Well, I'm not going to discuss why it was deleted, that is pretty clear, but let's talk about that product vs WB right here in the message board then.
I think personnaly it will depend on how the themes are distributed. Once a theme is created with the product, then what? You keep it for yourself? Or you distribute it? What format are the themes going to be? Will it require a third party software to apply them to XP? Or will the theme builder generate some sort of EXE that will install the files in the proper Windows directory. There is no "browse" button within XP to go get a new theme and apply it. There are no native ways in Windows to add new themes. So, how are the themes created by that program be applied?

My point is basically that if the themes created with that product make it so that people don't need a third party product to apply the themes, then yes, indeed, it will be a huge threat for Windowblinds, no matter how good WB is. But if it requires a third party product, then it's no different than WB and WB already has a head start.

We'll just have to wait and see. When a beta or a demo is available I know I'll give it a try, as will a lot of people. We'll have to see from there.

Apparently that news was not important enough for all in this "community" to be made aware of. It really is getting crazy around here.

I tried to contact Tarkus about it, unfortunatley the email address he has doesn't work as my email bounced back saying his mail box was suspended. But I have created a second news item that talks about the issue at hand.

And yes, feel free to talk about it here on the message board.

And yes, it is censorship. We reserve the right to control what news items are posted. It should be noted that we do post Hoverdesk news items so it's not a "competitor" issue alone.

BTW, Tarkus, let me say this again because your opinion matters a lot to us. I really did try to email you first. It was when your email bounced back that I deleted it. Do you have a working email address so that I can contact you in the future?

This is what I received:
This message could not be delivered to the following recipients:

:
This mailbox has been suspended. (#5.2.1)

Here is what I wrote in the updated news item:

Here are the facts:
1) Windows XP was not designed to allow skinners to skin it without the help of a third party program.

2) Windows XP visual styles are digitally signed by Microsoft. They did this for reasons discussed in the article.

3) Anyone wanting to add additional skins to Windows XP is going to have to download some third party program.

Over time, there will probably be plenty of options for people. But the term that really annoys me is when someone say WindowBlinds isn't "native". What does that mean? To non-technical people out there, bundling != native.

Windows XP comes with a DLL called uxtheme.dll. It runs a service when you boot (one of the svchost.exe services) that loads up a skin file called luna.msstyles from the hard disk and then sends it to uxtheme.dll to apply it.

WindowBlinds XP isn't bundled with Windows XP. It comes with a DLL called uxtheme.dll. It runs a program currently called wbload.exe that loads a skin file from the hard disk and sends parts of it to uxtheme.dll (the stuff that it can handle) and then additional features are sent to wblind.dll.

Now, other developers are likely to look at using uxtheme.dll too since it does the painting. Those developers will have a few choices in front of them:

1) They can try to use our skin language .UIS but that would violate our copyright as stated at the beginning of all .UIS documentation and has been discussed in the past when developers tried to take the easy way out and rip our skin language.

2) They can try to create their very own skin language ala Chroma or eFX.

3) They can borrow Microsoft's .msstyles skin language and hope that the Microsoft lawyers don't squash them into oblivion.

But in all 3 cases, it requires some third paty EXE to be run that takes the file and sends it to uxtheme.dll.

In options 1 and 3, this site won't support that. I.e. we won't support programs that rip our skin language or Microsoft's skin language (unless Microsoft publicly and officially gives the okay -- we're not going to support ripping). If they take option 2, if they gain enough support, we can look at supporting that here (but we won't create a section for "XPSkinner" or whatever if it only had a dozen or two skins, it has to have serious support).

But the most maddening thing in dealing with the misconceptions of Windows XP visual styles is the whole "native" thing. WindowBlinds XP IS native. And more importantly, it just today got Micrsosoft Windows XP certified. It was launched at Microsoft on September 26 and we worked closely with the shell team during the engine development for months during the beta.

So one of Stardock's jobs is to make sure that if someone develops a skin program that happens to read .msstyles that people don't say "oh, now see, that's native!" If WindowBlinds happened to load up .INI files (and that is what .msstyle's format is based on -- INI -- NOT XMLS) that corresponded to .msstyles it wouldn't become and more or less native.

The route that most casual users really would probably prefer is that Microsoft lifted the MS digitally signed requirement for visual styles. Then you wouldn't need a third party program at all.

But the fact is, they HAVE TO BE MICROSOFT DIGITALLY SIGNED TO WORK. And getting around that requires a third party program.

And once you require someone to download some program from somewhere, then it's purely a matter of which skin language is better. I obvously would argue WindowBlinds is. It was designed by the skin authors themselves over a period of 3 years. It was designed with skinning in mind. Microsoft's design was desgiend for internal Microsoft use in order to create a specific skin -- Windows XP style (aka Luna).

I hope this clears things up. Please feel free to comment. I tried to email Tarkus earlier about deleting his post about xpstyler or whatever but we felt that such a news item was not appropriate (it doesn't yet exist and it may in fact be illegal and we're not willing to incur MS's wrath), a message post would be fine though if people want to talk about that sort of thing. But the potential program in question isn't any more "native" than WB is. It just borrows .msstyles (without MS's permission btw which is probably why they have to meet with them) as their skin format. It would be akin to Chroma 2.0 coming out and reading .msstyles. That wouldn't make it more native than any other skinning program.

And it will still require that they convince skin authors to make skisn that only work on Windows XP using a skin language that doesn't do nearly as much as WindowBlinds (and for the record, WindowBlinds does skin just as many GUI elements as Windows XP and it does so on more programs).

After checking the site up more attentively, TGTSoft seem to have 2 products, Styles XP and Style Builder. The first will probably be the software needed to apply the themes made with the Builder. My guess is that they will probably have their own format and that you will need to purchase Styles XP in order to apply the skins.
So, it looks to me like it's only going to be an alternative to Windowblinds. We'll just have to wait to see if it'll be better or not.

btw whats link so i can check em out?

yeah xp skin is kinda limited i prefer wb bec thats only way i can set skin to certain way ( aka watery's one button interface heh )

Frogboy: Sorry about the broken email account. I had no idea there was a problem there (they never notified me, and I still don't know why it's suspended). I wouldn't have created this thread if I had gotten your email first. In any case, my email account has now been updated on this site.

XX: http://www.tgtsoft.com/product.html

I'm keeping an eye on tese guys, so far I don't think much of Window blinds XP.

And the fact this website deleted a link to there website is prett poor. That ribbon displayed on your frontpage is to support freedom, is freedom of speach suddenly unimportant??

ghostman: Have you ever read the 1st Amendment?

It should be interesting to see if MS gives someone the go ahead to effectively crack MS's digital signing mechanism. If one steps away from looking at it from a "I want more skins" point of view, it sends a chilling message.

Patching uxtheme.dll is akin to downloading a crack to take out the copy protection of a commercial game. It's hard to see how MS would be okay with that. If they are, I can't help but wonder how many hours we could have saved over the years by simply patchign and replacing Windows system DLLs. Imagine how easy WindowBlinds would have been to write if we simply replaced the Windows system DLLs with ours.

Cygnus....'guarantee'....

Isn't WinCustomize located in Afganastan? In fact, I hear something now outside...is it a plane...hold on.

Istari goes outside to check

Hmm.


There seems to be a light coming.

Closer..

Closer..


BAM!