Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Is GUI skinning fading?

I've been tracking the rate in which GUI skins (WindowBlinds / msstyles) since 2001. What I do is see how many new skins are created each month and then check on the rate of creation.

It is a good indicator of how popular skinning is. Now, from a purely competitive point of view, msstyles compete with WindowBlinds skins. But Stardock, as a company, benefits from and overall interest in skinning.

At the start of 2004 there were about 2,550 WindowBlinds skins and 1100 msstyles.

Now, April 12 there are about 2785 WindowBlinds skins (not counting GUI Olympics entries) and 1212 msstyles.

This is looking at ThemeXP.org mainly as the site for msstyles. deviantART is a good site too for msstyles but they get even fewer msstyles than ThemeXP does.

So since the start of the year, nearly twice as many WB skins have been made.

Yea, I know, yippie for WindowBlinds. But does it mean that the GUI skinning "craze" has peaked and it's starting to move back towards being a more techie thing? Obviously not good news for those who use uxtheme patching programs but WindowBlinds has really become really popular partly because of how popular skinning, as a whole has become.

Thoughts?

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1846

I think the growth of membership here is a fair indicator of popularity with skinning....where the number of 'users' is steadily increasing.

Actual increases in skin-making complexity can have an effect on new skin frequency...but it's the user numbers which perhaps give the best indicator of the state of play...

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

I'll have to go through and look at the overall count of new skinning.

Now, the million dollar question is, WHY is msstyle skinning fading? No, I don't think it's due to limitations in the format. ThemeXP has moved to spyware which is probably hurting it. It could be a distribution issue. Or it coudl be there just wasn't that much steam to begin with. Once the easy to port skins had been ported, new skins came at a lower trickle. I'm not sure.

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Apocalypse_67

Join Date 01/2003

I have never skinned msstyles, so I have no idea how hard or easy it is.
Perhaps the reason why less msstyle themes are made is because skinners are working more with windowblinds than any other shell replacement program. Another reason might be (as you stated) WB has gotten more popular so new skinners that are coming across skinning applications for the 1st time, have encounter WB first and have over looked other applications (I'm speaking from self experience)
2004-2005 could be a turning point for the GUI skinning, with new OS in the horizon one can only expect that lots of changes will occur and more people will get drowned into this great trade.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1846

windowblinds than any other shell replacement program

Um....WB is not a shell replacement...

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kona0197

Join Date 02/2003

+86

ThemeXP has moved to spyware which is probably hurting it.

I know that ALL to well. Downloaded a msstyle from themexp.org to port it... got choked with spyware. Yuck!!
[Message Edited]

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Koasati

Join Date 07/2001

+21

It could be that WindowBlinds is winning over more skinners. The msstyle
skinners may be moving on to WB, because it is simply a better format.

Perhaps the reason why less msstyle
themes are made is because skinners are working more with windowblinds than any
other shell replacement program.

WindowBlinds is not a 'shell replacement'.

I'm too slow... listen to Paul!

[Message Edited]

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Phoon

Join Date 10/2001

+382

Now, you should go back through it and look at the number of QUALITY skins. From what I have seen, there have been many new WB, but few that I would feel inclined to use.
This however is also an indication of new artists getting their feet wet as well.
Pesonaly, I am still submerged to the knee caps with windowblind skinning but I hope to emerge to a state of feet wetness before too long.

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Apocalypse_67

Join Date 01/2003

I meant windows GUI skinning.
Sorry, Im eating a sandwich, watching Air Force One and trying to surf the boards.

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treetog

Join Date 03/2001

+29

GUI skinning is getting more complex every day, more stuff to be skinned and more features at every new version of the applications.

Just an example: I am working on a wb skin that allready took me over 100 working hours and I still have a lot to do. Till my last one, the most time consuming wb skin I made was around 80 to 90 working hours.

Skinning is mostly a hobby, but when a skin never ends, then this hobby start to become boring.

In the other hand, people are making skins less sophisticated, to see them done faster.

If people don't make great new skins, users will slowly stop to download them because they are not good enough to replace what they allready have.

Do you see my point? My concern is like "who came first? the egg or the chicken?"

As for me....I am worried

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Same as treetog, skinning used to be really fun... and it is mocking it up in photoshop. When the time comes for thing like toolbar buttons and such I start to cringe. The amount of work involved is scary.

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DavidK

Join Date 03/2001

I agree with Renato... it's more complex to make them now and for various reasons it's not as much fun as before. I truly love making skins and always enjoy using a new one, but, today, I find I can't afford to take the extra two weeks of time. I do graphics for a living so maybe that's part of the problem too, burn-out from staring at a computer for too long.

I know I'll still make skins and I never made that many anyway but I really feel like the times are not good for skinning. It's harder now to make a living (for me at least) so it's difficult to justify devoting the time to skinning.

That being said I'm excited to see what's coming from treetog! The skinning world owes a real debt of gratitude to Renato and Alexandrie for devoting so much of their time to making great skins. The same goes for all the other great skinners too...

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Koasati

Join Date 07/2001

+21

Skinning WindowBlinds is getting more complex..... yes that's true, but didn't we ask for that?

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BoXXi

Join Date 03/2001

+393

I agree entirely with Renato.

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kona0197

Join Date 02/2003

+86

I do graphics for a living so maybe that's part of the problem too, burn-out from staring at a computer for too long.

David, you need some R+R in Newport for 2 weeks all paid.

