Brainfart: A skinners tale

Call me via Jaxter?

2007-09-13T11:22:00.001-07:00

Note to other Jaxtr'rs: The "Auto-insert into Blogger Blog" feature of Jaxtr simply slapped it into a blog entry, not the template coding. No title was provided, either. :(

Singularity v4 Release Candidate for LiteStep

2007-09-10T13:54:00.001-07:00

This one goes out for !mulestem, who has asked diligently on the progress of this theme for over a year.

A release-candidate of the theme is available at the Skinyourscreen Forums for download and testing. There are still some very large INCOMPLETES in the theme:

Color theme scripting isn't working yet. All the graphics and folders are there, but changing themes currently requires hacking the theme.rc file to change a variable.
No theme-specific wallpapers, yet.
Rainmeter mini-system meter isn't included yet, although the graphics are in place and ready to be coded into the theme.
Sysmetrix theme not included yet, although it, too, is mostly complete. All media functions have been off-loaded to Sysmetrix.

System Metering and/or calendar? Rainy or no?

2007-08-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Finally got a little time to at least assess progress on the Singularity skin(s). After doting on several variations of the media-control module I've finally decided to eliminate it altogether. The existing modules serve well as fronts for WinAmp or iTunes, but both look fine and work even better on their own (IMHO). Unless someone wants to argue against this, I'll be proceeding without any included media controls in the theme.

The next big question is what to do for Calendaring and System Metering functions. Below is a mockup I sketched out last night on the Wacom-tablet:

Traditionally I've skinned Rainlendar and Rainmeter in LiteStep themes because their origins are in LiteStep, and because they're easy to integrate with LiteStep themes. However, I've debated nixing a full-fledged calendar and instead integrating many of the calendar/date/time functions directly into a dedicated program, Sysmetrix, which greatly facilitates the skinning process. My time is at a premium, and IF I'm to complete this project in any measure, it'll mean streamlining my work-flow, and Sysmetrix would enhance this dramatically.

Still finalizing sketches on the system-meter, though. Don't really know what I want it to look like, beyond NOT looking like the original Sysmetrix skin I designed for Singularity so many years ago (a tad slug-like in my estimation).

Singularity Scripts Simplified

2007-04-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Singularity Under The Hood
A lot has happened behind-the-scenes with relation to the Singularity v0.004 theme for LiteStep OTS2 recently. Besides the entirely new graphical front-end of the theme, much of the back-end has changed likewise, although those parts are less likely to be noticed. Here are a few of the changes:

Switched from Layercuts-1.72 to xLabel-4.0.7. This was a major undertaking, as the syntax used between the two modules for rendering the desktop shortcuts and graphics is VERY different. Although I've had a hard-time learning xLabel's syntax and exactly what ties in to the xPaintClass.dll module, it's been worth it - xLabel uses less memory and does more despite the extra lines of code it takes. Setting up the instrument cluster (taskbar, VWM, and system tray) used much fewer graphics this time, although the RC coding almost quadrupled in size (and I haven't even gotten to the meters and audio module!). It renders much nimbler, however, and the theme's startup time has bee reduced as a consequence.
Taskbar went from Taskbar3.dll to xtaskbar-2.0.2. Man, what a cool module! Infinitely versatile, I don't think I'll ever use anything else again.
The System-Tray went from the previous installer-bundled tray module to xTray-1.1.1, again, going with the trend for the latest xModules where I can. No extra icon effects at the moment, because I feel the natural colors and saturations of the icons provide a better visual cue as to what they actually are, although an option for recolorization may be included.
Many RC configurations have been off-loaded from the THEME.RC file to auxiliary files in the CONFIG directory. I used to hate it when themers did this, because it made things harder to find sometimes. Having a tabbed text-editor with great syntax highlighting has largely resolved this for me, though.
Popup variations - 3 of them. I've already shown how these guys look. The scripts to change them, however, have been updated using the new xTextEdit module, whose !xTextSaveEvar bang (LiteStep command) has greatly simplified my life.

