Skin Primer 2002 (rough draft)

Wow, for a rough draft, its pretty complete.
Good work on the Litestep section. Nothing there that I would recommend changing, and ls2k is still the best bet for a link.
The graphs at the bottom are neat too!

It seems to sum up the idea behind what is going on here very nicely. However I've often wondered why there isn't a FAQ page on this site. I see what seem to be the same simple questions being posted on the board over and over. It might help to have a dozen or so frequently asked technical questions on a page so people new to the site could get a quick answer. Just a thought...

Let me tear this apart the same way I tear apart Teknidermy article drafts whenever I see them. I'll do it section by section.



[disclaimer]

Good to see this is here, seeing some sections are strongly StarDock-centric. The marketeer in you is too strong to be really objective in this field. But on the other hand, I have no idea how this is going to be used, so objectivity might not be the focal point.



[what are skins and themes]

Good stuff, maybe some screenshot could clarify the difference bteween themes and skins.



[a brief history of windows customization]

Hmm, I don't like this section. Quite some statements here with which I dont agree.

"Skins have their origin in video games"

Is that right? The term skin may stem from this, but what about where it really comes from. Wasn't that the *nix domain, with its highly configurable window managers (yes, I noticed that the history is limited to just Windows, not a good thing)?

And I always though skinning started with WinAmp. I wasn't around back then, but from what I've pieced together (which could be wrong), Fli7e hacked WinAmp and changed the bitmaps and posted that on layer3.org (which I've never seen), others followed and soon people where doing that too. Justin (of Nullsoft) liked that and implemented native skinning in WinAmp.

"The principle way of changing the OSes of these programs is through applying UIS (User Interface Specification) based skins."

No it is not, only in WindowBlinds. WindowBlinds may be the only remaining windowskinner out there, and in that sence UIS may be the only remaining format for it, but that does not make it the principle way.

The GDI explanation was good though (and I'll overlook that WindowBlinds 3 plug).



[alternative desktop shell enhancements]

Good to see you look at the various apps in this section, and list pros and cons of everything. By the way I though LiteStep was meant to emulate the look of Afterstep, not "to make a shell that is faster (..) and simpler than Explorer" and that NextStart was meant to emulate the look of NextStep (or whatever it was called, NextOS?).



[skins for specific applications]

If this section is about "skins for specific application" (which I would call "skinnable applications" instead), then why do you list IconPackager ("IconPackager isn't a skinnable app").



[websites dedicated to skins and themes]

Hmm, you mention customize.org, but you don't say anything about it. And perhaps you could mention that there used to be two other big sites (skinz.org and deskmod.com) that are dead and that some companies have their own skin archives too (winamp.com comes to mind).

Why do you list download traffic? Wouldn't hits give a better view of things (yes I know you haven't got those figures)?


[conclusion]

You're not the first and only one who wrote this. I don't blame you for not knowing this, but a long long time ago, clasqm wrote this faq on skinning for Tek: http://www.dezina.org/teknidermy/issuethree333/articleefaq.html


There, and I've been easy on you. Anyway, like Bill said, WinCustomize could use a FAQ.

/me applauds crae.

Goood feedback crae.

With regards to the history, the term skins did come from Quake. Nullsoft has said this themselves on occasion. That's where they borrowed the term.

Gotta put in customize.org. Forgot.

Regarding "principle" ways of changing the windows GUI. Since the target audience is the casual user, when someting has 99.99% of the market, it is effectively the principle way of doing something. eFX and Chroma are no longer developed and are today used by so few people that it's not worth confusing the issue. It's just like in the GUI skinning programs, we could have talked about Sonique or Kjfol but they're not used by enough people to justify confusing people with too many options.

That's why I mentioned IconPackager. People reglarly email us about how to change their icons. How do I change my icons? The way most people do is with IconPackager. What alternative shells are there? The main one is Litestep.

That's why I stuck with the term primer rather than as a comprehensive guide. Thanks again for taking he type to read it / give feedback.

Will put up draft 2 tonight with screenshots.

