Now if those "proper" XP skins weren't a combination of re-coloured Luna skins, and rips (ie: PreLuna), then you may have a point. Until then I'm not really interested.

Don't get me wrong, bezerka, I have no issues with you at all. I just don't like the mentality thats surrounding these .msstyles and those who are making them, (note: not all of them, just the rippers). PS: I also class all these recoloured Luna skins as rips.. Really, enough is enough.

Blahg...

wow..you chose the wrong site to post this one on..

Style XP themes are just recoloured Luna themes so far, and even the good ones are rips of Alexandries work among others.

Here we go again........

Indeed. The only "Proper" XP themes are WindowBlinds ones.

John Hamp looks at the MS certified for Windows XP logo.

Hacking DLLs so that you can recolor title bars and buttons isn't what I think most people want. Might as well stick to classic and just chnage the title bar color. quicker and faster.

ive seen a lot of what look like original work.

to be honest, i just bought this OS i dont want to spend more money on it just to make it look nice styles does what i need it to, make the tool bar and stuff look different. i found window blinds to be bloated, and more fuss than it was worth.. it was an early beta though so thats probably why.

i always thought skinning was a way to make your old stuff look better, and for free.

oh, and you CAN use custom shells, you need to edit the registry though

I really don't understand what people that doesn't like windowblinds come to win customize...
Maybe just to find some "inspiration"

not only inspiration, but actually steal work of others. Check out your skins will be in the party too I'm sure.

Sometimes, like an iceberg, what we can actually see is only a small part of the whole.

The number of out of the blue users who have come onto our news groups (the Stardock ones) as well as onto message boards preaching how great Style XP is and how terrible WB is has been astounding. I don't think most of those people are ringers, but swap things around, can anyone imagine "Stardock advocates" going onto TGTSoft websites and message boards and news groups telling those uesrs how terrible their program is and how they need to use various Stardock programs?

That's been one of our frustrations. I and other Stardock people are out there taking our lumps. It would be so much easier just to create a horde of aliases who aren't constrained as a "real user". That certainly isn't to imply that TGTSoft is doing that. But there does seem to be a fundamental difference in the type of users who use skinnable software. It's not been enough for Style XP advocates to be happy with their program. They also want to get in everyone's faces telling them how awful WB is and how terrible WB skins are (while ripping them).

If people are satisfied with what msstyles can do, that's great. Welcome to the skinning community. But we don't go around trashing other people's software. You don't see Hoverdesk users trashing Litestep or vice versa. You never saw Chroma users bashing WindowBlinds or vice versa. Hence why this whole thing seems fundamentally different.

You are right Alexandrie!!!
The site www.themexp.org must be renamed to "THE RIPPERS SITE".
Except from the rips of Styles XP, they have ripped many of my wallpapers !!!
What kind of people are those people?
Someone must help me to stop them; I am not very good in this kind of action.

and as for treetogs comment about why people come to this site if they dont use windowblinds, the reason for me is that i create wallpapers and this is the place where i showcase them

And of course, one of these two ways has "advocates" (not you berzerka) that insist on trying to bash the other way.

If someone wants a new look, they can also use classic and change the color of their title bar.

Even eFX can do more than msstyles. BTW bezerka, running msstyles you like uses more memory than running WindowBlinds.

berzerka - you've ignored the question of ripping through this entire thread. It's not a minor issue to the artists that produce work for any skinnable app or for wallpaper artists. What are your feelings? Would you download and use a ripped skin? Would you support the right of the original artist to get the rip removed from the site that is offering it?

Why is it that every time Styles XP is bought on, people automatically speak of ripping? Sure rips are bad, but it's not the product's fault that some of its users do rips. When IconPackager started, most of the icons sets made available were rips from other icons artists. Does that make IconPackager a bad program? Of course not.

Some people prefer msstles, and some people prefer Windowblinds; please respect that.