So with that said, here is a list of of the currently installed and working modules:

xPaintClass-1.0
xLabel-4.0.7
mzscript-0.8
jdesk-0.73
xpopup-1.3.1
xtaskbar-2.0.2
xtray-1.1.1
rabidvwm-1.2.1i
lsxcommand-1.9.4
ckhotspots-2.3.3
xtextedit-0.6

Scripts updated
Another major task in progress is to simplify the scripts present in the theme. A little secret for anyone reading: I suck at coding. That's right, I'm a really crappy, brute-force style programmer with no panache or elegance. It really showed in the previous scripts. The updates make it marginally easier to see what's going on. XLabel's Groups functions have really made this possible. Here's an example of what the script for changing the Instrument module's Z-order used to look like:

;_____/ Toggle bar Z-Order script \_____
*script bang !ToggleTopBar
*script gotoif ("%[_topzorderstate]" = "ontop") tbmove2bottom
*script gotoif ("%[_topzorderstate]" = "desktop") tbmove2top
*script label tbmove2bottom
;==>Move bar elements to bottom z-order.
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 1
*script exec !systrayontop
*script exec !vwmtoggleontop bottom
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 5
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 6
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 7
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 8
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 9
*script exec !shortcutgrouponbottom 10

;==>Ensure that command is hidden & correct btn shown.
*script exec !ifEq _cutsbarstate "expanded" !shortcutgroupshow 8
*script exec !ifEq _cutsbarstate "contracted" !shortcutgrouphide 8
*script exec !shortcutgrouphide 9
*script exec !commandhide

*script exec !varSet _topzorderstate "desktop"
*script exit

*script label tbmove2top
;==>Move bar elements to top z-order.
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 1
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 5
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 6
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 7
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 8
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 9
*script exec !shortcutgroupontop 10

;==>Ensure that command is hidden & right btn shown.
*script exec !ifEq _cutsbarstate "expanded" !shortcutgroupshow 8
*script exec !ifEq _cutsbarstate "contracted" !shortcutgrouphide 8
*script exec !shortcutgrouphide 9
*script exec !commandhide

*script exec !systrayontop
*script exec !vwmtoggleontop yes
*script exec !varSet _topzorderstate "ontop"
*script ~bang

Here's what it looks like now:

;_____] New Toggle Instruments Zorder script [_____
*script bang !ToggleInstrumentZ
*script exec !vwmtoggleontop
*script exec !xtrayalwaysontop toggle
*script exec !xtaskbaralwaysontop toggle
*script exec !labelalwaysontop Instruments toggle
*script exec !ifEq _instz "ontop" !varSet _instz "desktop"
*script exec !ifEq _instz "desktop" !varSet _instz "ontop"
*script ~bang

It's amazing what a few years experience can do. Regardless, I'm still less-than-average when it comes to the coding aspect of this, so any expertice or suggestions are appreciated.

What's Next
Here are a few of my current to-do items on the theme:

Create separators for the pop-up menus.
Tweak the existing taskbar drop-shadows slightly.
Create 2 more task-bar styles that can be dynamically selected on the fly.
Get the System Meters working, either through xStatsGraph or RainMeter.
Select an appropriate audio module and get it working through the desktop shortcuts.
Finish polishing up the scripts.
Add the afore-mentioned color themes to this version of singularity.

Singularity v0.004 for LiteStep - Menus/Popups

2007-03-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I've reinstalled Windows2000 on a partition on the Linux box to get back to LiteStep skinning (rather than doing it all through VirtualPC on the Mac.... SLOW). The next step was to get LiteStep installed, for which several installation options exist. I opted for one I'd never tried before, the LiteStep Open Source Installer (LOSI), principally because it's using the latest LiteStep core files by default. Although the installation and configuration of LiteStep through this installer appeared to go fine, installation of 3 out of 5 themes resulted in errors that completely hung the computer and required resetting of the shell back to Explorer through the Task-Manager. Not entertaining.

After uninstalling LOSI, Omar's 3.0.2 installer was my fall-back, the tried-and-true method with a mighty fine default LiteStep theme (one of my favorites, truly). Since the core files in this installer are a bit outdated, I quickly downloaded and installed the latest LiteStep 0.24.7 Core files in my LiteStep directory and updated to the latest version of NetLoadModule. All went well, and in the end, I had no problems installing themes. I've praised Omar before, but I'll do it again... fantastic installer, fantastic utilities, and it just plain works.

