Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Skinning: Where are they now?

Four years ago these are the sections on Skinz.org along with the # of skins in that section.

eFX: 173
EGN: 17
Half-Life: 23
K-Jofol: 14
LS Mods: 3
MPFree: 7
MyPad: 9
NeoPlanet: 23
PalmOS Emu: 11
QCD: 23
WindowBlinds: 18
WinAmp: 156
WPlay: 5

Some of these apps I'm not very sure about. Obviously Half-life isn't a skinnable app.

From top to bottom:
eFX was developed by Thirty4. They halted development after signing up with a company called Akamai (http://www.akamaidesign.com/). But nothing further ever was publicly released beyond 0.40 in 1999.

I'm not completely sure what EGN was. But you can find out more about it here (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/2995/index.html).

K-Jfol was a skinnable MP3 player that was bought out by Winamp. Its technology is thought to have served as the basis for Winamp 3.

Litestep Mods continue to be developed with themes available here at WinCustomize as well as at www.litestep.com

MPFree was another skinnable MP3 player. It has a section over at deviantART http://www.deviantart.com/browse/t/skin/mpfree/.

MyPad was a skinnable text editor. You can find its section at deviantART here: http://www.deviantart.com/thumbnails.php?section=mypad

Neoplanet was a skinnable web browser. It was actually one of those dot-com companies that saw skinning at the pathway to immense popularity. Unfortunately they were a bit too far ahead of the curve. At one point, Neoplanet had something like 60+ employees. It provided a Lord of the Rings web browser as well as an Austin Powers web browser. When the dot-com crash came, they were one of the early casaulties. You can still download their program at www.neoplanet.com (http://www.neoplanet.com).

QCD was another MP3 player. It is still updated on a regular basis.(http://www.quinnware.com/news.html). The most recent release being only a couple days old. It looks pretty impressive too (http://images.deviantart.com/large/skin/qcd/BetaMaxx.jpg).

WindowBlinds has grown in popularity over the years helping to make Stardock a significant player in the customization community. In 1999, the company was struggling in its transition from OS/2 to Windows. Stardock was in the process of creating Object Desktop for Windows and having a difficult time with the "enhanced look" component of Object Desktop. Eventually Stardock teamed up with Neil Banfield who was independently working on something similar. By combining knowledge and technology, WindowBlinds took off and now has over 2000 skins. You can find out more at http://www.windowblinds.net

Winamp has also seen its popularity grow. Originally a shareware program, it was bought out by AOL for millions of dollars. It has grown so popular as an MP3 player that even with Microsoft's efforts to dominate the media playing market, Winamp is still able to hold its own. Its third generation version incorporates very flexible skinning that supports alpha blending. You can find out more at http://www.winamp.com

WPlay, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have survived. It was a $10 shareware program that had to compete against free programs from much larger providers. It had some great skinning technology that was arguably ahead of its time. But with so many MP3 players, it was inevitable that some wouldn't make it.

So there you have it. A time machine trip back 4 years ago to the dawn of modern skinning. Back then, people didn't use graphics packages. We made skins using punch cards and each skin had only 4 colors of course... how things have changed!

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c242

Join Date 03/2001

+383

I remember, I started with eFX quickly discovering WB skinninng more components. Upgraded from WindowBlinds 1.x to OD. BTW, Remember IconPAX ?

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1846

Skinned most of those....eFX was one of my first.
4 colours?....even then I only had grey....

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Hah! And I was around to witness it all. Had the first public beta of WB to boot

0.40 I think it was?

When I shelled money out of ODNT all the way back in 1999 I wasn't too sure it was going to take off, hell, when I first saw (and used) WB I didn't expect it to survive. Look at me now, still a subscriber and can't imagine my life without WB and slowly warming up to DX too

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Aha! So that's the top secret company that took over eFX. skinz was started as a place to host eFX skins, but it soon had many other sections as well. When they sold eFX, development was halted... which is a bloody shame, 'cause when looking at where WindowBlinds was back then, you'd wonder how far eFX could've come.

Didn't WinAmp start out as freeware, then went shareware for a while, 'till Nullsoft changed their mind again?

As for K-Jöfol... Best skins ever!

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NeoPlanet and QCD. Gah, yep - used both of those religiously. QCD still holds a special place with me as the best CD Player ever. ^.^

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sheesh . . . and to think that litestep (

) was what originally sucked me into the world of desktop customization . . . soon thereafter got accounts at customize.org and skinz and messed around w/ eFX. those were the days . . .

(anyone remember pordey's winamp skins?)

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Winamp originally was planned to be freeware but his parents convinced him to charge for it, although he didnt cripple it in any way. So technically every official version up until the AOL days has been shareware.

As for windowblinds I remember using it back in 1997, at like version .21 or something like that. About all it could do then however was add the the then super cool gradient effect to windows that was available in what was then known as windows '97. Been hooked ever since.

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I remember Pordey's skins, I probably still have a lot of them on my drives somewhere. Although I also remember him copping a lot of slack over re-coloring his creations over and over and releasing as new versions

His Sonique skins on the other hand were sensational. I always wondered whatever happened to him.

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My favorite skinner for WB was Shawn Murdock.. His skins kicked a$$ back then *sigh*

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elvee

Join Date 03/2001

+113

I started with eFX before moving to WindowBlinds back in 1999. Skinz.org and Customize.org were there, But there were others like ChunkyMunky.com in 1999, and Desktopian.org in 1998

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screenshotz.net (?) was fun as well . . . didn't that eventually become what we know as DeskMod today?

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> QCD was another MP3 player. It is still updated on a regular
> basis.(http://www.quinnware.com/news.html Link). The most recent
> release being only a couple days old. It looks pretty impressive too
> (http://images.deviantart.com/large/skin/qcd/BetaMaxx.jpg Link).

Then why is there no QCD section on this website?

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Thanks CacheMonet - I am still alive and sort of kicking. I will come back, I promise, I have been slowly warming up my PSP again. At first I had just gotten burned out but then I got very sick. I have been sick for much of the year and the medicine makes it hard to sit and concentrate. I love skinning. I love everyones comments and support. I wont bore you with my problems but please dont give up on me yet.
I started way back around WB version .40 - basically skinning the the window frame and the scroll bars. My first skin was Blue Tube - boy was it bad. Skinz.org was, at least for me, the core of the skinning community. There was a handfull of skinners around and maybe a hundred skins at most. Back then a new skin could be made in like half and hour. Those were the days when just about everything was new and fresh.
Today its amazing how far things have come. There are so many good skinz out there. Like many I am a fan of other monster skinners like Essorant, Frogboy, Treetog, ..........
I really like seeing peoples first skin, especially one that really rocks. They usually have some unique trait that stands out.
One thing that I think shows how much skinning has grown is how things are displayed. I remember the first WB 'screenshots' were basically just a capture of the titlebar - thats all you really needed to see. Now the 'screenshot' is really a screenshot, the whole desktop. I think that really shows how things have expanded. I hope they keep expanding. I love tweaking out my desktop. I think its also interesting to see how many apps that were not skinable are now skinable.

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