New Page 1 After the miner set back of having no power at the office today, Things are going ok on the Christmas Theme. I am not going to show any Screenshots tonight, as I am not ready to show what I have. But here are the things I got done today. 1) Established look and feel of the Windowblinds skin. This proved much harder then I had hoped. Making something that is decidedly "Christmasy" that is not annoyingly bright, or to Cliché, What I want is when people see the skin for...
New Page 1 Skinning Christmas.... As most of the skinners out there know, I am one of the luckiest skinners arrowed. In that I one of the few who get paid to skin. While it is not my full time job here at Stardock, It is something I get to do for special occasions. And Low and behold, its one of those special occasions, Christmas. I have been given the task over the rest of this week, to make a Christmas Suite skins. And I thought it would be kind of cool...
New Page 1 Not that this will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever made a Windowblinds skin, I am running a bit behind the. But the good news is I think I am only about a half day behind my proposed schedule. My main problem today was I pretty much completely abandoned the Titlebar and Frames that I had finished yesterday. Brad pointed out to me that it was a bit Harsh. And I had to admit he was right. The funny thing is that once I got into rethinking it I decided to go with a ...
Under The Skin: (Episode 1) In every episode of Under the Skin we are going to try and provide as detailed show notes as possible. Today we take the time to introduce ourselves, as well as let everyone know what our Podcast is all about. Then we welcome Mike Bryant, one of the worlds most popular skinners, and co-founder of the SkinPlant.com . Show Notes: Under the Skin : Episode 1 , Recorded August 13, 2005. Host: Paul Boyer Guest Host:...
Under The Skin: (We have a home!) Last week we recorded our first episode of the new Skinning Podcast , Under the Skin . My original plan was to host it on my Wincustomize.com website. This was a bit of a cheap solution because I was concerned about the cost of bandwidth. However, once again, Stardock has stepped in to give me a hand. Under the Skin , will now be part of the PowerUser.tv "network". We will have our own home page, at undertheskin.poweru...
Skinning Podcast!As most of you know, Stardock and Neowin have joined up to do PowerUser.tv. PowerUser TV is going to be a tech news Podcast, and video cast. During the process of getting set up for this, I have been inspired to do podcast of my own about skinning and the skinning community. The plan so far: We are planning on doing two episodes a month. Maybe weekly if it is well received. I will be hosting it, and we will be interviewing a different skinner each episode. I hope...
An Icon a day Keeps the Creative Block away. (I hope) As some of you may have noticed, and gotten mad at me for, I have not had a new free Iconpack out for quite some time. This is not so much because I have been doing Premium Suites, it's because I just have not been able to find any time. Since I have started working at Stardock, over a year ago now, I have been doing a lot of fun stuff at work. Making video game UI's, Skins, and 3D. This has been sa...
Ok, As I was saying yesterday I am a bit behind schedule. I was hoping to have the Windowblinds skin wrapped up tonight, and I almost got there. But not quite. I still need a XP start button, as well to tweak some of the system colors. But I should have no problem finishing it up tomorrow. Here is another teaser of the skin. I will have a full Screenshot for you tomorrow night. Click the Thumbnail to see full size Image. My Plan for tomorrow is to finish up the Windowblinds Skin, do t...
New Page 1 This morning I came in early to start on my Christmas theme, and low and behold, there is no power at the office. Luckily I had not stated the theme yet, so I jumped in my car and headed home. After a this hour or so of delay I am back on it. I spent some time this morning just coming up with Christmas elements that I can work in to the suite. This allows me to come up with a color palette, as well as helps me ...
Yesterday we created a "Wrapper folder" and we will be using it as the key ingredient for our User folders. Tonight we will start with one of the simple ones, just to see how it works out. Day 9 (Thursday, August 14th, 2008) The Users Folder: In the past, the favorites folder was tucked away in the depths of the Documents and ...
Windows Vista has brought us a great many things, some good, some bad. One of the less noticed changes is the new User folder structure. With this they have changed one of the staples of windows customization and icon design in general. Day 8 (Wednesday, August 13th, 2008) The Users Folder: In Windows 95 through XP, user folders (My Mus...
Windows Vista made several changes and additions to the way folders are displayed. The most obvious change is the Live folders; subtler is the addition of the Data folder. The Data folder is often mistaken for a Live folder, but is, in fact, simply a folder, with another folder inside of it. It is used whenever a folder contains one or more sub-folders. The Data folder is used even if those folders are empty. Day, ...
On Day 3 we created the new Closed Folder icon, and then on Day 4 we took that folder and created our Open Folder. Today we will take it even further and use our Open Folder to create our Windows Vista Live Folder. Day, 5 (Friday, August 8th, 2008) In Windows Vista, if you have your folders displaying at any size above 48x48, just about any folder you see is a Li...
Back in the dark times of 2005, we did not have such things as Live Folder, and the Open Folder was a rarely seen anomaly on the Windows desktop. Now things have changed; though you rarely see the actual Open Folder icon, you see the Live Folders everywhere. We will take advantage of this to finally give the Open Folder some love, and I will try and explain just what goes into the Vista Live Folder icons along the way. ...
The first Icon in the original Icon-A-Day series was the Closed Folder. I have to admit that I was not quite sure what I was getting into at the time. This time I do, so we will begin once again at the beginning, with the Closed Folder. Day, 3 (Wednesday, August 6th, 2008) The funny thing about the Closed Folder icon is that by default, in Vista it is no lon...