Minor Setback: no backup...
After all the LiteStep installation, I was eager to fire up my work-in-progress, Singularity v0.004. A thorough sweep of my archives, however, revealed that the config files for the theme were nowhere to be found. All the graphics were there, but the previous theme.rc, script.rc, themevars.rc, and popup configs were non-existant. Dang.

Starting over quickly: Menus
Without further ado, I began crafting what to me is the most critical part of any LiteStep theme: the Popup Menu. Without this, you're not going to be navigating far. I quickly set-up a new theme.rc file and gave it some basic instructions for where to find files (the typical directory tree, config, images, misc...) and then added the line to get NetLoadModule to load an old favorite, and something cutting edge:

*NetLoadModule jdesk-0.73
*NetLoadModule xpopup-1.3.1

jDesk is an old desktop module that will let the user right-click the desktop to activate a popup menu, the traditional way, and xPopup is Andymon's incredible popup module. I specifically went for xPopup over alternatives because of its ability to quickly render alpha-transparent images as the menu, allowing me to do cool things with drop-shadows and glass effects.

In the graphical design stage, I couldn't figure out which prototype popup menu I liked most, so I decided to include all three and let the user pick what they want. This means unique settings for each popup menu, as icons and text position is slightly different between them. This necessitated splitting the popup configuration parameters into 4 parts:

Theme.rc: all popup settings common
Popup-1.rc: all settings specific to popup style 1.
Popup-2.rc: all settings specific to popup style 2.
Popup-3.rc: all settings specific to popup style 3.

After all the configuration, here's a preview of the three different styles in action:

Now I'm working on getting the graphics layout completed using either the Layer-Cuts module or one of Andymon's shortcut modules. The taskbar and system tray will be soon to follow!

Singularity for iPulse

2007-03-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

In the process of re-creating a new Singularity suite, I've updated the layer-styles significantly. To see how it works on a fully functional skinned program I applied the graphics to iPulse, a novel system meter for Apple's OS X operating system. Below are the results:

There are essentially two graphical variations, and then two meter-color variations. Actually, there's a third option I've made, too, more monochromatic for the actual meters to the skin shows up (the meters can sometimes hide the graphics, although the meters are, of course, the bread-and-butter of the program).

I'll be trying it out with color variations next. BTW, although this theme is essentially ready for publication, I'm gonna use a little restraint and wait until the rest of the suite is largely completed before releasing this.

Update on Singularity for LiteStep
The audio module graphics are completed and diced. I'm in the process of selecting which LiteStep modules to use, and I've been out of the LiteStep loop for some years. Then the coding commences. Also in the works is a completely revised System Meter that will be skinned onto SysMetrix as well as RainMeter. All I will comment here is that it will be significantly different from the previous incarnation of the system meters in the Singularity suite ;) More to come later.

"Open" in Mac OS X Terminal

2007-02-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

I find myself doing most of my file operations from the terminal in linux or Mac OS X - it's just fast. One of the differences from the typical linux install vs. Mac OS X's terminal, however, is the opening of programs. Under linux once can simply type the name of the program to open - "xfcedesktop" for instance, and start it up. Starting up a GUI-based program under the Mac OS X terminal, however, requires navigating into that application's *.app folder, navigating through the Contents and MacOS folder before using a terminal shell command like "./TextEdit" to start the program.

Inelegant.

While goofing around with the documentation man-pages I stumbled upon the "open" command, however. Use it on a document or file at the terminal to cause the appropriate application to open the file. Great for opening Microsoft Office files, movies, programming files, etc. Now I just type "open somestupidpieceofdata.txt" and voila!

Singularity v0.004 audio controls - your opinion?

2007-02-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

While the rest of the graphics for the Singularity v0.004 theme for LiteStep are in place and functioning for the tray, shortcuts, and taskbar, the audio control module has been more interesting to deal with. In keeping with the original theme, the graphics have been made in a digital style, where the individual controls are emphasized by a glowing effect upon mouse-over/hover. In putting together two mockups of varying complexity the thought arose to remake the audio controls using a more tactile approach. This angle has not been pursued, yet. What's your opinion?

