Spring is here and skinning continues abreast.  The GUI Championships, the multi-website skinning contest has had to be postponed while we improve WinCustomize's infrastructure.  The slow speeds and such are a real headache.  Sometimes it's lightning fast, other times it's incredibly slow.  It's all very frustrating and, as you can imagine, very difficult to debug.

But cool stuff keeps getting made. BootSkin continues to thrive. I haven't tried it on Windows Vista yet to see if it works but if not, it shouldn't be too hard to update it.  Stardock actually had nearly finished a high-resolution, true color BootSkin that could support true animations but Microsoft hired the lead developer in the last weeks of coding. Unfortunately, since it was all written in assembly, it was abandoned.  I think a perpetual beta of it floats around for Object Desktop users. But I'm continually amazed at what people can do with 16 colors on the boot screens.

JJ Ying, one of the world's most popular skinners, continues to expand his gallery. I have to say that people like JJ Ying and many others help bring the world together.  According to our stats, China is home to a significant percentage of the WinCustomize.com population.  JJ Ying's Halo Cursors are particularly cool.

Windows Vista's cursors are pretty much the same as Windows XP.  So expect there to be a "CursorVista" when the time comes.  There may be additional things we'll be able to on Windows Vista thanks to the 3D engine that is part of Vista's desktop.

Have you ever read the Dune series? The first book was great. The second book was good. The third book was..well the first two books were definitely worth reading. NetBadger has been in the process of putting together a Dune based suite. If you're a fan of the series, it's definitely worth checking out on his personal page.