User voting has begun to pick 20 finalists for Best Use of Colors. Now, this isn't for what skin makes best use of the WindowBlinds colorizing feature. Rather, this is the skin that by default strikes you as using color just right.

A good user interface designer knows how to use color to make their user interface both attractive and intuitive to use while ensuring that it does not create eye strain over time. Users can go to the voting booth and pick 5 skins they feel do this successfully.

With 20 finalists for Fastest Skins, the website breakdown goes as follows:

deviantART: 9
LotsOfSkins: 7
SkinBase: 2
VeloctyArt: 1
Customize: 1

The judges will be voting on this and two other events this week with the results announced next Monday.

With the first week of the GUI Olympics over, LotsOfSkins leads in the medal count with a gold and a silver medal. Deskmod is close behind with a silver and bronze medal.

The first two events were Most Cheerful Skin and Most Depressing Skin.

Tropica by Hippy for LotsOfSkins won the most cheerful skin.

Organix by Mindless Puppet for Customize.org won the most depressing skin.

Mindless Puppet dominated the first two events with an honorable mention in the first event and winning 3 of the 5 top judged spots in the most depressing skin. MP walked away with the gold medal in that event.

Upcoming skinning events include Best powerUser skin, Strangest skin and Best use of sound effects. It's not too late to get skins entered into the GUI Olympics for those events.

Here are the winners of the first two events:

Most Cheerful skin:

GOLD MEDAL: Tropica by Hippy (LotsOfSkins)

SILVER MEDAL:
Gilla by Ruined Inc. (DeskMod)

BRONZE MEDAL:
Banana Cream by Emily (TweakXP)

Honorable Mentions:
OlympicsOS by Treetog (deviantART)

Soma by Mindless Puppet (deviantART)


EVENT #2: Most Depressing Skin

-- EVENT #2 --
In the most depressing skin, MindlessPuppet dominated. But according to the rules, contestants can only have 1 entry qualify for a prize.

Here are judges rankings:

#1 Ogranix by Mindless Puppet (Customize.org)
#2 Elemental Forces by Mindless Puppet (deviantART)
#3 NecroPhasia by Hippy (LotsOfSkins)
#4 RazorARt by Ruined Inc. (Deskmod)
#5 CrudeMetals by Mindless Puppet (Customize.org)
#6 Real by Judge (deviantART)
#7 NightVision II by Mindless Puppet (deviantART)
#8 die Zukunft by Invincible (Customize.org)
#9 LOS by Alexandrie (LotsOfSkins)

But because of the published rules, only Mindless Puppet's top entry can count. Despite that, his domination of this event should be respected by all.

Here are the official results then:

GOLD MEDAL:
Organiz by MindlessPuppet (Customize.org)

SILVER MEDAL:
Necrophasia by Hippy (LotsOfSkins)

BRONZE MEDAL:
Razorart by Ruined Inc. (Deskmod)


Honorable Mentions:
Real by Judge (deviantART)
die Zukunft by Invincible (Customize.org)


The medal count on the right will shortly be updated. Using the scoring system mentioned in the rules here are the overall standings:

#1 LotsOfSkins (8 points)
#2 Customize.org (6 points)
#3 DeskMod (5 points)
#4 deviantART (3 points)
#5 TweakXP (2 points)

Next Week we'll announce the winners of these 3 events:
Fastest Skin, Best use of colors, and Best "Power User" skin.

The third event is "Fastest skin". So what does that mean? As most people know, different GUI's perform at different speeds.

Here are things that slow the GUI down:

1) Transparencies. Computers are designed to draw rectangles. So any skin that isn't completely rectangle is not going to be one of the fastest skins.

2) Stretching. Did the skin author use stretching in their bitmaps? If you have SkinStudio, you can find this out quickly by clicking on the edit skin button in display properties and loading up Skinstudio. If the borders have an S in them instead of T or Tile you know that it's stretching the frame images. If it's doing that then it is NOT going to be the fastest skin. Tiling is fast, stretching is slow.

