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Longhorn Skinning A Reality

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the eye-candy-is-fun dept.

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."

2 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Skin the crash screens, too? by Mr_Silver · · Score: 5, Informative
    I want to skin my windows crash screens, can I do that too? It'd be great to skin the crash screen to look just like the regular o/s, so I get the impression that everything is fine.

    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.

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  2. Re:what the... by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...