Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

SkinStudio 5.01 released

Make your own skins

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Stardock has released SkinStudio 5.01. SkinStudio is a program used by designers and skin authors to create their own visual styles / skins for Stardock WindowBlinds, Microsoft Media Player, and other programs.

SkinStudio is most popularly used in conjunction with WindowBlinds. Where WindowBlinds applies skins to change the look and feel of Windows, SkinStudio is what helps people create the skins in the first place. SkinStudio 5.01 supports all the native features of the new WindowBlinds 5 including per-pixel alpha blended title bars, animations, etc.

With SkinStudio, skinners can actually select different parts of the Windows GUI (title bars, push buttons, etc.) and then change how they look by selecting a different bitmap (or PNG). SkinStudio can also import skins create in .msstyles format to be used in WindowBlinds format seamlessly. SkinStudio also supports creating Boot Skins as well as skins for other programs.

Version 5.01 is a maintenance release over 5.0 which was released last November. It includes performance enhancements, further support for other languages, and better skin previewing.

Download at http://www.skinstudio.net

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Much better than the old version, but still a bit buggy...

Nice work though people!

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

It isn't playing well with multiple skins open. The prior version "encountered problems and needed to close" occasionally. This version seems to be doing it more often. If you have more than one skin open, the program shuts down during applying skins. This started happening after install of the latest WB but seems to be worse after this SKS version. The first 3 times I tried applying skins I encountered the problem and the prog closes. Applying skins seems less smooth also. I don't seem to have the problem as much with only 1 skin open. I'lll try the whole uninstall and reinstall thing when I feel up to it.

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I love WindowBlinds. Keep up the great work!

ch_tru

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OK after a fair bit of testing I've had it crash on me quite a few times. Virtual desktop manager also conflicts with Desktopearth- probably an active desktop issue though and this is a VD problem not OB. It crashed quite a few times when I was trying to create my own bar- once after half an hour of unsaved work which really ticked me off...
I also noticed that particularly with old skins it is very slow to react. There's about a half-second delay on mouseovers which in practise is extremely frustrating. I'm on a high powered rig here (AMD 3500 & 6800GT) so this should not be happening.

I really like the RSS thing though and the way you can integrate widgets. We need more 'thin' widgets for top bars etc. Also more options to control the font size, colour and appearance within OB would be nice.

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

There's about a half-second delay on mouseovers which in practise is extremely frustrating

That could be the mouseover effect settings if they are enabled. The effect is a slow highlighting.

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I've noticed that there seems to be no way to set the new taskbar blur effect from within SKS, I figured out myself that I can manually add BackgroundEffect=10 into the code to get the effect, but I shouldn't have to do that.

I'm happy in general with it, but I just wish that the features for WB and SKS would be more in sync, given that they share version number (WB 5.01 & SKS 5.01). Instead, the features in SKS seem to lag about 1 release behind WB.

Anyway, griping over. I'm (mostly) happy!

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