DavidMandle - I do indeed mention msstyles and themexp.

The reason I don't specify TGTSoft is that I don't really see them as being a contributing factor. And I mean that sincerely. For instance, what is the difference between TGTSoft and say Lokai.net? (http://www.lokai.net)? Or any other provider of a patch for making it so that you can use msstyles? I mean that as no offense to TGTSoft, I just don't see a concrete contribution.

This actually goes well with that other discussion on communities. If someone says a false thing enough times, eventually it becomes a truth. There are actually sites that call msstyles "Style XP themes". Unbelieveable. One has to wonder what the poor guys at Microsoft who actually put in the effort to create the skinning engine think of that. Not to mention that they SELL this stuff. Someone can knock WindowBlinds but at least it actually does something.

Giving msstyles time is a tricky thing but they and boot screens have become popular enough that a primer needs to talk about. I just wish someone else would write a thorough primer because I feel a bit handcuffed. I mean, do people realize what they're doing when they replace their logonui.exe? or their NT kernel? Or use a shellstyle.dll? or patch uxtheme.dll? Ack. But if I point out the blatant security/virus concerns, I get accused of bashing. I had always hoped that someone like Teknidermy would do an expose on this kind of stuff.