Here's the preview:

Singularity and Synovium in progress

2006-12-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

A very unusual thing happened the other day. I received an email from a user requesting color-variations of my Synovium skin for Sysmetrix, released some time ago. His simple request precipitated something much more personally profound:

I found my muse.

Pulling up the original Photoshop files for the Synovium skin, two thoughts immediately entered my mind:

The graphics for Synovium for AstonShell and LiteStep were almost completed a year ago.
I really enjoy my graphic style

So, without further provocation work has again commenced on Synovium, as well as the Singularity Project for LiteStep and AstonShell that formed the impetus for this very blog. BTW: Big thanks, Mr. Chandler! :)

Here's a preview of what's going on with Synovium:

...and here's what Singularity is looking like so far:

I should comment that although these themes are for Windows software that all the development will me occurring on a PowerBook G4 Mac. Although I've had no difficulty running LiteStep, RainMeter, Rainlendar, or Sysmetrix via VirtualPC, no version of AstonShell yet tried (1.6+) has worked and I no longer have an WinXP box. This will of course make AstonShell theme development more, well, difficult, if not impossible. That is, unless some tortured soul coughs up a WinXP capable box for development or I get a Windows box for Christmas (quote from wife: "unlikely").

More to come...

IE7: still worse than the competition

2006-10-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

A few recent observations regarding Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7):

1) Had a neighbor below me that gave IE7 an install on his Windows XP pro install on a home computer. Unfortunately, he was not pleased by its performance and how it goofed up the rest of his shell (apparently). Attempting to uninstall it, however, resulted in catastrophic loss of system-required files, principally shared DLLs. Whether or not he went through appropriate install/uninstall procedures is unbeknownst to me, but he's a pretty tech-savvy guy, so I've given him the benefit of the doubt.

2) The Zimbra organization, which produces an online Outlook replacement, recently decided to put MS's most recent IE7 release to the test on their AJAXified system. It does sound like Microsoft has made significant strides in the browser, with several notable memory leaks patched. In particular, MS claims that their browser will finally be standards-compliant and properly use CSS (FINALLY!!!). It's this fact that has me a bit excited: will Microsoft actually produce a browser that will finally permit web-designers to abandon the many hacks that must be employed just to get a nice designed site working with their crappy browser? In terms of browser performance, however, the Zimbra group noted that rendering times were still below that of Firefox (in some cases, pages loaded half as fast).

I daresay that IE7 has little to offer web-users who have made the switch years ago out of frustration induced by their insecure and non-compliant browser, however. It's gonna be a hard sell to try and reobtain the market share they've lost so far.

New AstonShell ate my icons!

2006-08-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

The wife and kids were in Chicago for two weeks visiting family, granting me access to the old home desktop, an old 1Ghz Athlon-processored HP that runs Win2K for the wife and kids, and Ubuntu Linux on another partition for me. There was a request recently from an individual to update the TopPanel plugin of my DominantNegative theme to the more recent Panel plugin, and a few other minor things. Finally had the time to at least take a look at it, so I booted into Win2K and installed AstonShell 1.92.

First off, Win2K is truly hideous... I forgot how crummy it looks and works. The menu system (from the start-button) is truly abominable - you forget details like this when you use an organized system like MacOSX or KDE/Gnome/XFCE on linux.

Aesthetics and function aside, the AstonShell install under W2K went cleanly, as always, and I was able to quickly make the alterations to the DominantNegative theme to update it to the latest set up plugins. Was pleased to see that the Main Menu plugin now permits a bottom texture, something that LiteStep popup menus have enjoyed for over a decade now. It was a simple detail that makes the program more fun to skin and a bit more graphically versatile, giving skinners what they really want: freedom.

