Any long time skinner knows the pain -- they can create great graphics but the coding/scripting is just too much.  Or on the flip side, the developer can make the skin but can't draw or design to save his or her life.  And hence we have the wonderful balance of ugly skins and pretty buggy skins.

The way most interfaces are designed these days is by a professional graphics designer creating cool looking stuff as a mockup and then the developer trying to recreate it as best they can.  

It's a problem that has plagued Windows for years.  Lots of ugly looking programs with bizarre interfaces that only a developer could love.  It's one reason why MacOS apps tend to look so much better -- designers and developers are able to work together much more seamlesly.

But Microsoft is hoping to put an end to that with the announcement of Microsoft Expression Suite. It's a suite of 3 programs -- Sparkle, Quartz, and Acrylic.  Acrylic allows the designer to create the visual content. Sparkle allows the designer to create interfaces visually without writing any code and Quartz does much the same thing for web pages (based on what I could tell -- mind you I never saw Quartz until today).

Sparkle reminds me a lot of the popular widget enabler, Samurize. It has an environment where designers can visually create their interfaces without having to write any code.  The two are very similar in concept.

The significance of being able to have designers create their interfaces directly as part of the project can't be discounted.  Stardock first began using DesktopX to enable its graphics designers to create the interfaces in its games with 2004's The Political Machine.  It is currently being used in Galactic Civilizations II.  Both games read in DesktopX packages (.dxpacks) and then uses them in the game (powered by Direct3D).  This way, if a designer wants to make a tweak, they can without having to write code or talk to a developer.

Sparkle does this on a much wider scale of course. Now all developers will be able to make use of this kind of thing which should translate into much nicer looking programs with interfaces and graphics done by designers rather than just developers.

Now pause here for a second and consider the ramifications for Windows customization / skinning.  If skinning software developers (ala Stardock) can develop programs that make use of these new technologies, it could bring in a whole new era of skinners.  Imagine having galleries that are designed for collaboration between developers and designers. 

Pretty exciting stuff!