The explorer background it includes is quite nice and it provides a consistent look and feel. Some of the text color choices keep it from being as usable as it could be too. The constant flashing of the active window, however, makes it less uasable and the currently selected window in the taskbar is hard to find. Moreover, the lack of contrasting in the skin (it's all a blue-ish green) make it hard to use overall.īBK is a pretty creative idea that makes use of animation in the please wait dialog, the start menu and in the title bar. It's very hard to read the text and the art level and design quality aren't competitive as some of the elements don't remotely match.Īqueus makes good use of the Aero style but strikes me as being a bit too derivative of Aero to be considered original. Unfortunately, it's not as usable as it could be because of the text color choices in various places makes it hard to read.Īqua XP is an interesting idea but the technical execution keeps it from being competitive. Very good use of colors keeps it highly usable and makes me, as a user, want to use it.Īgua is very original as a concept with an animated title bar and start menu. No included wallpaper in the skin, no dialog background texture but a very good explorer texture is provided. The dragon on the start menu is actually animated and extremely fluid. The actual Windows title bars, borders, etc. It's not ugly by any means in my opinion so I'm okay running it but it's also not particularly compelling.ĭragon from Stardock Design is a very original and well executed concept. The borders aren't alpha blended so there are jaggies around the edges, no shadows, and the overall look is a bit of a drab blue. It's not particularly pretty but it gets the job done. It's quite usable thanks to good use of contrast and the title bar buttons are very large. Luna from Microsoft is what you get when a committee designs a skin. Most scores are going to be less than 5.Įxample of Luna (XP's default visual style running on Vista) It took countless meetings and effort for Microsoft to create Luna so anything that gets over a 5 is pretty impressive. Now before people get upset with all the "low" scores let's remember that we're using Windows XP's default look, Luna, as the baseline for 5. Supporting Vista isn't required in the contest but obviously, if the skin doesn't work on Vista at all it's going to take a hit given that a quarter of the users out there are using it and that's only going to grow. If it gets less than a 5, it's not as good as Luna. Using Windows XP's Luna as the middle benchmark, if a skin gets higher than a 5, it's better than Luna in my opinion. This is largely a combination of the two but often times a skin is more than the sum of its parts. Does it allow me to use my computer effectively? That's a big part of it but it also has to be something I would want to use too.ģ. How creative a concept is it? The benchmark is Luna, the default skin of Windows XP.Ģ. Our votes help determine the 10 finalists who will be voted on by users. I am one of the 3 judges for the contest. WindowBlinds is a program that allows users to change the look and feel of the Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 graphical user interface (title bars, Start menu, push buttons, borders, checkboxes, etc.). This is the 4th GUI Championships and in that time we've seen some great skins made.
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