DesktopX lets you use VBScript and Javascript (and any other scripting language that supports Windows scripting host) to extend what DesktopX can do.

But it also allows you to directly access EVERY COM object (ActiveX controls) on your system.

This morning I saw my son playing a game from Lego.com. That got me thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could take that game and email it to my friends and family who have kids. Not a URL, but the actual game. And what if the final "Game object" was only 2K?

Here's how I did it:



Ist, I right clicked on the DX tray icon and chose "new object". It opened up the object props dialog and I chose to create a NEW script. This opened up the DXScript editor and put in the VBScript template code. Since I wanted to make an IE control I went to the script menu item and picked the ActiveX control chooser item.




This opens up the ActiveX control list. These are all the ActiveX controls on my computer. Most people have no idea what ActiveX controls are nor do they realize just how much of them on their system. Basically, most modern programs are no longer monolithic. They are instead broken up into COM objects. DesktopX lets you directly access them. I went down and found the Microsoft web browser object and chose that.




Now, I don't know VBscript at all. All I know is that ActiveX controls are referred to as well "Controls". Thankfully, DesktopX's script editor has intellisense. So I typed Control. and then intellisense showed all the methods of the IE control. I went through it until I found one that looked like it would let me navigate to a particular page (navigate2). I'd never have known what the method was without this as I haven't messed with COM myself. So Picked that one.




Then I put in the URL page from the Lego site my kid was playing on.




I exited out of it. There is no "save" option because it's all "live". I right clicked on the object and chose "enable script" to get it started. I held down the Ctrl key to resize the object to be the size I wanted it to be.




And voila, my game is on the desktop. Only thing left to do is create some pretty bitmaps to act as the borders of this "window" and then group them together (drag select all the objects and choose to group them). Then I can email it to anyone running DesktopX and they now can play this game.

Try this very soon, before Google fixes its site:

1) Go to www.Google.com
2) Type in to search: weapons of mass destruction
3) Click the I'm feeling lucky" button, instead of the normal "Google
search" button;
4) Read what appears to be a normal error message...carefully. Read the
whole page.

The DesktopX 2 public beta is getting ready to start in the next few days. One of the places where DesktopX 2 issues, tips, suggestions, etc. will be handled at is the DesktopX forum over at Neowin.

If you have Object Desktop, you can now download DesktopX 2 beta (v1.98) from Stardock Central (http://www.sdcentral.net).

If you don't have Object Desktop, its home page is http://www.objectdesktop.com.

Version 1.98 has a host of fixes and enhancements as we move towards version 2.0. It also includes some really cool objects such an Amazon.com object, a really cool weather object, a stock ticker object, another fish object, and much more.

For a suite to be useful, it needs to support the applications people use.

But this also has to be carefully balanced -- every application that is skinned adds time and effort to the project. So what do you think would be the list of core apps that need to be skinned for something to be complete for the mainstream user?

Here's what I would pick:

 IconPackager for the icons

 CursorXP for the cursors.

 WindowBlinds for the GUI

 DesktopX for the desktop

 ObjectBar for the bars and menus

Windows Media Player for the MP3 player (or Winamp)

Maybe Trillian but probably not (I use MSN now).

 And WinStyles to put it all together.

What apps do you think really need to be skinned for a complete suite?

In April of 2003 Stardock released WindowBlinds 4.0. Version 4 was redesigned for Windows XP to make use of Windows XP features. It added smart painting which has allowed WindowBlinds visual styles to perform faster than the included Windows XP visual styles.

It also was able to take advantage of the XP visual style compatibility APIs that have allowed WindowBlinds 4.x to have equal compatibility to what is provided by Microsoft.

In addition, new features such as shellstyle support (task panels), sliders, command prompt skinning, logoff screen support, please wait screen support, control panel background skinning, and mcuh more were added.

The net result is that WindowBlinds 4.x provides a very complete, very fast, and very compatible Windows customization solution.

