Well written and I tend to agree to a good amount.

While I get paid to help create skinning SOFTWARE. I don't get paid to make skins. But I still love doing it. I love seeing the cool new things that can be done.

That's one of the reasons I've been having such a blast with DesktopX lately. Being able to take a flash game and embed it in an interesting way has been immensely enjoyable. I've been learning Javascript and VBScript and doing interesting things with them that take me back to the early days.

But artwork is somethign I've always been weak at. And I'll be the first to admit that the biggest reason I don't create WindowBlinds skins is embarassment. I simply can't create skins that look as good as the other people around here.

There is also, not so much here but elsewhere, a tendancy of users to seem pretty damn ungrateful for the hard work skinners put into their work. People who don't make skins should be thankful for what is made. But often times, they'll write such vile comments which really can take the wind out of the enjoyment of skin creation.

My theory regarding the Mac users is that yes, I believe they are better skinners per capita because I suspect that many of those creating skins have day jobs that are (wait for it) graphics designers. So they go home and they make skins and such for fun.

I think it's also why there's so much skinning SOFTWARE on the PC. Lots of software developers by day who go home and tinker around at night.

On the Mac, Konfabulator has no real competition. On Windows, it has Samurize, DesktopX, SysMetrix, Hoverdesk, the various shells, etc. to contend with.

My frustration is that the MEDIA tends to automatically think that Mac software is better. It is easier to write slick software for the Mac than it is for the PC. DesktopX, for instance, has to contend with Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP and various slight differences in between (tons of system DLLs which are arbitrarily changed from version to version can affect us along with other thing slike video cards, start-up software, etc.). Other PC programs have to deal with the same thing. It may come as a rude awakening when Konfabulator comes out on the PC (or if I should say) and they discover that it is hard to get this stuff to work as slickly as they hope.

But I could be wrong and maybe Konfabulator will come out and make DesktopX a foot note and I can focus on game development instead.

Following your train of thought, if Konfabulator would come out on the PC, it could possibly be less popular than it is on the Mac and the quality of the skins would be lower, since there is more competition (assuming, for the sake of argument, that skins for the Mac version are incompatible with PC skins).

So what you are saying is that skinning on the pc is actually killing itself because there are so many apps. And to elaborate on that, it would be better for the quality if there were less apps to skin (which, while we're at it, would get more developement time and so on).

Now that's an interesting angle.

Well, no, I think he meant that there are PC users are more apt to be developers, and Mac users are more apt to be designers, just because of their history in each industry. I would have to agree. Granted, the more apps the more skinners you need.

Baker said:

There isn’t enough money to pay professionals for all the skins we need to energize the artform, so this community *needs* the elite hobbyist. To have a stable pool of such, we need to tune-out all the pressure to commercialize, and be satisfied with making beautiful UI for our peers.

I agree whole-heartedly. And we need not only to win back the hobbyists who got discouraged, but to attract new artists to the scene. One way to do that is as Baker suggested, a more welcoming, tolerant and supportive environment. Easy to say, tougher to do, I know. But there is definitely an identifiable inner circle here at WC and Stardock. You know who you/they are. Those that are in have so much more influence on the rest of the community than you may even realize.

Watch the message boards for a few weeks with this in mind... and see how newbies or citizens that get a friendly or welcoming response tend to come back and participate again and begin to get excited about creating. And watch how those who get ridiculed or rebuffed or just ignored tend to disappear. Most interesting of all is when one of the inner circle steps in and says, "Whoa... give so-and-so a break, guys." The turnaround in tone and attitude from others is amazing.

What I'm trying to say is that fostering a more open and welcoming environment here can't happen unless YOU in the inner circle make it happen. You are leaders and role models here whether you want to be or not.

Frogboy said:

But artwork is somethign I've always been weak at. And I'll be the first to admit that the biggest reason I don't create WindowBlinds skins is embarassment. I simply can't create skins that look as good as the other people around here.

And I would submit that the embarassment and/or frustration you feel about your artistic ability is very similar to the embarassment and frustration that a lot of very talented artists feel about the coding and scripting and technical aspects of skinning. As one of them, I can tell you that I love the art side of skinning and have a whole lot of ideas for making new skins. But right now, trying to learn all the behind the scenes stuff is really kicking my butt.

Which brings me back to my earlier point about documentation and help. I'm not just talking about manuals and tutorials either. Anyone visit the Skinning Message Board here lately? Not many others are either. If you're already an established skinner you can get a response fairly quickly, but even those in that group are posting their questions more and more often on the general board. If you're NOT in that group, you're lucky if you get any response beyond a link that may or may not be on point, or to be told to take apart XYZ skin and figure it out. Not exactly an ideal way to encourage participation and foster potential new talent.

