Just a little heads-up that after a little discussion in the comments of my Daimen skin, I decided to add sub styles which have the Start Menu user picture hidden to a further ten skins (basically all my recent ones). So that's as follows:

Daimen
Flick
Hyano Pulse
Yokai
Hyano Nexa
Ketix2
Kairon
Grape
Dax
Nirah
Hyano

(this means that Dax has six sub styles - three existing titlebar icon styles plus 'no user pic' versions for each)

In addition, I've added a lot of 'common' graphics to them all to make sure almost all Windows elements are catered for. Basically, my approach to WB for all these free skins is for them to share some of the elements which I've found over the years end up being almost identical in my skins anyway, or that they are Vista/Win7 parts that I don't see in much in Win10. The end result is it cuts down how much time it takes me to make a skin, so you get more of them!

If you're going to get the updates, my way of doing it would be to switch to completely different skin, DELETE the old versions you have (they should be in Public\Documents\Stardock\WindowBlinds folder - maybe check they are definitely deleted..), download the new versions and reinstall them one by one. 

And finally, they are all free to download and use, not Master Skins, but any appreciation shown by "buying me a coffee" will be greatly appreciated! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/caconym64

regards,

retiredmaster

Anyone else noticing that some of the comment on skins are spam recently? Maybe it's time to add Captcha or something to the comments forms?

So, just uploaded an icon pack, but while making them found that when I compared my set with others available around various sites, it looks like IconPackager is falling behind. I made an icon for SSD drive, Recent Documents and the 'Cloud' folder, but IP doesn't seem to have a place for them or other icons (3D folder, padlock overlay for encrypted drives, default printer, alternative folder colours etc.)

Is there likely to be any development which will remove some of the redundant icons (5.25 floppy, program group, downloaded program files, dial-up connection!...) and add places for new icons which will cater for Win10 and Win11?

On the topic of annoyances...

Why isn't Start 10 showing the correct icons for some entries? eg I have 'settings' and 'control panel' in my Start menu, and my icon package has separate icons for both of those, but they both use the control panel icon. Also, my user name is displayed in the Start menu - when I hover over it it shows the 'Documents folder' icon - surely it should be showing the 'Libraries' icon, because that's what opens if I click on it. I also would like the 'recent items' to show the 'recent documents' icon I made, but I can't find anywhere in the package builder to add it.

Thanks.

After a little correspondance with Vampothica recently, I noticed that some of the files in a couple of the skins have duplicated extensions - eg combobox.tga.tga.tga.tga.TGA 

Can anyone else who uses SkinStudio - particularly if you use it to import/convert graphics - check whether they have the same issue? 

(I don't use it.)

Thanks.

Correct me if I'm wrong.. Curtains doesn't support transparency for the Start Menu or vertical taskbar? Just the horizontal taskbar and frame top?

Thanks..

Just wondered if anyone can tell me why there is a 1px gap between the top of the button background and the top of the frame, when I'm expecting the button background to fill the whole area (ie it doesn't have any gaps in the image). I would expect the button bacground would be stretched to fill the frame top completely - seems to fill to the L and R and bottom edges ok. Have I missed a setting or this a bug? Or is there an extra 1px edge around the frame top? [e digicons]:rolleyes:[/e]  

A tiny thing but a tiny bit irritating.

So 8 out of 9 skins on the WindowBlinds gallery home page are Master Skins. It makes me beg the question: is this slowly killing WindowBlinds?

No disrespect to those designing and selling them - I've done it myself in the past. I know how much effort it takes.

Maybe designers could do two releases - 'lite skin' and 'full featured skin' (not really thought what those would constitute of). At least people would get a taste of the design and it might stimulate downloads of the full version. I know from experience that $10 a skin equals not many downloads...

Food for thought.

Just been playing with Curtains theming and unsure how much control there is over desktop colours.  Eg.. The colour of a selected block of text in Notepad, the menu item highlight..

Is there an area where this can be set, or is it controlled by Windows itself? (I know this can be done in WB.)

Thanks.

Hi,

If anyone has WBA or Zips for the following skins I'd very much appreciate if you could let me have copies to tweak for re-uploading.  Although I still have some of the original PSD files I have lost the skins themselves and it would save tons of time if I could get them back. Thank you..

Emprise, Credo, Revolver, Slow Burn

retiredmaster (essorant)

I'm liking Curtains up to now. Kinda WB-lite. I was feeling like skinning full WB had become a bit of a monster. Also feel a little UI performance boost, Curtains vs WB?

My question is, is there any likelihood of UI buttons being skinnable? (The elements that made the character of a skin to me were always window frame, titlebar buttons and UI buttons. ) No problem if not, just curious.

Nice job Neil