PM
How did we go from discussing SKS to discussing Curtains?
Translation: Sks will not get any attention/updates because "no one" is skinning anymore and WB is going obsolete.
It's CURTAINS for us skinners.......See what I did there?
Looks like it