There are a lot of skins that I personally find very good. I will admit that I'll usually skip (or change if I can) any skin (for my own personal use) that still has Microsoft branding. The whole point for me of running any Stardock applications is to give me as much OS customization as possible, and for me that means no "Windows" logos. I'll gladly take the glass style of a Vista skin, but I don't want that "Windows" start button logo staring at me.

Skins I really like?

Vienna2 Spectrum, LK, Sunlife, Purple Haze, Rainbow (John Guger), LOTR Gondor, Vista Plus V2, Musical Vision, Noel, Halloween 2, Hallows Eve and October, which is what's on the desktop just now...

All in all I enjoy a good clean skin, but I also love bright colors, and themed skins, which one I will use at any given time depends upon whether or not I am playing or working at any given time.

As for 6, looks good to me, and I like the new skins, particularly "Molten" which works just fine even on XP Pro.

Right now I am in trial mode, but I just may upgrade, if only to keep that skin....

I think alot of people like themes that change the size and proportion of the Taskbar/Start Menu/Frame...etc. Like smaller taskbars, uniquely shaped frames and so on. Optix for example is quite a unique skin.
I think peoples taste just varies thats all.

In no particular order:

StealthOS (I used this one for a long time)
NeOS
Eminence
Vienna Vista
Ecliz
Ecliz Deluxe2
Azenis2
And oh so many others

Holiday themes like Christmas Time and R.I.P.

Skinners like MikeB, JJ, danilloOc, Tiggz, Basj, IR Brainiac and many others



While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think I'd have to agree with this statement... at least from my personal set of aesthetics for most of the 4200 WBs on the site. Why??? In order of importance to me at least: Bad contrast, incomplete, poor font choices, poor quality fit, finish and function, to complex (I.E. trying to do too much in the skin).



Education, specifically some 'best practices' with examples would help. What elements/rules result in good contrast, what does it mean to be complete, what makes a skin usable, what things besides the pretty graphics need to be considered when looking at fit and finish, what comprises bad function?

One of the things I've always found curious about this site and it's previous incarnations is that there's no specific 'developer' type forums that talk to development specific issues. (I use development to mean coding, graphic design, tool usage, etc.) Or at least it's not obvious to me if and where they exist. It appears to be mixed in with the general messages of 'Help Me' or 'This Sux'. Obviously, something analogous must exist some place otherwise skinners/developers would take forever to come up to speed. While there are any number of tutorials which is good in and of itself, tutorials don't supply the depth and breath of information needed... nor should they.

Where is the 'history', the technical details of issues solved, problems overcome, tips, tricks, etc? I've read/been told over the years that a lot of information is supplied or passed along via IRC. Which I assume to be SD's IRC server. All well and good as I know SD's developers visit quite often and I assume the 'Master Skinners/Developers' also appear, but I've never been able to find a log of those conversations. So if you don't happen to be on the channel... then you're SOL. And that information/knowledge is limited to the few that were present at the time. And even worse from the education point of view would be the private emails and PMs.

Of couse it could all be around and I've just missed it.

Anyway... just my 2bc.

I tend to favor only a few. Opus by Bose Harvey and Optimal2 by Z71(GUIMagic). Both are like me, old and utilitarian. Holiday seasons (Christmas and Halloween) I use the RIP and the new Community Skin and whatever comes along during Christmas.     

Ok, I formatted and installed WB6 fresh install over the weekend and one thing I noticed...it only came with a handful of skins that look like they were created from SD Design. Didn't it used to contain a bunch of community made skins? What happened to that?

My recommendation would be to include some of these mentioned skins with the program itself as a testament to what *can* be done with Windowblinds. Include a few from the different categories: minimalistic, clean, extreme, unique, pseudo-OS, etc.

I finally downloaded WB6 to give it a try. The only thing I was disappointed in was the shilling of yahoo crapbar by default.

Morpheous416 ....that's an interesting interpretation of 'history'....

The 'early days of skinning' were long before Bill had a twinkle in his eye re XP OR Luna ....so skin evolution was already well underway with 95/98/2K, etc.

The issue of [relative] blandness with uxtheme-based creations isn't a 'stigma' it's a program deficiency/failing.  XP's inherent skinning options stifle creativity through lack of variable feature.

Windowblinds on the other hand is in constant development....and each subsequent ver over the years has enabled skinners to do/vary MORE of the OS GUI than those before....

I think in the cold hard light of today that many of the Windowblinds skins are genuinely horrible [including mine].....for all sorts of reasons, mostly because they either are not up to date with what WB can skin....and are thus incomplete[ish], or are trying to do/be too much to/for too many people....and are not simply cleanly and quietly well-executed.....too many bells and whistles.

If it's an indicator...I'm currently using Tiggz' GT2 .....compared with many it's almost 'bland'....but it also appeals to someone who is interested in 'Good Design' [whatever the object]....