I think some of that attitude comes back to Baker's point about the pressures to be a commercial skinner. New talent equals potential competition so let's not make it too easy. Maybe I'm off base here, but as someone relatively new here, that's how I see it after a few months. I'll keep at it because I'm hooked and I have that kind of drive. But I think we'll lose a lot of others if things stay as they are.

Sadly, I think people have come to expect to be able to attain any skill through knowledge. There is a great deal of 'Art', though, in both the development and graphical sides of skinning, and that really can't be fostered easily. This is a tinkerer's hobby, and if you aren't willing to tinker aimlessly (endlessly) you aren't gonna get it. Most people who dash in for help seem to be wanting to save themselves that time.

I'm not saying they have to reinvent the wheel. The thing is, though, you learn immense amounts during as you tinker and debug, most of which is unrelated to the task at hand... BUT will come into play later. Step by step help, to me, isn't always best, since you are letting them postpone familiarizing themselves with the software or format. I think that is why techies seem to fit-in faster than people who are primarily focused on graphics.

Community/documentation/tutorials are great, but it is like the difference between knowledge and understanding. You only have to browse the sections here and elsewhere to see all the perfectly executed glassy effects on skins that are pretty basically useless, or well-made skins with terrible aesthetics. They have knowledge with no understanding.

I think you find that expertise on your own, and all the time you spend flailing around hopelessly accumulates that experience. If people are kind of cold, it is probably because we feel they are hoping to skip all the parts we enjoyed doing ourselves.

Following your train of thought, if Konfabulator would come out on the PC, it could possibly be less popular than it is on the Mac and the quality of the skins would be lower, since there is more competition (assuming, for the sake of argument, that skins for the Mac version are incompatible with PC skins). So what you are saying is that skinning on the pc is actually killing itself because there are so many apps. And to elaborate on that, it would be better for the quality if there were less apps to skin (which, while we're at it, would get more developement time and so on). Now that's an interesting angle.

Wow, that's reading in something completely different than I intended.

My point was simply that the Mac user has a higher percentage of graphics designers because that's what Macs are used for. Meanwhile, the PC has more software because there are more software developers on the PC because there are ore people who do coding for a living on a PC and then go home and do coding for fun.

Quality of skinning on the PC is not related to the number of programs to skin.

Again Baker hits the nail on the head....

With skinning it's the journey way more than the arrival.

Taking shortcuts gets you there but you see bugger-all scenery along the way....and it's all about the scenery, not the standing around at the destination wondering 'what are we doing here?'....

But Jafo, your's is much more poetic...

ack, life designed in the trials and tribulations of skinning

who would have ever thought

oSoShameless.... when we tell someone to tear a skin apart and study it, we're not being cold. We're saying. learn it the same way we all did, coz until you do, we really can't help much.    More specific questions get better answers. The general "how do I skin?" is difficult to answer. .....   .... at least that's how I see it.

#45 by BakerStreet - 11/16/2003 7:14:59 PM Sadly, I think people have come to expect to be able to attain any skill through knowledge. There is a great deal of 'Art', though, in both the development and graphical sides of skinning, and that really can't be fostered easily. This is a tinkerer's hobby, and if you aren't willing to tinker aimlessly (endlessly) you aren't gonna get it. Most people who dash in for help seem to be wanting to save themselves that time.

#47 by Admin Jafo - 11/16/2003 7:25:37 PM Again Baker hits the nail on the head....With skinning it's the journey way more than the arrival.Taking shortcuts gets you there but you see bugger-all scenery along the way....and it's all about the scenery, not the standing around at the destination wondering 'what are we doing here?'....

I agree Baker hits the nail on the head when he says that "There is a great deal of 'Art'... that really can't be fostered easily." Which is exactly why we need to help those who have the 'Art" but struggle with the mechanics of putting a skin together. I'm not talking about shortcuts or hand-holding here. I'm talking about mentoring and coaching and providing access to accurate information.

There will always be those who will not listen or bother to RTFM But by taking this "sink or swim" approach, we will also lose some very good artists who just get too frustrated trying to figure the coding and the programs out by trial and error. I agree this is a tinkerer's art, but the tinkering side, the mechanics side, CAN be fostered and made easier. Several people have commented, Hippy comes to mind off the bat, that the artist population is higher in the Mac skinning community. If we really want to attract more artists, making them feel stupid or frustrated by leaving them to flounder is NOT the way to do it.

If the real goal here is to keep the skinning community small and tight, then this approach will do it. But then don't complain when the number of quality skinners and the level of slick, professional graphics is lacking. On the other hand, if we really want to get more talented artists involved, we need to make it a more attractive proposition with a bit more openness and mentoring.

One last thought... Experience can be a good teacher, but is not the only way to learn. One can make the same mistakes for years and call it experience.

