Neowin.net

Nice fair article. A few competing products were left out at times, but I can understand why. It's nothing I didn't already know, but would be very useful for someone new to the scene.

Adonai, you have a selective memory to do skinning. Anyone can use archive.org and go back to the start of skinning and they'll find that WindowBlinds was also there.

Skinning was like it is today in terms of a mixture of free and non-free programs. Stardock was skinning OS/2 back in 1994 and moved to Windows in 1997. Stardock preceded efX, K-jfol, Neoplanet, etc. So it's not correct to imply that somehow there was this paradise and then suddenly the (insert evil music)CORPORATIONS(end evil music) came in and started exploiting it. Incidentially, eFX wasn't going to remain free either. Mian and Toasty sold it to a company who had intended to make it commercial.

Verona, btw, was a program that let people put bitstrips on their desktops. It was not remotely similar to DesktopX.

I would argue that there are more good free customization programs today than there were back in 1998.

As for StyleXP, I do mention programs that charge money for patching uxtheme.dll. Even if Style XP didn't "compete" with WindowBlinds I still wouldn't mention it. It doesn't, IMO, provide enough value-add over what is free. If someone else wants to do an article explaining why it's a good idea to pay $19.95 to patch your uxtheme.dll file they are certainly free to.

Adonai. I have Verona right here. Alberto would be the first to tell you (and he's told me on countless occasions) that DesktopX is not a derivative of Verona. He took the things he learned but to compare the two is not giving Alberto the real credit he deserves. We offered a free subscription to VDE registered users (which incidentally wasn't free) because Alberto wouldn't be able to continue development on it. You can still download it http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Verona_Desktop_Enhancer/942594763/1 and anyone can compare it.

Moreover, note (again) VDE was shareware, not freeware. So as I said previously, you are attempting to rewrite history when you say that there was somehow this community of free programs and then (EVIL CORPORATION) Stardock shows up and spoils all the fun. You name WinAmp, eFX, and now Verona. eFX sold out and became a commercial program. Verona was a Shareware program (same as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, etc.). And Winamp last time I checked has a non-free version too. Stardock (aka EVIL MONEY GRUBBING CORPORATON) makes lots of free programs -- BootSkin, CursorXP, LogonStudio, ObjectDock. I don' t think skinning has somehow become a big commercial enterprise.

As for "my fortune", I don't think you know nearly enough about me to say what a "large" part of whatever I have came from. By the time DesktopX was released, Stardock was already several years old.

ImTooMuch: There are a lot better uxtheme patchers out there than Style XP. There's Styler which can change the color of msstyles. There's also Tune-Up WinStyler http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-winstyler/

It's easy to say "Well you have to include Style XP" but going into a section on it would mean covering these other 2 programs which, IMO, are far better. But then onc eyou mention them, you'd have people screaming that we're not including the free uxtheme patchers in more detail http://www.anti-tgtsoft.com/

In short, I can't win no matter how I cover the topic. So I left it as simply as I could with the existence of uxtheme.dll patchers.

BTW Adonai: One more thing, about "giving Alberto more credit" it should be noted that every about box of DesktopX, even today, contains full credit to Alberto Riccio. How many other companies do that? Most about boxes only contain the company, they don't give credit to the lead developer. All of our software is that way.