Thats weird...I ran out of disk space the other day on my second internal drive...I was going to buy a bigger internal but thought "Why not get a big external drive and then install this copy of VISTA that has been collecting dust". So that's what I did. I'm on it right now too. So far so good.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Darkmatter - Ended up not dual booting, putting the theme on the laptop instead.

Yep, sorry forgot each color had a different name.

some thoughts on hyperdesk and mycolors, i use my colors and love it, i have purchased 11 themes so far,( maybe a silly addiction) but i like the hyperdesk suites too, and when they go vista i will try them, think of me as "average joe consumer" you people that create them nitpick them (rightfully so) but the average person like myself just likes the end result, you as the creators have the option of being fussy about things, because its your work, but believe me the end user (myself) just loves these themes. so in the end maybe all this bashing back and forth is a blessing in disguise, to both TSF and Stardock, please do keep up the good work, cause i am sure happy about the end results, and i do believe i speak for a lot of people

Glad to see things have calmed down.

Sorry Jeff, my invite must have gotten lost in snail mail.

Regarding uxtheme.dll.  My concern isn't that you're not using WindowBlinds. It's that uxtheme is not a good foundation. We (all of us) should be very conscious of providing users with a truly seamless experience.   Even ignoring the fact it's primitive, it's an engine that isn't under your control, isn't authorized, and explicitly not designed for third-party use. Plus, the fact that to get access to it, you have to disable system file protection.

I would have liked to have seen you guys create an engine or something. A genuine competitor to WindowBlinds. Now obviously, as Stardock CEO, I shouldn't like competition, but I prefer competition over patching uxtheme because I know that it's going to have serious support problems for users and serious user experience problems and users won't discern what the tech was, they'll just remember that when they tried to change from the default look of Windows that they had a bad experience.

You've got the art team, you've got the icon tech, on Vista you have the gadget  tech (Windows Sidebar).  It's the skinning tech that's the issue. Anything but uxtheme. Anything that doesn't involve patching out system file protection or passing around patched msstyles files. It doesn't have to be WindowBlinds. But it needs to be something that doesn't compromise the user experience or system integrity.  I really wish Chroma hadn't died off.  At least then you could have gone to them if we pissed you off and licensed their stuff.

Now, with that said, here are some pictures from up north:

 

More here.

 

I dont see any Corona's   

I have to say - That is a classy comment from Brad. And I believe he honestly means it. We all want to see a lot more people enjoy what we enjoy. The more people that get into customization, the better it is for everyone........there are huge plus's for everyone.......The companies and Masters in revenue, the users with more choice and more budding artists to make the products - to mention but a few. A 'win win' for all. If the engine running the art is flawed or not up to par with other products like the MyColors or Windowblinds engine and people have problems then it will put a lot of customers off and the potential influx of users, artists etc. will be dwindle. Here is a fantastic moment in skinning history which we need to seize by the scruff of the collar. Some of the most outstanding customization artists in the world - in TSF, Jesh, Bill and Kol etc - have thrown the gauntlet into the arena with an outstanding product that only seems to lack the best engine around to run it. I'd love to see Jesh and Brad get together and come to some arrangement where Jesh licenses the MyColors or Windowblinds engines to run his themes. Maybe it's more complicated than this - and I'm a simple soul with a lot of wishful thinking.

Jesh - I'm a Disney fanatic, having worked for the company for years. I spoke to a couple of colleagues in FL and CA this week who had the theme and they are thrilled and full of praise for your work. Man, you guys have got talent and as anyone knows - who has worked for Disney - They only take on the best and by god, are they fussy. Everything has to be perfect or it goes in the bin. I will purchase the theme from your site over the weekend and I know I'm going to be thrilled too.

And finally, Jesh, whatever you decide and whatever the future holds for you.......Good Luck and God Bless you...........for all your artistic talents and in your personal life too with that 'bundle of joy' that's about to change your life forever.   

Can you do that with XP too? Because I already have iconpackager, I don't want to use another app to apply icons. Truth is, I don't want to apply the icons to Windows anyway, just png's would be fine for me (to use with Avedesk on my desktop). And just a plain .wba file would be great, I'm avoiding MyColors (or any other theme manager) like the plague.

Speaking of WB...when the skins are ported to WB, will they take full advantage of all the WB6 features (per-pixel, shadows, trans where possible/appropriate, animations, layering effects, etc?) *crosses fingers*

Phew, i thought i was the only one. Thought it was taboo around here

If it does come out on WB... well... gahhhh...*drooool*..

hehe I avoid it too ... nice that the themes are .zips

It wouldn't be MyColors that we used. Most likely it will just put a special installer the deposits all the theme elements to a folder. So your WB theme, icon package, wallpaper, wmp 11 skin and the widget would all be served up a la carte so to speak.

1. Zips are easy to pirate
2. Branding is lost with zips.
   

I am not running a Hyperdesk theme, I haven't run one in several days. But there is a service running in my task manager called HDThemeEnabler.exe. This sux.