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I noticed that wb skins DrOPped off each time there was a new program added to the libraries to skin. between dx, od,bootskin and logonstudio not to mention cursorxp, there have been many times the skinning community put aside wb for a while to play with the new toys. but if you watch carefully, once the newness wears off , the wb library increases again.
more people are interested in skinning now, because of more publicity letting people know it's possible, but the number of skin designers has slacked off a little bit lately. Some of that is due to economy, and also deployment of quite a few soldiers who could have been or would have been skinning, ... there's lots of reasons why this very moment you see a decrease. given time I Think it will return to it's normal pattern.
[Message Edited]

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Apocalypse_67

Join Date 01/2003

Renato brings up a good point. But then again, isn't innovations and additions to the programs what makes skins more attractive?
I think these additions are what draw the line between the average skinners and the elites of the trade. For someone that does this for a hobby (regardless of how much fun it was/is) it will certainly take a toll, for someone that does it for a living it has a monetary value.
The sudden rush of new skinners has boost the amount of skins but just as Phoon said, how many of those are really usable skins?
So all of us that are used to the high quality skins from artists such as Pixtudio, TSF, Adni, Gabriel (just to name a few) will certainly want to see more of their work.
Is skinning GUI fading? Not for a long shot.
Has quality been replaced by quantity? It most certainly has.

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Well said apocalypse_67! and very on target.

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My question is, Do we have to skin everything? Of course not but if we don't, people think the skin is incomplete.
Now even, if it doesn't come with a compact startmenu, they won't even look twice at it.

Times are changing but that doesn't say we have to. Skin what you want and leave it at that. The whole idea is to keep it fun, right?

On the issue of windowblinds having a large number. Is that including all the MSStyle ports? That would increase the count right there.

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Personally, I don't think that it's a matter of gui skinning having faded in popularity. If looking purely at the numbers of new skils/msstyles, I think there's a very clear reason there would be a slowdown over time. That is, unless radical new features come out which change the paradigm of application "frames", then most of the basic (that is, moderate, within the box) skin designs have been done. Most of what's left is either tweaking existing designs, or pushing the envelope with experimental new designs. When skinning first became popular, anyone with a paint program could put together a skin and it would be somehow different from what was already out there. Now, it takes creativity to put up something that hasn't been done before. I think it's just a sign of a more matured market that there aren't as many new skins submitted on a regular basis.

As far as msstyles-vs-windowblinds, the main reason I switched to WB had nothing to do with ease of use, or even really some of the added features. It mostly had to do with the fact that the skins I can get through WB show a lot more originality and creativity than msstyles skins, which tend to be rehashes in most cases.

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When the time comes for thing like toolbar buttons and such I start to cringe.

Don't you mean toolbar icons? Because, I feel the same way.

And now there are animations too. Heck, six months ago, there were no toolbar icons to skin or shell animations. Now, everything is getting so complicated. No wonder there aren't quality skins. To make a quality skin, you have to skin all this stuff, and it does take over a 100 hours. And when you are doing this for free..OMG

Windowblinds is starting to make me hate being inspired.

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In the philatelic community the APS (American Philatelic Society) has expressed concern that the interest in stamp collecting is fading as the average age of it membership rose and the number of stamp dealers is less. I'd be curious to hear membership stats on the percent of folks that feel that they are skinners versus users and the percent of skinners and users in various age ranges. I wonder if that type of info would be useful in determining the growing or waning popularity of skinning.

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'scuse me, but i go to ThemeXP often, and i download .msstyles often, and i have never seen spyware there. can you tell me more (hopefully to show me why to use windowsblinds, i dont at the moment.)

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kona0197

Join Date 02/2003

+86

'scuse me, but i go to ThemeXP often, and i download .msstyles often, and i have never seen spyware there. can you tell me more (hopefully to show me why to use windowsblinds, i dont at the moment.)

This is from themexp.org:

In order to keep our costs down, some of the files on this site have been wrapped with advertisements. This has nothing to do with the theme authors and they are not making any money because of it. It is simply a way for us to pay for bandwidth and servers to keep this site going.

Not EXACTLY spyware but still pretty annoying and not needed.
[Message Edited]

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

Essencay posted a comment at the start of the GUIO about how inspired he was by the first few submissions. I am sure alot of people learned all sorts of new things from disecting Thunderstorm and Pixel 8. After about 2 weeks of Thunderstorm being posted I started to see other skins utilizing Treetog's experience. I would consider them to be "Pioneer" skins. All of the so calleed "big guns" have it different than us beginners. We can get away with doing just a "theme". You pioneers (I wont single anyone out cause there are so many) have to go the whole nine yards with icons, and animation, etc. The public won't really accept somehting from you that isn't astounding. Well thats not totally true but I think you get my point. It then becomes work rather than fun. You pioneers must sometimes envy the freedom that a newbie has in creating a theme. Right now I am having alot of fun just doing "themes", and with each click I learn something new. I am limited to my knowledge of skinstudio. I got tons of ideas but I just run out of talent when it comes to skin studio. I don't even truly know just exactly what shell styles are. The information and tutorials are helpful but they just don't go into enough detail. If someone wrote a book / manual I think alot of people would benefit. Alot of others are confused when trying to learn skinstudio. This is not a complaint whatsoever but(well maybe it is) almost all other graphic software comes with a manual, but not skinstudio. This is why I rely on you pioneers to show me the way.

After I finish the whole Zodiac series I am gonna go into hiding for a couple of months and try to take my game to the next level.

I have only been around for about 2 years so I am not sure about this but, I see a growing population of younger people jumping into the skinning community. With the elder's experience and the younger perspective I think a few months after the contest is over you are gonna see some really new and creative work.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Just a reminder: Msstyles are no more complicated now than they were in 2001.

WindowBlinds skinning hasn't declined.

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