SkinStudio needs modernisation

from WinCustomize Forums

First of all, I LOVE SkinStudio! I've been using it since version 4!

Sks 6 saw a complete revamp of the interface which had a lot of people up in arms complaining about the new interface (anyone remember the clickable preview funtion we lost?) We finally got used to it and didn't look back.

SkinStudio has stayed more or less the same since v6 with some major and minor updates as we have traveled through xp, vista, 7, 8.1 and finally 10.

I have no problem with the interface at all. That's fine. Here's my problem:

 

How does Sks expect you to start a new skin? Well simple. Open the program and select "new skin" Great! Next? Select skin to base it on.....hmmm Diamond? Oh there's a dropdown. Hmmm....Diamond vista or xp?

OK. I choose Diamond since I'm not skinning for vista or xp. Great! Good to go! Oh, wait! Why does this skin have vista and xp substyles? NO ONE would like to start a new skin with complete substyles already there! I never make a substyle until the first style is 100% complete. I create my first substyle based on the finished style, I don't go hopping back and forth between. So ok. Gotta delete those finished subbys.

Now, I'm left with a clean base skin to start adding my images to.

Ok, skin's done. Time to make the .wba and upload. Let's use the clean skin funtion. Wow, lots of non referenced images there to delete. Makes sense, since there were many xp and vista images when I started. Let's go into the skin folder to delete the folder where the images went. Hey! there's still a TON of extra images here!

Ok, gotta go through and start deleting extra images. Oh crap! I broke my skin! I must have deleted something relevant. The whole shutdown section is gone on my skin because I deleted the xp and vista images for that section??? Can I go into sks and find those vista and xp sections and safely delete the code from there? Hmmm... no. Those sections no longer exist in sks. No way to get to these sections that are somehow referencing old images thus keeping them in the skin.

Anyway, I've deleted as much as I can without breaking the skin. I'm happy now.

 

That was a long winded way of saying that I would like:

1. The option to choose any installed skin from the dropdown menu.

and/or

2. Please give us a better template skin. One that's free of old unused, unsupported sections. And no finished substyles.

 

Now. I'm certainly capable of starting a skin differently. I can just open a skin of mine which has a similar color palette and re save it in sks as a different skin. I do, in fact have a template skin on my system called "Basic" for just that purpose. But I, as I stated in the intro, have been using sks for a while.

Think of the person just starting out in skinning. Sks is a puzzle to new people as it is. I think we owe it to them to give them a clean simple starting skin to make the process slightly easier.

skinstudio
88,010 views 27 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top


Sks is a puzzle to new people as it is. I think we owe it to them to give them a clean simple starting skin to make the process slightly easier.
This is THE reason I don't skin any more WBs.  Too hard, too complicated, and several areas have the button states actually backward to what they really are.

 

If SKS were to be updated, more easily used, I would definitely skin for WindowBlinds.

 

Good rant, Timothy.

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting RedneckDude, reply 1

and several areas have the button states actually backward to what they really are.

Yup. Sections as well that show 5 suggested states where only a single image should be.

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The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I could actually spend hours pointing out the bugs in SkinStudio... but hopefully the  programmers at Stardock will find them. Here's one though, the text colors on the horizontal taskbar buttons are correct, but they are not on the vertical taskbar buttons.

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting LightStar, reply 3

the vertical taskbar buttons.
I don't care about the Vert anymore, Just making it work somewhat for those who actually prefer a vertical Taskbar...:|  

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

And here I am, thinking, the puzzles and headaches are part of the design steps to make it more interesting and Fun. Or not. ;P  

Good write-up and comments, I have forwarded your questions/problems to the Stardock Support team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Thank You,
Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

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Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 6

It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.

So, Neil, what are you saying, SKS has reached it's peak, and it's being phased out, and "Curtains" will be it's replacement? I for one, don't like Curtains, it's more confusing than Skin Studio (in my opinion), and you're not allowed to choose your program for editing images, it just opens up "Paint", I prefer Photoshop over Paint. I know you can create your images in any image/photo editing program, then import it, but, if one wants to tweak the imported image, one can't "edit" it, without one using "Paint", at least in SKS, one could "customize" which editing program they want to use. :rolleyes:  

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting don5318, reply 7


Quoting Neil Banfield,
reply 6

It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.



So, Neil, what are you saying, SKS has reached it's peak, and it's being phased out, and "Curtains" will be it's replacement? I for one, don't like Curtains, it's more confusing than Skin Studio (in my opinion), and you're not allowed to choose your program for editing images, it just opens up "Paint", I prefer Photoshop over Paint. I know you can create your images in any image/photo editing program, then import it, but, if one wants to tweak the imported image, one can't "edit" it, without one using "Paint", at least in SKS, one could "customize" which editing program they want to use. :rolleyes:  

I am saying curtains has a newly designed editor.