In addition, WindowBlinds 4.x has these advantages over the bundled Microsoft visual style engine:

1) Uses less memory and resources. Ram usage in GUI skinning is largely due to the actual skin. The overhead from the engine itself is minimal. WindowBlinds visual styles were designed to use less memory. For example, the Luna visual style (Windows XP style) uses 4 megabytes of space on the drive. To put it in perspective, WindowBlinds 4.1 comes with 10 skins and the entire package including installer is about 5 megabytes total. In memory, WindowBlinds skins use caching, shared bitmaps, and video card memory to use significantly less memory than the bundled XP visual style engine.

2) Not only are explorer views skinned by WindowBlinds but it does not require the user to hack the shellstyles.dll. Users who have "customized" their shellstyles have had to actually hack a DLL to do so. WindowBlinds makes the skinning of the explorer views as part of its format ensuring compatibility with different versions of Windows XP (i.e. no need to download a new version of WindowBlinds when a Service Pack comes out).

3) Identical compatibility. Not only does WindowBlinds use the same APIs to detect whether to skin a given program, WindowBlinds can allow users to skin all their programs if they so choose.

4) Works with .suite and .xptheme formats. The standard suite format used by skin authors is the .suite format used by WinStyles that can put together Icons, skins, themes, etc. all together into a single file.

5) Multiple Language Support. WindowBlinds works with all languages Windows supports. WindowBlinds continues to be popular in Japan and other Asian countries where customization has always been quite popular.

6) Fast System hooking. WindowBlinds uses the same system hooks that the Windows XP engine uses (some people have tried to say that Windows XP's visual style engine uses no system hooks but they are mistaken). The advantage though is that the WindowBlinds DLL uses less memory than uxtheme.dll resulting in less overhead.

7) WindowBlinds not only supports multiple font sizes and DPI sizes, skin authors can use their own fonts and sizes within their own skins. WindowBlinds can automatically install an included font onto a system for the user. In addition, users can magnify or reduce the size of the fonts on a per skin basis.

8) Integrated into Themeing APIs. WindowBlinds automatically detects applications that are using the new XP themeing APIs and skins them natively. In addition, WindowBlinds is the basis for DirectSkin, the world's most popular custom skinning API.

9) Massive user control. Users can control the size of the taskbar, change the color of the skin, take advantage of hardware acceleration in their video cards with Hyperpaint, control the gamma correction of their skin, change the skin to be grayscale, set different skins on a per application basis, add additional controls to the title bar, write plugins to control their MP3 player, report weather, and much much more.

10) Ongoing support. WindowBlinds 1.0 was released in 1999. 5 years of development have made Stardock the world's leader in GUI customization. Its engine continues to evolve and add new features based on both user and skin author support. Its skin creation program, SkinStudio, supports many different formats including UIS1, UIS2, USF, and msstyle. WindowBlinds technology has been licensed by Microsoft, nVidia, Nintendo, Bell South, Warner Bros, Touchstone Pictures, Serious Magic, and countless other companies.

WindowBlinds 4.1 is available at http://www.windowblinds.net (www.windowblinds.net).

It's free to try and $19.95 to register on its own. The full version skins additional controls and has additional features, enhanced skin packs and more.

You can also purchase Object Desktop which comes with WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, ControlCenter, ObjectZIP, Keyboard LaunchPad, and much more.

I was inspired by Grayhaze's post on donations ( https://www.wincustomize.com/msgboard.asp?BID=WC&id=167122 ) to write this article.

In the good old days, a WindowBlinds skin or a Winamp skin or whatever could be started and finished in a few hours. I know, I used to make them.

As time has gone on, a good skin now takes 20 to 50 hours each and that's assuming no colorization support, no sub-styles, no plugins, etc.

Stardock's been working to make it easier to create the more common style of skins with a new skin format called the Universal Skin Format. With USF, the title bar buttons can be on the left or right but are otherwise pretty much set and a lot of the other parts of the skin are automated.

But UIS2, the skin format for WindowBlinds that is very free form, will continue to evolve to gain new features. And as a result, making a fully featured skin of quality now takes a lot of time to do. I think the same thing will happen to other skin formats as the programs they are for become increasingly feature rich.

And while non-skin authors sometimes have a hard time understanding it, there is an invisible threshold between when something is fun to do and when something becomes work. And at that point, the author will want something in return.

