I have restored the skin. While I agree that Microsoft has every right to request the removal of the skin, they do not have the right to selectively enforce that right. That is, they can't simply ask us to remove it but not request the other sites to do so as well. I had informed Microsoft we would not agree with selective enforcement again. It's been nearly a week and they still have done nothing. The skin is available in countless forms (including .msstyles) on various websites. And while Kol's is the closest to the Windows Vista look and feel, there are countless other similar skins that have been available for motnh.
If they are serious in their concern over skins inspired by the Windows Vista look & feel remaining off the net, we'll be happy to oblige them. But we're not going to be the only skin site that doesn't have it simply because we're friends with Microsoft and thus are more familiar with what's happening on WC.
During the "Whistler" beta in May of 2001, we were working on a version of WindowBlinds then called WindowBlinds XP. During that beta, we had figured out how to get WindowBlinds to apply .msstyles WITHOUT having to patch any DLLs. It was a clean "native" way of doing it (ironcially, the person at Stardock who figured this out now works at Microsoft but that's another story). Microsoft requested that we take this ability OUT of WindowBlinds because they did not want third-party msstyles due to support and branding concerns at the time. We complied with Microsoft's wish. 4 months later, Style XP was released by a new company called TGT Soft. Not only did Microsoft not do anything to try to stop them, but they allowed TGT Soft to falsely claim that Microsoft supported what they were doing. Only months later, on a web post, did a Microsoft spokesperson -- on deviantART, state that they did not want to see third-party .msstyles but it was too little too late.
To make a long story short, Stardock, which owns this site, is not going to suffer through selective enforcement again. We abided by Microsoft's wishes during the Windows XP beta and the result has been 3 years of hacked uxthemes, msstyles advocates falsely claiming WindowBlinds is "bloated" (even though it's essentially identical in implementation to uxtheme except with more features and HW acceleration) and of course TGT Soft.
