I would love to see if widgets would have the ability to use the current WindowBlind skin. I am not sure how hard it would be to implement, but it would make changing the overall-look of your desktop much easier.

In addition to that, having lots of skins for different Widgets would then be the ideal combination and would certainly give the people the freedom to customize their desktop individually. It would most likely require that Stardock creates the most common basic Widgets as some kind of "standard skeleton" for which the individual skins can be created, and that WC will have the ability to sort the skins by the widgets. Such a widget would then have a right-click menu allowing to choose between: "Use current WindowBlind" and "use other skin".

My thought (expressed several times before) was to add into Skin Studio the ability to have images for weather, rss, clock, calendar, etc so that i could code a widget/gadget that used the correct images, and add the functionality i wanted it to have, then have the current WB skin (if it had the images in it) change the skin of my gadget/widget.

I have really fought to break out of the same old same old stuff, trying to make DX work in ways most people are not currently using, but its really hard. I think there is a major split in the skin/dx world over SKINNERS vs CODERS, rarely are there people who are good at both. I think having the ability to use the great looking images/graphics/skins that so many people here put out, on a brand new type of widget would be great.

I think having a seperate skinning program for DX is not a good idea, its one more things the "skinners" would need to learn how to use. Where if the major items (just look in the widgets gallery to see what they are) had base images, etc that could be implemented inside SS there would be a Wealth of new and great looking skins for DX widgets.

I think there is another issue as well, with my limited knowledge of Vista, i think there are going to have to be new widgets/gadgets created that FIT into the standard sidebar, and as i have not used vista all that much (yet) and have only played with some of my own items, i see a lot of size issues, and that would be something that skinning could help with.

I think the main problem with DX/widgets/gadgets is people think of them as throw-away apps, things they can turn on/off/ignore/etc. But what we have to move to are mini-programs that have skinning abilities. One that I have worked very hard on is the Holiday Countdown, it uses built-in images, but it also allows you to use your own images, and that was a major undertaking, but it is something that i think is really new for DX (maybe im missing things). We need to come up with widgets/gadgets that push the limits of what can be done, and in DX that limit is REALLLLLY out there. I have worked on some new things that use a lot of WMI calls (something i never used till about 2-3 mo ago), and the wealth of info in there is amazing. Just look at what VAD_M has done.. wow.

I look forward to DX4 and the new things there, DX is an amazing platform to work from to make some really great things.

Accourding the vista sidebar : It will never be able to compete with DX, as the widgets for it are far from perfection (Ever used a mail or another sidebar gaddget that needs an internet connection without connection ? Crash crash...) and it is also a ressource hog compared to DX or even DX gadgets. I have played arround with it when my vista was new and I quickly got back to DX.

I think it should be skinned like everything else.  Apply a skin and it gets skinned like everything else, or most everything.

I gave up on that a while ago, and just have savesettings() and loadsettings() functions i made to write out to the reg and read from the reg. its a pain in the rear, but not much i can do.

I still hope this thread will have more life than this one which has some importand points in it but died pretty soon after it was posted.

Skinnable widgets is a great idea. As it is now, the same widgets are used over an over again but with different images. So, basically that's what is going on now anyway. It would be much more convenient to be able to simply change the skin via a menu than to reload a new widget. Plus, why have so many copies of the same thing on your computer when you only need one?

There should be seperate skins for different types of widgets rather than having them being created in a universal format. I think the skins will look much better if they are designed specifically for a certain type of widget. Hopefully there would also be a way to move items around in the skin so they dont all look exactly the same. Something like an ini file where you can define the size, font, and placement of buttons and images.

The idea of using the existing WB skin, if possible, should be an option but only along with using the skins. The end user, although its hard to imagine, may not have WB installed. Plus, not everyone may want there widgets to look like window frames (Assuming that is how it would work).

It would also be nice if the "base widgets" were released with permission to reuse the code. That way if someone wanted to create something a little bit different from the norm they could. Like making a combo widget by combining one or more widgets into one. For example: a calendar / weather widget, or grouping several widgets together into a sidebar like dock. Or if they were capable, they could add features that were not included in the base widget.

c242- for what its worth, I think your solution would have worked fine if skinners would have adopted it. But like you pointed out, the weather widgets kept flooding in and the only skins available were the ones you submitted. Which, by the way, all look great.

So the idea is that there will be this one Stardock weather widget and it will pull images from a WB skin. In addition, skinners will be able to make skins for this widget following a basic platform. Instead of thousands of weather widgets we get thousands of weather widget skins.

I just have alot of questions for anyone who has an idea:

Are we proposing that there will be a seperate gallery for widget 'skins'?
What if we don't have WB? Would it also be able to pull images from a DX theme?
What about design? Most of the weather widgets are in the same 'window' or 'box' fashion. Supposing a skinner wanted to make a skin in other odd shapes and sizes; arranging the buttons, images etc in different ways. Would pulling images from a WB work with that? Would it recognize that the close button goes in the bottom right corner,the temperature goes in the top left, the now weather image goes in the middle, and the 5-day is arranged vertically?
Would the skinning process be anything like Xion where each image must be named the correct keyword so the DX widget will know which image to apply to what?


Supposing there is this one weather widget and I make a DX theme. What exactly would I include instead of a weather widget? A package of images?


Finally, can we really make people stop duplicating weather widgets if that's what they choose to do? I'd imagine somewhere down the line someone will make a better more efficient weather widget and will want to upload that instead of the UniversalSkin weather widget.

I used the word flooding simply because it was the terminology introduced in post #5. I wasn't intending to imply something negative, I thought it was referring to the quantity.

That’s why I think it would be convenient for people to have just one widget that they could right click on and quickly choose a new skin. Kind of like changing a skin in rainlendar. Of course the skins wouldn’t necessarily have to match a WB and could take on any design the artist creates.

I didn't mean to single you out on that - its just that the person that made 90% of the weather widgets wrote on their last widget they would no longer upload to WC , I have no idea why she left but it did seem a shame that her work was regarded as ' flooding' when people did in fact download tons of her stuff.


Not sure it would be the same as a Rainlendar...each rainlendar 'skin' is totally different size and set up ( hopefully )

A rainlendar takes twice as long to make than a widget. But Rainlendars seem to be a dying breed..

Maybe widgets are just going the same direction. The novelty type widgets have run their course.