That something can come in many forms. Props from their friends. I can tell you that a kind word, a showing of appreciation, recognition, etc. goes a long way. When I make something and share it freely with others, it really does make it worth it to see people say kind things about it or for a website to feature it or whatever.

But another form of compensation is financial. I think what will increasingly happen is that skin authors who have been around a long while and have freely contributed for a long while, having created fan bases, will start to occasionally release "suites". Pixtudio started the trend and others have followed. To keep that fan base strong and to keep public recognition and to keep the community thriving, these "pro" skinners will still release lots of free stuff. In fact, arguably, it'll be the "pros" who release the most/best free stuff because they can justify the time because a) they like doing it and it helps promote their non-paid stuff.

But going Pro means putting ones business hat on. It means making a decision whether to go it alone or to work with a publisher. Going with a publisher means giving up a large percentage of the proceeds in exchange for hoping to get more income overall.

This can be a bitter pill to swallow on the surface. For instance, on Galactic Civilizations, Stardock paid for development, hosts the website, handles the support, and does quite a bit of the marketing and our HOPED for per unit revenue on this $40+ game is about $10. 25% of the sales price. I.e. that's our BEST case scenario. But the idea is that instead of selling only 5,000 units at $40, we'll sell 60,000 units at $10.

The same is true on skins and themes.

A good suite sold by Stardock, for instance, can sell anywhere between 1,500 to 2,500 units per year. At $9 apiece, that's up to $22,500.  25% of that would be $5,600 in royalties.  So then the question is, can you make more than $5,600 selling it yourself or in some other fashion? Is $5,600 worth your time to create a suite?

And if so, what about making 2 or 3 of them per year? Now you're at $10,000 to $15,000 per year. Enough to upgrade your hardware and justify to yourself and your parents or wife or husband the time you put into it as well as "feeling good" about the community.

Which is where things return to -- the skinning community. Joe graphics designer is not going to be able to make mega skins and get them sold in quantity without having already become well known in the community. Similarly, skin authors who go "pure pro" are likely to lose out because as competition grows, people will choose the suites made by people they've heard of and who have given a lot to the community in the past and present.

So ironically, it is my belief that as time goes on, it may be the for pay suites that help drive the creation of free skins. Free skins from up and comers who are trying to gain recognition and a resume and free skins from pro skinners who are trying to keep that recognition and be able to supliment their income by doing something they love and are good at.

 

http://skins.stardock.com/video/DesktopX20-1.wmv

This is a lengthy video but really shows off what DesktopX 2 is capable of doing.

Every so often a real milestone comes to skinning. Where the technology available happens to coincide with the hardware people happen to be using.

Winamp 2's release would be an example of such a time. Windows XP and the release of WindowBlinds 3 near the same time would be another.

We think DesktopX version 2 may be such a time. Tonight version 1.98 beta was put up onto Object Desktop (via Stardock Central). If you don't have Object Desktop, you can get it by going to www.objectdesktop.com ( http://www.objectdesktop.com ). But for those of you who have access to it, this might be a good time to try it out the beta of DesktopX if you hvae any interest in skinning.

I'll be putting out a video demo so that it'll be more clear. But this version comes with some sample objects that give you a taste of what is possible and there are a ton of incredibly cool objects coming down the pike.

We will be splitting the DesktopX section into 2 sections - objects and themes. DesktopX themes are different than objects. A "theme" takes over your desktop whereas an object is merely enhancing your existing desktop. DesktopX 2 objects are fully scriptable and it's much easier to use than...well anything else that is even remotely similar. I could, for example, create an object and have it change its color based on the time of day in less than a minute.

As a fairly simple example, the beta includes some fish objects that swim around your desktop. These are just DX objects with a few dozen lines of VB scripting to give the fish some "intelligence".

DX objects can also be ActiveX controls which means if you're a developer you could use DesktopX to rapidly develop an application.

We're very excited about this. The video we'll be releasing this week will show more of it off but in the meantime, if you have Object Desktop already go ahead and give this a shot if you're comfortable running beta software.

Heh. You have to check this out.