Re getting help or figuring it out on your own, I can see both sides. Yes, you really don't have a complete understanding of skinning if you are handed all the answers without having to go through the trials of learning it first hand. But I also see what seems to be a lack of input from the more experienced skinners. The skinning messageboard has a Unofficial WindowBlinds/SkinStudio Documentation Project. When this first started, I thought "Great idea! All the really good, old time skinners will add a lot of input". But, with few exceptions, little seem to be added except by newer skinners. The same seems to happen with SkinStudio questions that arise about odd behaviours or difficulties. That would seem to breed a belief of 'They (the experienced) know but don't want to spread their knowledge'.

I'm the kind of person that likes to figure things out on my own. Maybe I'm one of those 'tinkerers' that was mentioned, but I can see where some may become discouraged or feel there is an elite group they have no chance of entering.
I'm not familiar with the Mac world of skinning, but I wonder if knowledge is treated as the same sort of arcane secret in that community or if it is shared among the community, thereby producing more quality skinners and skins.

The reason mac themes are more polished and overall better looking than most skins on windows is because most people who use macs dont know how to do these things so the real pros work at it. The same applies for windows too but since windows holds such a large market share there will always be more pros out there for windows than macs. Since there are a lot more people using windows there are a lot of resources for people who want to learn how to skin so we get more of maybe the not so polished skins than macs do.

But if you ask me, there are a lot more ORIGINAL skins in windows than on the mac. Most mac skin all use the same macish looking effects like the glossy buttons and scroll bars, thins like that. Mac users can skin, but i think windows users can truly customize their computers because we have so much selection.

pictoratus: Perhaps this is because these advanced/expert techniques are hard to communicate.

froggy and baker: Alright alright, froggy didn't say what I read into it. Let's just say that I let my imagination run wild on this one.

If you want to see any really mind blowing work for Windows, you generally need to look in the Winamp scene. Outside that, Pixtudio and Skins factory are probably the only people producing truly outstanding stuff.

sad, but true. personally i would have replaced Pixtudio with Mark McQuillan though.

Konfabulator on Windows. Are the widgets cross-platform? I don't see how they can be...so why even worry?

what are you talking about? the widgets are PNG images and XML configs. tell me why that should not be cross-platform compliant. the only thing to become cross-platform is to make two download buttons on their website. one with a Windows-flag for the Windows version (packed as ZIP) and one with an Apple for the Mac version (packed as SIT, SITX, DMG, BIN/HEX, whatever)

moshi: That is like saying that a C++ program is cross platform because the code is a text file.

Many, if not most, of the Konfabulator widgets make use of MacOS specific features and APIs. Sure, the weather widget will work fine. But the CPU temperature ones? You think those will work? Or the task monitor? Or the iTunes controllers?  Obviously with enough work or in the case of iTunes if Apple implemented the same hooking then it can be done. But just because they  both use XML doesn't mean anything.  DesktopX objects are just .PNG and .XML. Does that mean they would work on the Mac if there was a Mac version of DesktopX? No. Not many of them.

But even that isn't really overcoming the other issue - are Mac users going to be willing to make .ZIP versions of their files? How many Windows users would be willing (or able) to create a .DMG file for Mac users?

the level of elitism in the mac scene is far higher than on windows.

if you aren't making pro level graphics that wow EVERYONE you wouldn't even be considered on the top end sites for kaleidascope etc.

while on windows a far lower standard is accepted and therefore the general arena is far more saturated with for lack of a better term...
crap

i am betting that there is the same number of great objects. however there are so many more people making desktopx objects that the great ones are harder to find. but i saw a few on the konfabulator that i wouldn't mind having on my desktop

I wonder how many Mac's Boeing runs Catia or UniGraphics on when designing new Jets or revising older models?

I really do think it boils down to MAC being the accepted standard in Graphic Design and PC being the accepted standard for Mechanical Design and Application Development.

One of the main reasons MAC has held onto k12 schools so intently is because for them to loose that base will really expand the PC beyond anything MAC can really face excluding the hardliner Graphics shops that will refuse anything Gate's. 51 million in grants are being given out by Gates and company, Pinellas County in Florida is switching to Dell's running Windows XP for all class rooms and also teachers laptops and such. Has a bunch of people twisted because they want their MAC too. But the reasoning behind this switch is that kids growing up and learning Mac's who do not happen to go into the Graphic Arts profession have to learn a whole new Computer System and OS. Start them on PC/Windows and they are supposed to be at a higher employment level when they hit 15 and are able to work part time while in school and beyond into adult employment. I am beginning to wonder if MAC has figured out that at this point in time it is best to start working on a model that allows them to Join the PC end user market. Rather than wait and find the ship sailed 5 years earlier?


[Message Edited]

ok I'm not an expert in MAC and PC, my question is what is so different between them when it comes to graphic design?