Bill,

Yes a FAQ is a good idea and is something that I've been wanting to do for some time. Unfortunately I just have not been able to get around to it yet.

Now if someone wants to volunteer to create the FAQ I will gladly find a home for it!

Yeah but... it's a skins primer. I don't think icons, wallpapers or Windows themes should play any part there, other than as a historical note. That should really be reserved for a faq or so.

As for UIS being the princple format, it came across to me as if UIS is the standard in skinning. You and I know it is king when it's about windowskinners (since WindowBlinds rules supreme there), but newbies don't and might think UIS is a standard in all skinning, so they can skin every program with UIS. Like skinning WinAmp using the UIS format.

By the way, somewhere (can't remember the exact spot) in the primer, you gave an example of WindowBlinds' possibilities, stating it could "totally customize Photoshop" (or so). That's a bit misleading, for as far as I know it can't alter Photoshop's icons, just general Windows widgets and windows.

Hmm, I posted <whine> tags around that post, but they were parsed out. I'm starting to forget which forum does what with all these sites. Must be getting old.

It's a skins & themes primer. Icons are part of it.

There is only one thing I don't like in your NextSTART description, Brad (besides spelling it 'NeXTStart' instead of 'NextSTART' ) and that is the old VB vs Any Other language urban myth.

VB is a compiled language, just like C is, so speed would be roughly the same as long as you optimize your code. Specially so because most of the work in NextSTART is done by calls to the Windows API (and here it really does not matter which language you use). I have NextSTART running on an old 64 MB Pentium 166 MMX machine basically as fast as it runs on my PII 350 with 256 MB RAM.

Another thing regarding VB memory usage that you might not know is that the VB engine transparently caches discarded code and forms in memory in case it might need them again. If the OS needs the memory, however, VB will gladly give it back. This is why it sometimes *appears* that a VB application is using a lot of memory - it isn't, its just working more efficiently. To prove this all you have to do is let NextSTART sit around for a while doing nothing - after some time you will see that the amount of used RAM goes way down. This is VB giving the unused memory back to the OS.

Right now I'm running NextSTART with Smobs, a fairly complicated theme (if there is such a thing). NextSTART is only using 7 MB of memory, not the 16 MB you claim for the default theme. Outlook Express, on the other hand, is using almost 21 MB (not to mention IE that is using 40 MB!)

--
Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 2.70 - A Windows interface that you can actually use!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet

Objections noted and I made some changes based on your feedback. BTW, I did verify today that your default theme upon downloading uses 16MB of RAM on a second machine. But I changed the paragraph so that RAM numbers aren't discussed.

DeviantArt (www.deviantart.com) <-- deviantART

...and i cant believe i submitted that without saying this: DNS has updated for images.deviantart.com and files.deviantart.com but has not propagated out everwhere yet. you will need to change that download speed statement once you take a gander, for yourself, just how fast our new bandwidth really is.

Though I am in no position to give good feedback cuz I tend to run to the Dutchy for advice on my stuff too, (He gives really good & honest feedback)

I did check yours out Brad and it was pretty good though your layout reminds me of my own Frontpage 2K style... hehe

I found it to be an interesting and informative read...

Maybe you should add a section comparing donwload counts now that DA has better bandwidth.

Ok I went ahead and did a quickie preliminary check on how DA's increased bandwidth has helped.

The short answer is: Yes, it's helped massively.

For you number folks, here is how it was:

Downloads per day ratio between WinCustomize and DeviantArt (for those of you unfamiliar with DA and WC's relationship, imagine them as having a similar relationship to that of United States and Great Britain, they're allies).

## Litestep ##
Before DA's new bandwidth: .2
(i.e. Litestep themes on WinCustomize got 5 times as many downloads).

AFTER DA's new bandwidth: .4
(Litestep downloads at DeviantArt DOUBLED).

Here's the big one:

## WinAmp ##
Before: .75 (DA got 3/4ths what WC got)
After: 1.9!! (WinAmp skins at DA got nearly twice as many downloads as they did on WC -- a massive change).

