I'm a regular deviantart visitor and I'm realy surprised by the quantity of nice visual styles for Win7 posted there. Sometimes they can even be more then 4 visual styles for Win7 posted in one single day while the windowblinds skins are getting a little bit rare. I know it takes much more time to create a windowblinds skin but I keep asking myself if the windowblinds skins are going to be left out after some time.
What do you guys think?
No.
Just because the most common 'junk' cars ever built are Corollas...and VW beetles doesn't mean there's no market for "real" cars....Ferraris...BMWs....Jags....Gogomobiles....cars with ACTUAL character....
Keep Using Windows Blind and show your style
I'm not impressed with the ton of look alike/multiple version/beta/half finished VS's that I see at DA. I would rather apply a well thought out and fully functional WB, but that is just my take.
I must say that WBs aren't coming through like they used to here at WC. Seems we're losing skinners and/or summertime has everyone doing other things.
There are some coming through back to back that aren't top quality, but the real good ones seem few and far between.
Jafo and 2of3
Quality over quantity. Any day. Everyday.
Part of the slow down may be that a fully compatible WindowBlinds skin has to cover three versions of the OS - XP, Vista, Win7. It all adds to the time, and maybe some skinners just skin their own OS and feel that they would rather not upload an 'incomplete' skin.
I look forward to the day when XP has gone! Win7 FTW!
Yeah, I think so, Essorant, DrJBHL. There are too many things for our skinners to do to have a complete skin for THREE operating systems. Anyway, I still love WindowBlinds so much. Big love to our great Skinners and Stardock .
Why skin Vista at all anymore? It is very similar to 7 in many ways already.
Because people still use Vista as they may not see any reason to pay Microsoft more money.
I have to agree here and say that it requires a pretty decent little setup to have all software the you need installed on 3 different Os's making it very expensive to skin all 3.
I often switch between custom visual styles and windowblinds. I think there's a huge difference between the two. Windowblinds allows for a more custom layout, for example - I've never seen any kind of visual style that looked like Venom by Vstyler. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
I don't think windowblinds will ever die. It's becoming more and more popular, for those who aren't comfortable hacking system files. I follow many artists on deviantart too, and I agree that there are tons of high quality themes there. I use many of them. But, windowsblinds is a different, unique kind of customization that will never lose popularity.
That's my opinion.
I thought all you needed to do was skin 2 of the 3 OS's, not all 3.
Hey Sir WOM how are ya?
In theroy you could build just 1 skin that would work on all 3 but here is what I ran into ..1 skin all elements ...looks good in XP so on to Vista...looks good on Vista except there are some unreadable menus So we correct the text issues at this point for me XP was till usable just not perfect .....So on to win 7 now there are only apprx.15-20 MUST HAVE images in 7 that arent needed in Vista so if we included ithem in the Visya skin that would take care of that but then you will find some menus that just dont work right so,fix those and we have 3 sub-styles....
Now if you had abolutely perfect forethought I guess you could do it especialy if all yout parts were microsoft colors but then you would still have to test all 3.....
Ok I just pulled another hand full of hair out ! lol
I find that a very strange comment coming from you Jim, considering you dont make yr own graphics, when you are
constantly porning everyones work just to make a dx theme. I personally find
nothing wrong with the wb gallery at the moment, stuff from 20f3, avman, myself and many others. which i personally think
is good quality. maybe you should start making your own wb's.
i was told we have to skin all 3 os's especially if its a master skin.
I now skin all 3 os's just so everyone is happy.
Applying Visual styles cost nothing, thats the main difference, there are bound to be more of an abundance of users, and skinners, as someone said, most of them are copies, rehashes of whats around already. The last time I saw an impressive visual style..
... I made it
What does porning mean ?
Duly noted, Vamps. Wasn't pointing the finger at anyone, just an opinion. If you think I meant you, then maybe you're a little unhappy with your own work? I certainly have no problem with your skins. Most aren't my taste but they are quality. Again, not talking about anyone in particular.
That said, if you check the galleries, you'll see that I do quite a few original skins, making my own graphics. I just happen to specialize in matching blinds. If not me, who? No one else is doing it. Just like those who make docks, rainys, xions, etc. Matching skins by anyone is using the original author's graphics. Everyone you mentioned I have made DXes for. Now would I do that if I thought they were bad skins?
I appreciate your effort Jimster
John, I think it's what WebGizmos does when he makes docks for you, or what Xiandi does when she makes a rainy for someone's blind.
Or maybe it's what Messiah did when he used to make all your docks....I dunno....confused..
Thanks John. I appreciate the opportunity. And the graphics.
Hey Jim, you're a PORN STAR!!!
Personally I'll use WindowBlinds over Visual styles simply because one is meticulously thought out and applied over many different aspects of the desktop whereas Visual Styles in my opinion are just adding different colors to what already exists as opposed to actually skinning stuff. Maybe I'm wrong having never skinned more than a calendar but once for me is enough. I had downloaded a VS called Blue Cube 1.0. It looked good and I thought since I'm not using WindowBlinds at the moment I'd give it a shot. It was off my machine in less than a minute. It's very dark, too dark to be usable and the text is either blue on black to the point of invisibility or black on black and therefore useless. I'm not saying they're all bad but I'd rather have something I can put on my machine and enjoy it. Besides...there are those skinners like Vampothika, vStyler, RedneckDude, amitsaran, jazzilady, to name just a few who take originality and give it new meaning. Visual Styles may be more prolific but that's only because they are easier to do, I think. Again I may be wrong but there it is. Quality over quantity is what I'd rather have. Also because I'm biased in favor of WB's. They have a certain flair (I wanted to say the french name for it but I don't know how to spell it).
I ain't touchin' that one.
I have tried a couple of other types of themes other than WindowBlinds.
The verdict? A good WindowBlinds skin beats the pants off of all the others!
Then why did you make the comment that you thought most of what was coming out wasn't top quality? You must be basing your opinion on something. Are you saying ALL of the newest Windowblinds that have come through are less than top quality? Please qualify yourself. I'm curious as to why you would make that comment. You're usually so positive about what's uploaded here.
Here's an idea...why don't you use your talent and rank to create a tutorial so those of us with lesser rank can learn from you. Vampothika did it for Windowblinds, but nobody has done a dumbed down DesktopX tutorial with lots of pictures. Just as an example of something that's been on my wishlist forever is a how to make an analog clock widget, for which there is suppose to be a plugin, but I don't know where the plugin is, and I don't know how to insert graphics into DX once I've created them in my art program. If you share you knowledge, we could take some of the burden off your shoulders of making matching widgets and then the DX uploads could be less than top quality, too.
sViz has a great tutorial on analog clock making. And, I might add, a bunch of other tutorials on DX. http://sviz.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=162744 I'm a skinner, not a writer.
There is a plugin for it, in DX, comes with it if you use 3.5. But it don't work on 64 bit. sViz's does.
You know, there really is no reason to make a big stink about one comment made by a WC subscriber who was merely stating an opinion, as everyone here does from time to time.
I have given this as much attention as it needs.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