With regards to editing images, it sounds like your association for .png files is set to paint.  Setting it to another in the shell would make it open that.

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 8

I am saying curtains has a newly designed editor.

With regards to editing images, it sounds like your association for .png files is set to paint.  Setting it to another in the shell would make it open that.

All my .png files are associated with Photoshop, I'd assume it should open in Photoshop, not paint, thanks for your response.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting don5318, reply 9


Quoting Neil Banfield,
reply 8

I am saying curtains has a newly designed editor.

With regards to editing images, it sounds like your association for .png files is set to paint.  Setting it to another in the shell would make it open that.



All my .png files are associated with Photoshop, I'd assume it should open in Photoshop, not paint, thanks for your response.

Whilst you may have the open verb set to photoshop, it seems the edit one is set on your computer to paint.

If you right click on a png and pick edit does it also open in paint?

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top

Any feedback on what you find confusing with the curtains editor would be most helpful as the aim is to make things as easy as possible.

Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

I've set ".png" files to open with Adobe Fireworks. But it still open up in Paint from Curtains.

Quoting Neil, reply 10

If you right click on a png and pick edit does it also open in paint?

Yes it open in paint.

Thank you,

Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting basj, reply 12

I've set ".png" files to open with Adobe Fireworks. But it still open up in Paint from Curtains.


Quoting Neil Banfield,
reply 10

If you right click on a png and pick edit does it also open in paint?



Yes it open in paint.

Thank you,

Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

Then the issue is an associations one.

Open is intended for quick viewing apps, edit is for editing so slower to load software like Photoshop.  This has been standard since Windows 95.

 

Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top

And idea how to easily set Edit to open up with any other application?

Thank you,

Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

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Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting basj, reply 14

And idea how to easily set Edit to open up with any other application?

Thank you,

Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

You can use a tool like this

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/file_types_manager.html

We used edit as that's the right verb for the task but it looks like Photoshop may not be taking the association for everyone so may have to detect if open has been edited but edit not and use open in that scenario.

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 10

Whilst you may have the open verb set to photoshop, it seems the edit one is set on your computer to paint.

If you right click on a png and pick edit does it also open in paint?

Yes, it opens in "Paint" Neil.

Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top

How did we go from discussing SKS to discussing Curtains?  O:)  

Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting RedneckDude, reply 17

How did we go from discussing SKS to discussing Curtains?

Translation: Sks will not get any attention/updates because "no one" is skinning anymore and WB is going obsolete.

It's CURTAINS for us skinners.......See what I did there? :P  

Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top

If by chance sks ever got an update, I love to see some changes to the interface:

No more "window in window" and tabbed navigation in the different sections. Here's a quick and dirty screeny of what I mean:

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Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 6

It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.

Nope. I'm asking about Skinstudio for Windowblinds. O:)  

Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting 2of3, reply 18


Quoting RedneckDude,
reply 17

How did we go from discussing SKS to discussing Curtains?



Translation: Sks will not get any attention/updates because "no one" is skinning anymore and WB is going obsolete.

It's CURTAINS for us skinners.......See what I did there? :P  

Looks like it :pout:  

Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting 2of3, reply 20


Quoting Neil Banfield,
reply 6

It may be of interest for you to all try Curtains and the editing facilities in that.



Nope. I'm asking about Skinstudio for Windowblinds. O:)  

My thinking was to see if there was anything about how the editing worked that you might like.  For example the advanced properties being a list, or allowing colours to be entered as hex which I know was very much appreciated by Dani (though there is a bug in beta 2 that it doesn't save manually entered text for colours)

Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 22

My thinking was to see if there was anything about how the editing worked that you might like. For example the advanced properties being a list, or allowing colours to be entered as hex which I know was very much appreciated by Dani (though there is a bug in beta 2 that it doesn't save manually entered text for colours)

Sorry. Me so snappy. :blush:  

 

Since I took a 4 year hiatus, I've unfortunately let my Object Desktop sub lapse. I currently only have WB and OD2 installed on my computer. Both are bought as stand alone programs. I therefor don't have any access to Curtains.

Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting 2of3, reply 19

If by chance sks ever got an update, I love to see some changes to the interface:

No more "window in window" and tabbed navigation in the different sections. Here's a quick and dirty screeny of what I mean:

Reduced 34%
Original 1920 x 1041


I am impressed Tim!

Does anybody remember a company called TGTSoft from the old says, they had an application called StyleBuilder that was super easy to use, wish SkinStudio was. StyleBulder had a fantastic interface! :-)

Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I don't know Neil, personally I prefer the RGB for colors, but, that's just me. I'll have to re-install Curtains, to take a look at the Advanced properties.....I do like the example that Tim (2of3) used for a new GUI for SKS. |-)