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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."
That, more than anything, tells me a lot about how people feel about Microsoft's operating systems. Past, present, and future.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams: "It is no accident that there is no single word in any language that means, 'As pretty as the Longhorn OS.'"
It's good to see Microsoft supporting free file formats! Along with using PNG, I predict that future versions of Microsoft Windows will use OGG .
- Jax
Skinned Longhorn = Circumsized OS?
-el
Perhaps PNG support in IE will have been improved then; this is good news for web designers.
( http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/ )
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.
stuff |
...for me isn't how pretty I can get an OS to look, but how well it works. If I can put all kinds of skins on Longhorn, but it runs as slow as molasses and crashes at the drop of a hat, then MS will have wasted their time developing this thing. On the other hand if Longhorn turns out to be a nice, stable, functional OS that happens to be skinnable then Linux will have some real competition (which is good for both OS's).
get started on creating your own Longhorn skins.
How about I get the OS first?
I don't get it. This is news about a feature in an OS that's not available yet, and when it's available, that feature will have changed? Excuse me, but what the heck is this about? (I'm not trying to sound like a troll - I'm really confused)
Underholdning.info
1. Buy Sun, use as tool to claim *nix compatability
2. Release some unimportant software under open/shared source license
3. Allow skinning of crappy m$ OS windowing environment
4. Spread more patently false FUD about how Linux suX0rs, make outrageous claims saying m$ is better
5. Have m$ OS be able to look like Linux
6. $$$!
Is this feature really going to be popular? Honestly, I'd love to hear what makes customizable skins so desirable.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
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!
I don't want Windows to waste my CPU cycles with hardware-accelerated graphics crap. I don't need fading menus and rotating icons.
The whole point of hardware accelerated GUIs are that they save CPU cycles by offlaoding GUI rendering to the graphics card, hardware designed for rendering graphics.
Slashdot posting a positive article about a Windows OS? [regardless of the fact its years away from release, and still in extremely early alpha stages]. Slashdot, this is so unlike you. Where are the backhand comments against M$? Where are the links with Better Operating systems? I'm ashamed of you. Where's your prejudice? Where's your bias?
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
<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:
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.
Why is PNG a good format to use? This has already been discussed on slashdot but for those of you that are new to: PNGs
First PNG is an open standard that doesn't rely on proprietary formats like LZW for compression like in Gif that is owned by Unisys. PNG has a better compresses algorithm than GIF anyway.
PNG is a loss-less compression method meaning that you open and save and get back to original data. Think of it like a ZIP file, you can always get the data back from a ZIP files as you stored it in.
PNG supports three main image types: true color, grayscale and palette-based. Good for Normal Pictures, Documents and Web Based Images.
Skins are to user interfaces what Type-R and VTEC stickers are to Honda Civics.
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.
I was under the impression that Longhorn would be using vector graphical extensively in its UI. Mind you, I don't follow Microsoft hype very closely so I may well be totally wrong.
:P
It will. This is one of the beta builds. I've seen at least three MSDN videos showcasing the technology...clearly, people on this site haven't been paying attention.
All the questions and comments similar to this one in this discussion really reveal how absolutely uninformed about Longhorn Slashdotters are as they meanwhile bash it. Common knowledge about Longhorn seems to have not yet reached Slashdot--no doubt because Slashdot would rather post silly anti-"M$" article when meanwhile, great strides are taking place in their technology. Someone here actually implied you'd need a DirectX9 level card just to run the thing--obviously he didn't know Longhorn supports several tiers of operation, going all the way down to standard 2D like Windows 2000. You can choose a tier manually or let Longhorn decide for you according to system specs. This is just one example of bizarre posts that completely reveal how ignorant people are of this OS--they call it "vaporware" as though there is no information released about it. People, there is tons of info already known that Microsoft has given away freely in the past year.
For crying out loud, visit WinSuperSite and read up a little bit!