What makes me always upset is when they tell lies or attack every newspost at da or neowin with stupid statements. Can't hold it... Even on the GUIOlympics thread.

I've seen c242 brutally flamed on forums simply for stating facts or simply pointing out the falacy of some user.

There's been so much FUD spread about WindowBlinds by these Style XP "advocates" that some think they're "facts".

Consider these (and I'm sure you've seen these)

claim: "All WindowBlinds skins suck!"

reality: Given that there are thousands of WindowBlinds skins, it's hard to take such a claim seriously. Especially when most of the decent msstyles are also available in WindowBlinds format. And also, amazingly, msstyles peopel are constantly asking for ports of popular WindowBlinds skins.

claim: "WindowBlinds is a memory hog!"

reality: Wbload.exe on my system uses 1.7M

Meanwhile, who knows which of those svchost.exe's is the theme service (I rarely bother to turn mine off because I don't sweat about memory because I understand the concept of virtual memory and know if it ain't being used, it's going to get swapped to disk at some point).

claim: "Style XP uses no additional resources"

reality: It certainly does if you use its config and it includes a service that is always running. And last time I used it for any length it had a small memory leak that added up if you kept your system up long enough:

And I'm not even sure what that thing is supposed to do. I wasn't even running Style XP at the time. Whatever it is, it uses even more memory and handles than WBload.exe uses when its actually running.

claim: "WindowBlinds slows down your system"

reality: Relative to what? Relative to classic? Sure. Relative to running an msstyle? No way. Not unless you're running some incredibly bloated WindowBlinds visual style. For one thing, WindowBlinds uses features in the Radeon and Geforce cards to speed up drawing. If you turn on hyperpaint, you can pretty much eliminate redraws.

Of course, you're lucky to even get those specifics. Most of the time it's just shrieks of "WindowBlinds blows!".  It's just software and yet some people take it like a religion. And I bet there's 50X more WindowBlinds users than Style XP users. It's lucky for them that there isn't a proportional # of WindowBlinds trolls out there. Imagine if every time someone previewed yet another "Hey, it's like 50 other skins out there but with different title bar buttons" someone didn't say "Looks lame, you should get WindowBlinds."

And then there's copyright. Style XP includes as its default skin a MacOS X visual style complete with Apple logo. We don't because we know how Apple feels (we include a Mac classic skin because Apple legal said they didn't have a problem with that as long as it doesn't include the Apple logo).

I'm just glad our other products don't run into this though. Imagine if every time there was a post for Galactic Civilizations some Master of Orion 3 fan or some Space Empries fan trashed the posting for GalCiv? Or if every post on DesktopX had varius Litestep or Samurize advocates come out and say it's crap. I'm not saying that never happens, but it's rare.

what cracks me up is that THEY are suing YOU. this thread alone is enough evidence to SHUT THEIR COMPANY DOWN.

i'd speak softly and not make my enemies.
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OK now this is funny. Another forum I'm on has yet another fascinating StyleXP topic going. There's so much misinformation being spewed, it's crazy, thought I'd come here for some peace.
I'm trying to explain, again that StyleXP does indeed use resources but it ain't working. >

it must be that limited edition over comercialized, hyperglossy, turbo powered user, gui/os replacement skin ive heard about ....
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I can only say 2 things after reading this thread. 1)I love WindowBlinds and all the fixin's. And 2)I'm kind to dumb animals.

Ok....3 things.

"the Windowblinds themes add stupid window borders and 15 bazillion buttons so that you can access every possible function of your computer from one freaking window."

And this is a bad thing? Like I said...I'm kind to dumb animals.

Hippy, your skins rock, dude. We all know that

Yea, the attacks on skins get on my nerves.

I was doing an article today on the history of WindowBlinds skinning. And I firmly believe the msstyles zealots have really done real harm to skinning. I say that because skin authors have become so paranoid about making anything that isn't "minimalistic" because not only will they not be appreciated for being creative and original, they're likely to get flamed by the msstyles militia.

Let me show you some skins from 1999 so you can see what I mean in terms of originality.

 

This is old but when was the last time you saw a skin that tried to look like something other than "Look, it's another generic GUI"? Or at least done reasonably well?

This is from 2000! Sure there's OS skins in here too but look at that Allend Bond skin. Or Dangeruss's skin.

This is from Shoggot. His title bar blade actually rotated (animated) when it was the active window and the blade stretched as you increased the size of the window. I can't even remember the last time someone made a good animated title bar. And it's so easy. It's just frames of animation. Some little glowing effect or SOMETHING other than the usual gradients that everyone seems fixated on.

I believe that the reason for the lack of creativity these days is because of the obsession with downloads combined with fatigue from being flamed by the msstyle kiddies who will look at a skin that took 2 weeks to make and shrug it off "I won't use that crap" simply because it's not Windows Luna (but red) or some skin that looks like a slightly more minimalistic version of Luna.

I can't even remember the last time someone made a good animated title bar.

Centurion by Hippy has a cool one. it also makes sense interface-wise in his skin.

btw: the old days weren´t that original as well from the given examples. the first skin seems to be ported from "Notepad" by Hideaki Kamada (at least heavily inspired by) and the skin By Dangeruss is ported from "Galactica" by Duncan Cowan. both Kaleidoscope schemes. so the an other conclusion could be that Apple has done harm to Windows skinning as OS X is no longer that freeform as before and the usual sources for ripping/porting look almost all the same. the rips/ports of course will also all look the same

an other thing is that many people do not want skins, but get them pushed in the face with Luna. Classic with the ugly default colors and too high bevels is not much of an alternative. so the desire for more minimal skins by people that overwise would not have thought about skinning at all is understandable.

but yeah, of course the most important reason is that many people nowadays do not skin for fun or for creativity, but in order to upload stuff and feel like part of a community. that´s why things like comments or ratings are so important for them. an other phenomenum (not really new, but it happens more often now) are people that are watching other people´s skins like vultures waiting to port them. seems to be something pathological.

btw: the more popular skinning gets the more average and mediocre skins will be there. not much that can be done about that, it´s natural. as in the Gauss curve.

I'm just appalled by the number of false statements StyleXP has on its website. They say they "started the 3rd party visual styles craze." Are they that ignorant? WB was around long before StyleXP even thought of existing.
There are numorous other statements that detail their ignorance. It is funny that they don't have the balls to mention Windowblinds directly in any of their statements, just refer to other 3rd party software. They know if they mention it, they will be exposed.
Its too bad legally you can't do something to get those false claims off the website.

c242: hmmm ... not as many as you might think. credits are not here at WC, they were probably removed when the skins were transferred from Skinz.org. you´d be surprised how many of those are ports. (originals: Takashi Izawa, Albie Wong or William Martin for example).

I believe that well informed Style XP users could compare to well informed windowblinds users and co-exist without much hassle. It is, in my opinion, the few crazed ex-windowblinds converts or the uninformed/misinformed StyleXp users that engage in most of the bashing/flaming. People with real "chips" on their shoulders.

"WB was around long before StyleXP even thought of existing."

Even the short lived EFX, CustomEyes and Illumination preceeded StyleXP by a good 3 years.
But TGT either selectively forgot those, or just proved their ignorance to the real skinning scene that exists.
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