alright, so, we're back to this i see...
firstly, and what i feel is one of the major points that we're both dancing around, is the primer you wrote when wb 3 first came out.
convenient link: http://www.windowblinds.net/xp/wb3advantages.html
that is where all this stemmed from, most notably the 'windowblinds 3 fully skins windows xp' part of the document (in the title for all those playing along at home)
now, i may just be completely deanse, but to me at least, your first lengthy response tends to read (aside from the first bulleted list) just like that primer. same example images, same arguments, you get the idea.
now, nothing against that, but, i just read that as more marketing, and THAT's what i meant by 'please, no marketing?' sorry to kind of over-generalize that, but, read it again and tell me that they both don't read kind of similarly. course, could just be me.
now, to try and restate/answer what's been brought up...this may take a while...
first and foremost: i never argued that windowblinds wasn't making progress. i know it's made progress. i've seen the progress. what i said was that that progress was secondary to speed increases. (i'm gonna shoot myself for this but) your own marketing tells this. every new build on component manager since 3 has touted 'performance/compatibility improvements' whereas the only build to tout new features were 3.15 and now 3.2 with ie skinning and global image cache respectively. so, by that i can therefore assume that performance and compatability were higher on the development white board than new features, aside from ie skinning which i assume would be considered a biggy because that's what most people were noticing wb didn't skin.
i think part of our failure to adequately communicate is that you and i hold onto our respective views of each other a bit too strongly. i know i do it, it's human nature and it's hard to let go of, but hopefully by the end of this you'll see that i have to an extent done so in order to try and more clearly get arguements resolved.
i write like an engineer, it's so sad...
alright, so, before i tried to get this across, and i guess it just didn't sink in well enough.
let's focus. let's focus on windows itself. no apps unless they're tied into (read: bundled like IE) with windows xp. i concede that windowblinds skins more apps (though i never really argued otherwise, but we're trying to resolve things, not start new ones...)
again, the image i made above applies because i based it off of an arguement based on JUST windows itself and internet explorer, explorer, notepad, etc. basic 'fresh install of xp out of the box' apps.
now then, i'm gonna try and rephrase your above bullet lists and and tell me if you think this is a fair assumption:
windowblinds, with respect to captions and the things thereof, namely buttons, text, has more features than msstyles, and it skins menus that aren't toolbars.
true? true...now, i know that windowblinds has the ability to set different visibility settings for buttons in order to get more states for a button. i was wrong about that. but, the animated start button/scrollbars/buttons in general (on mouseover/click only though if i'm not mistaken) i don't feel is a valid arguement with regard to states. YES, windowblinds allows for animations, but, those all boil down to being just for one state, hover/onmouseover. the states i was referring to was with, for instance (just an example) scrollbar thumbs. in windowblinds by default they have 3 states: normal, pressed, mouseover. they simply aren't drawn in the disabled state. with msstyles, by default, scrollbar thumbs have a normal, mouseover, pressed, disabled state. the same holds true for checkboxes/radio buttons. in windowblinds they merely have normal and checked states, with mouseover/semi-checked being optional. now, with msstyles, checkboxes/radiobuttons have normal, mouseover, pressed, disabled states for checked, unchecked, and semi checked boxes, as well as for radio buttons (selected and not selected). course, you mess with msstyles already, so this must just be restating the obvious to you, right?
this i think leads nicely into 'shortcuts,' or rather, things left over from windows9x/2k that still have yet to be addressed/updated. the extra states of controls being omitted, though i doubt many missed the mouseover on a checkbox till whistler started showing up around the net, the places area not getting it's own skinning options, dropdown buttons just being handled as normal toolbar buttons, toolbar menus just getting handled as toolbars, the favorites menu...it's not just that they're not skinned, but rather, that they're not skinned in a logical manner. a menu should be skinned like a menu. not like a toolbar. in windows pre-xp, yes, this is fine. but, with xp having the ability to not skin toolbar menus as toolbars, this shouldn't be that big a deal should it?
here's a pic of the header 'issue' (ie: there's no header background skinning being done, and it's not in the skin, all states have something not beige in them) that i've brought up before...
http://www.geocities.com/mephistocorugant/header.x
alright, so, where were we? ah yes...
um, addressing the 'consistent environment' while i'm thinking about it...that's the thing. windowblinds is growing and it's getting to a state where you can actually choose between msstyles or windowblinds skins and not lose anything between the two. but it's not there yet. part of that is because of consistancy. when using a windowblinds skin, the average user won't notice a difference between it and an msstyle skin (assuming that both are nice skins that skin everything they can). but, there are still enough things that seem jarring enough to remind someone 'hey, i'm using a 3rd party solution to skin this.' like the favorites menu. IE was like that up until 3.15 when it finally got skinned. the grouped taskbar menu is like that. the (at this point unskinned) tasks panel is like that. that's not even having opened a 3rd party app yet...
now, up until now i thought i'd made my assertions pretty clear as to what i was comparing. controls to controls. LOGICALLY skinning controls to logically skinning controls. you can't actually sit there and read this and look at windowblinds and then look at a comparable msstyle skin and say that they're the same and they're both doing just as much. bringing win9x/2k into this shouldn't even be thought of as fair because they can't use msstyles. it'd be like comparing a truck to a dragster in an offroad competition.
now i think we come full circle, back to where this is all stemming from. microsoft made the msstyle format in it's final (as of win xp) form to give the user a seamless feeling across windows. not across apps, across windows. i for one think they pulled this off. now, when i look at making an msstyle skin there's something that off the bat you notice. across all controls that it skins, you have a measure of control that's pretty much equal...be it scrollbar thumb, button, tab control, etc. you're given as much freedom with one as you are with the other, relatively speaking.
with windowblinds, it's a different story. it's like, captions have a lot of stuff you can do with them and the buttons on them. tons of options, open canvas really. but as you go along and get to controls that have been added in later and later in wb's life, and come to the windows xp components, it's like the amount of options tend to fluctuate and with some you can do a ton of stuff, but with others they're just an image. like, radio buttons. why can they only have transparency if they're tga's? why can't you use magic pink and have them bitmaps?
bollocks...i don't know anymore. if you wanna argue that msstyles is still not skinning controls as well and as numerous as windowblinds until you're blue in the face, go right ahead. i'll just chill here and have my views and just hope that each new version brings wb closer to replacing msstyles. maybe when longhorn comes out and wb 4 is released it'll be up there with xp's msstyles and some of longhorn's, course, then this argument will just start over again i'm sure.
just think, next time y'all go to document a control, it's not whether you're skinning it or not, but, whether you're skinning it how you should be. in msstyles there is now something to go by, a template, an ideal if you will, and a means to go about doing it in the apis therein. don't just turn a blind eye to it...as i'm sure someone once said 'even the best of people will be able to see the best in others without themselves getting in the way' but since i seem to be the only vocal member of this community that seems to be able to tell the difference between windowblinds and msstyles, maybe i'm the one at fault?
regardless, it's quarter till 10, and i've got a test to prepare for in a few hours...
meph