3) How does it feel? When you use the skin, does it feel fast? Or does it seem like it's slowing down your system?

4) Did they make a UIS1 version? A UIS1 skin is faster than a UIS2 skin usually and you can tell whether it's a UIS1 skin if there are THREE preview windows displayed.

When you have narrowed it down, head over to the voting booth. We will be looking at 20 finalists this time to determine which is the fastest skin.

Here are the finalists for the most depressing skin:

razorart vr2
NightVision ii Lit
Organix 2 v2.0-2.5
Elemental Forces v
CrudeMetals v1.01
NecroPhasia
Asylum
Real
Cast Iron
Codedragon Dark
LOS
die Zukunft
ProjectX
Gilla
WinLCD

The judges will now look at those 15 skins and pick the gold, silver, and bronze medalists!

Good luck to all!

What is the oldest pet that you have or have ever had?

I have a box turtle that I got when I was 15-16 years old. It was an old turtle then (roughly 30 years old we estimated). I'm now 30 and still have that turtle which would make him around 46 years old and 15 years that he's been with me - through highschoool, college, various places at college, various places after college. A very well traveled turtle.

I have one of those aqua-baby frogs someone gave me, I've had that for over 2 years now, surprised at how long that thing has lived, frogs don't tend to do very well in captivity (which is why I'd never buy one).

Well, the crazy bird that last Spring spent days ramming itself into our window has returned. Same bird, same window.

The more things change...

Sometimes people get confused about what Object Desktop is. They don't realize that the programs, WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, WebBlinds, WindowFX, etc. are all components of Object Desktop.

The goal of Object Desktop is to allow users and corporations to transform their Windows desktop to be a customized solution that is specific to their needs. Until now, however, it has been a tedious process to do just that. That's because a user or IT manager would have to literally go and apply the themes, packages, and skins for those various programs individually. On top of that, there were various third party programs that also would then have to be manipulated to go with the overall look.

To this end, Stardock created a project called Convergence. The Convergence project was designed to put all the various major skinnable/themeable programs together with a single interface to control them all.

The final result is WinStyles, the Object Desktop component that not only controls the various parts of Object Desktop but can also control popular third party programs like Windows Media Player, WinAmp, Hoverdesk, Beatnik, etc. So no matter what programs you use, you could access them in a single consistent manner right from the Windows display properties (in the WinStyles tab).

Not only can WinStyles control the individual programs, it can apply entire super themes (.xpthemes) which contain skins and themes and icons from all those various programs at once. Want a Mac-like look? Download a MacOS XPTheme and apply it. The XPTheme will have the necessary WB skin, ObjectBar theme, DesktopX theme, IconPackager icons, etc. to have, in a single click, a reasonable facsimile of the Mac desktop.

To protect the intellectual property rights of skin and theme authors, Stardock also created a .suite format. Where a .xptheme file literally contained the actual skins and themes within it, a .suite contains LINKS to the individual pieces where WinStyles can go out and download those pieces. Fields are available for listing the author information and no legitimate website will knowingly accept a .xptheme that contains other people's materials without their permission. Meanwhile, .suites allow skin and theme authors to get their work not only more distributed but distributed with credit AND increases their download count (for instance, when a .suite file downloads the WindowBlinds skin, it increases the download count of that skin - the more widely available the .suite file becomes, the higher the download count on the websites their skin gets which in turn increases the visibility of the skin author). So users get an easy way to quickly reproduce a favorite screenshot and skin and theme authors control their skins and themes and gain greater visibility.

WinStyles is also good for software developers. If a .xptheme or .suite contains files to programs the user does not have installed, WinStyles will offer to go out onto the net and download/install it automatically. No need to hunt for the program yourself.

WinStyles is available in two forms - WinStyles standard which is free and WinStyles enhanced which is $10. The enhanced version supports additional programs (to help offset Stardock's cost of supporting those programs). Future versions of WinStyles will support a plugin-standard so that developers can add WinStyles support for their program.

As part of our continuing series, we talked to Jark, the lead administrator of deviantART and took a close look at the site at what makes it so special. Check it out.