Not again....

risk7...do you have any idea how expensive bandwidth is? I would imagine at this point that the cost would be upward of $10,000 per month (low balled that one, I know).

Think, man, think

Skinstudio and WindowBlinds are now bundled together though. Therefore, those who purchase WindowBlinds will receive Skinstudio as well. It's still not free, but it does come with the program for which it is made.

That's a lot better then what I thought. Still doesn't help me, somone "Thinking of switching" from StyleXP which is free too WB but wanted to make a skin but it's limited to being without widgets etc. Maybe it sounds bad but I can't figure out why anyone would charge extra for dev tools that result in an end product that could possiblly increase its revenue. Maybe i'm just stoned.

Peff Peff grabs the spliff and partakes.....

I think anyone using StyleXP will be unpleasently surprised when Microsoft decides to correct the hole in their theme DLL which is being hacked to allow StyleXP. Then the 'switch' will be a no-brainer.

BTW....does ID actually provide the Map editor? I always thought it was a third party product.

Correct a hole in there theme .dll? You mean like Internet explorer being proprietary to the windows install? I don't think microfsoft has the right to stop anyone from customizing there OS or the developers of. That sounds like a monopoly. That would be the same as saying we won't alow WB to load or be installed.. or making there themes proprietary. Im only assuming. Just doesn't sound right.

ID's map tools are free.. they are open source. Hence more third party involvement but the original tools were released by ID.

Risk7...StyleXP is a hack into the msthemes.dll that bypasses the security features put there by the all knowing, all virtuous Microsoft god (I hope you know I'm joking). There is nothing to stop MS from modifying the mstheme.dll (a single byte ought to do it) to break StyleXP. I seriously doubt that the StyleXP community has the ability to bring on an anti-trust lawsuit to stop them from doing so. WindowBlinds, on the other hand, is sanctioned by MS (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) - in fact, from what I've read here (and elsewhere) XP themes are based (to some degree) on WB technology. I wouldn't be surprised if the next version of XP (or whatever they decise to call it) incorporates WB.

I think the question of 'The switch' is moot (or will soon be).

Messiah (feels weird typing that...I'm sure)....what does the 'K' stand for?

It used to stand for Katie, but now it stands for Kakarot because he's hardcore.
Yes, Windows XP's skinning engine is based on WindowBlinds. In fact, Microsoft has released a couple of WindowBlinds skins lately, but not any new XP Visual Styles.