This also helped ease bandwidth -- WinCustomize saw a 37% drop in WinAmp skin downloads today. We'll have to keep an eye on that. But if this continues, WC bandwidth pressure will be eased.


And now for the most impressive increase:

## WindowBlinds ##

Before: .03 (Essentially everyone was downloading WB skins from WinCustomize)

AFTER: .24!!! Downloads increased by a factor of EIGHT.

And this is with WB downloads in WinCustomize increasing by 10% today. Of course, PixFriend's Halloween skin might be single handedly thwarting the stats.


So it's a huge improvement that should continue improving as more places get their DNS's updated.

There is one anamoly though:

LotsOfSkins is down today. LotsOfSkins demographics suggest that it draws users away from DA more so than from WC. So with it down, many of its regulars likely downloaded materials on the newly faster DeviantArt.

Conclusion:
In a few weeks I'll write an addendum that gives more stats on the skin community if people are interested in that sort of thing. Those of you who know me know that I just love statistics.

I think though at this point some congratulations are in order for our friend Jark who has worked very hard over the past couple of months to secure increased bandwidth for DeviantArt. Most people don't realize that these websites are basically free public services funded by the Admins of the sites. Congratulations Jark!

interesting stats there brad...sounds like an exciting increase, especially in the first day of the bandwidth increase, with virtually no advertising of it. will be interesting to see what happens once we announce it!

Yea, I'll definitely do a follow up on those stats. I wish it was easier to track messageboard/comments/news comments activity. I really wanted to highlight in the primer just how active DeviantART is from a community perspective.

It would be nice if the folks at Tek or somewhere else wrote up a review on the websites -- a thorough one. As funny as it might be, I'd love to write a full review of DeviantART. As a coder and admin, I can really appreciate the little things in DeviantART that no other site has. And I don't mean just any other skin site, I mean no other site period.

I also got some..ahem feedback from Chaz about the LotsOfSkins part. I will make some modifications to that as well.

Also got some great feedback from Dangeruss to add to the Hoverdesk section. He had a really great phrase - Hoverdesk is really designed to be like a Litestep for the masses.

sounds great brad. one quick question: how are you conducting your research into all these stats?

Sure thing.

Basically all I do is go to a website and 1) find out when their day starts.

and 2) Go and look at their top 5 downloads per day in a given category and just add it up.

From that, one can get a rough idea of the skin using population of the site.

So as an example, I would go to website X, go to the Litestep section and then sort by downloads per day for the top 5. LOS and Skinbase are tougher to do because they don't explicitly have downloads that day (SB has "popularity" and on LOS I do it manually). But it's within a few percent margin of error (i.e. the question isn't whethre website X gets 5,095 downloads per day, it's a question of whether the site gets roughly 50 downloads per day or 500 downloads per day).

If we wanted to really get this going, we could look into trying to have a report that lists message board/comment activity per day. That's where DA really shines above all the other websites combined. Roughly speaking, DA gets approximately 3X more general user posting activity than all the other 4 skinsites combined which is quite a remarkable achievement.

In fact, DeviantART gets MORE community traffic in terms of comments/posting/news postsings than Skinz.org ever did by a wide margin.

I wish I had more time, I'd love to do some analysis on what types of features sites can have to create so much community activity. I have some thoughts on that but without surveys and other scientific methods, it would just be conjecture.

Phew, Skinbase is there Thanks for the comments. gRAVE will appreciate them I'm sure. I know I do

I agree it would be nice to mention the great sites that have fallen. I feel skinz.org especially did a lot towards getting people interested in skinning. It deserves a mention.

Well, Froggy, you could always write that in-depth article and post it at Tek under another name!

i would be interested in an in-depth article like that brad, it sounds very intriguing. i appreciate the stats and you taking your time to look at DA like that.

...mind sending some traffic our way now?

Jark, as soon as you make your announcement on increased bandwidth, we'll do a dual announcement here and at Stardock. The more traffic you get..the better!

Scarebear, I'm going to update the Skinbase stuff to be even better. I want to talk about some of the unique features of Skinbase more.

Brad, let me know if you need anything. And I'll run and get it from gRAVE