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Longhorn Skinning A Reality
AlphaAlien writes "AlphaAlien of HardwareGeeks.com has figured out how to skin all of Microsoft's upcoming Windows release codenamed Longhorn. We can now skin Longhorn in the same manner we can skin Windows XP. Here's a picture of a very early copy of the first ever non-Microsoft skin for Longhorn. The only possible issue at this point is that Microsoft appears to be planning to move away from BMP based skinning altogethor and move to PNG based skins in which case any skins made for Longhorn at this point in time will not work far into the future. Also the patch to allow the skins to be loaded may not work many builds from the present as well. But for now we'll be able to hack away at the skinning engine at our leisure. in co-operation with BetasIRC.net we will be releasing the first few longhorn skins and a guide on how to get started on creating your own Longhorn skins."
I'm not sure if you're trolling or trying to be funny, but never mind.
However, you can actually change the colour of the BSOD to make it more PSOD (pink screen of death) or maybe YSOD (yellow screen of death).
Details are here although many Slashdotters probably won't like to admit that on W2K/XP they might never actually see the fruits of their labour.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
While this is all very nice and pretty, if this is based on the PDC build of Longhorn (which is painfully slow on any of my systems, but that's besides the point...) then it doesn't have the new fangled hardware accelerated bits that are going to be part of Longhorn (Indigo? or is that something else). The GUI that comes with the Longhorn betas is just a testing one that won't be useful in the final release, so I can't really see what use skinning the gui in the beta that'll never actually be used is....
well... maybe... juuuuuust maybe. Those new resource files will replace the standard ones, having them cached, and all will be well. If you think the default XP themes are hard-coded into the source... I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Your problems solved! Sort of, anyway - there's some caveats, and it's only for IE5.5 and above.
I think modern versions of Opera support PNG with alpha - it's really just Internet Explorer that's 'special'.
Windows XP uses a .DLL file (.so) for handling "visual styles" (skins). These skins are signed by microsoft, so you can only use their skins (to stop people from making virii or something, or to line their pockets). Since XP came out, people have been hacking this .dll file (uxtheme.dll) to allow custom, non-microsoft visual styles to be used. This is quite a coup as they've removed the need for signing before the OS is even released. It's not about the technology present in skinning, but the fact that they've circumvented MS's encryption/signing thingy 2 years prior to release.
<obvious>
Well, this might come as a shock to you, but I'll cite some examples:
Simply because you like your speakers in black, doesn't mean everyone does. I, for once, prefer mahogny.
And as computers become a common thing, you might expect people to want to alter their looks and maybe even behaviour to suit whatever needs they may have.
</obvious>
If you really needed this answer, I think you spend way too much time alone in your room, boy. (Perhaps <obvious> as well...)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Microsoft does make it possible to create new themes. People do create them, in fact there are thousands and thousands of them out there.
No reason to lie.
> People do create them, in fact there are thousands and thousands [themexp.org] of them out there.
Just a friendly warning, but themexp.org is filled with all kinds of lousy spyware. Their frontpage links to a javascript on http://webpdp.gator.com/4/placement/475/, which presumably tries to install GAIN under IE. They also have the audacity to wrap (!) all the themes that they offer in spyware. That's not nice.
Stay clear of this worthless site and get your themes on good sites like Neowin or DeviantART instead.
My technial knowledge of this is limitied, but IIRC Styles XP feigns the system into thinking these 3rd party themes are part of the original msstyles set shipped with Windows XP.
From a forum post on the web:
It's not about the technology present in skinning, but the fact that they've circumvented MS's encryption/signing thingy 2 years prior to release.
The current Longhorn releases feature the same UI system as XP, using static images for everything.
The final release will have an Avalon-powered UI. Because it uses DirectX, its a safe bet they will use scalable vector graphics (more flash-like, no BMP/PNG/JPG) for everything possible. The ability to resize windows has already been demonstrated, and keeping the UI clean and un-pixely is probably a big priority for them.
I would be *very* surprised if the Avalon UI uses the same theming system. All they've done is apply an old crack to old code. Nothing amazing there...
You do know that green isn't a primary color, right?
RGB is the three additive primary colors (and monitors use additive primary colors since they emit light, not subtractive).
XP uses by default in G and B in its color scheme.
Wikipedia article about primary colors
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
And the whole point of a server is to provide....services to other computers, not to provide pretty eye candy for some newbie admin.
And the OS release commonly reffered to in media as "Longhorn" is a client OS release, where eye-candy is appropriate and in some sense needed to catch-up/differentiate from OS X.
Longhorn server is a different story. I've heard rumors of Microsoft moving towards a componentized approach to OS install. Something similar to building Windows Embedded images, where you've got about 10,000 various modules which comprise the OS and a package manager making sure dependencies are satisfied. If that's true, system builders will have far greater flexibility in purposing their servers. Monad shell seems to be the solution Microsoft is banking on to provide robusts CLI. That being said, GUI still has its place on the server for newbie admins. Even Linux distributions are putting more and more work into adding GUI tools to configure various services. Like it or not, newbie admins make up a large population of small business place and these people will buy/use whatever makes their lives easier. GUI is a crutch very much needed in that space and there's too much money at stake to not provide that crutch.
If you need a PNG with a fully transparent color (just like GIF), IE have no problem supporting it, as long as your PNG is indexed (aka PNG8). If you need partial transparency (aka alpha channel), then yes IE is broke.
To index a PNG in The Gimp 2.x, choose "Mode" -> "Indexed" in the Image menu.
:wq
There's MUCH more (including adding and removing RAM without rebooting--currently, Windows Server 2003 only lets you add RAM)...but you've read up on Longhorn before bashing it, right?
Note before I get called a Microsoftie--yes, I appreciate their technology. They have some of the smartest developers in the world working there. Yes, I also run Linux--Gentoo, to be exact.