Upon saving the theme, however, I still ran into one of my long-time gripes with Aston: saving a theme under multiple resolutions. Saving the theme as 1280x1024 resolution (the max of my LCD), I then reset my screen resolution for 1280x768 and resaved the theme through the included Theme-Manager. Upon trying to reload the theme from the Theme-Manager, the drop-down box for the theme resolution would only show 1280x768, even AFTER switching the resolution back to 1280x1024. STINK. Now that Aston themes are compiled files (some sort of archive), hacking into the config file is a little less entertaining. So I skipped it. Loss of freedom will not lead to more loss of my time.

After exitting my login and returning to my wife's, it became clear that something was VERY wrong with the desktop. Any desktop icons (under the regular explorer shell) that would have contained the little "Shortcut Arrow" to indicate their nature as a shortcut was covered by AdAwareSE's icon. Try as I might to change the icons, the problem would not go away. Considering the only change to the Win2K system on this computer was the addition of AstonShell, I switched out of AstonShell as the primary shell under my login and re-logged on as the wife. PROBLEM SOLVED!!! Using previous versions of AstonShell I have seen situations where icons on other logins got moved or misplaced, especially if a user switched to Aston and then switched back to Explorer. This was new behavior entirely, however.

Long story short: Installing AstonShell for one user under Windows2000Pro will screw up icons for the other accounts on the computer even if they don't have AstonShell enabled as the shell. Be aware, however, that this was a beta release, and as all Beta software should be approached, do not consider this bug too heavily.

Needless to say, the developers are probably on the way to solving this. AstonShell has always been the most exceptionally stable shell alternative for Windows because it has developers who know their stuff, know how to optimize it, and consider consequences for each line of code. I would still recommend their software to anyone.

iPulse system meter for Mac OS X, it rocks!

2006-07-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

After having used and loved skinnable Windows system meters like SysMetrix and RainMeter for years, switching to a Mac provided an unanticipated conundrum. Sure, there are a plethora of sys-monitor widgets for Dashboard, and a few decent floating window monitors out there, but they, well, lacked the cool factor. Then I stumbled upon iPulse by Iconfactory. Actually enjoyed it so much, I wrote a review of it. In a nutshell, I REALLY likes it: it's really novel in its monitoring approach and easy to skin. If you're a skinner using Mac OS X, you really should get iPulse.

But... since this blog is dedicated to my skinning experience (temporarily forgetting the MicroSuck entries), I'll use this entry to self-advertise my latest skin, SYSmeter for iPulse, made while trying out iPulse for the review. Both the menu-bar and the floating monitor are skinned (as seen in the screenshot above). It's being released under the Creative Commons Noncommercial Sampling Plus license v1.0

Download the SYSMeter Jacket/Skin for iPulse here.

Can Microsoft keep its course?

2006-06-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

Previously I commented on an article by Tech diva John C Dvorak about Microsoft being dead in the water. Among the assertions made by Dvorak and myself were the issues of internal mismanagement and panic. The following are a few more comments regarding the topic with some more current information.

Windows Vista loses another major feature: Microsoft's WinFS blog announced yesterday that all development of the WinFS secure file system will immediately cease and that there will be no more future betas. The reason they provide is that although WinFS itself was not completed, it spun off other technologies that proved to be better solutions, such as work in SQL and ADO.NET. This still means, however, that another feature touted at the core of the upcoming Vista will not be available for its release, and will perhaps never be shipped with any MS products of the future.

Mismanagement as revealed from within: A blog by a Microsoft developer recently provided a flurry of activity on digg.com as it outlined the behemoth tasks MS has faced in trying to publish Windows Vista. It speaks of a remaining attitude of belittlement that stifles innovation within the company, the burgeoning complexity of trying to have one piece of software be everything to everybody, and the poor decision making mechanisms of a company intolerant of truth. Of course, to hear this from a lead developer in Microsoft was a verification from the horse's mouth regarding the mismanagement issue. Perhaps to avoid reproach from his employer and certainly to prevent his entry from being quoted by MS haters, the entry was very quickly removed from the site, further heating the debate. It is once again back in its fullness, comments and all.

Two key MS players leave: Microsoft will see the departure of head visionary Bill Gates in 2008, freeing him to devote more time to his generous philanthropic efforts. As a given, Bill will still likely maintain a divested interest in his company, although his direct involvement will likely diminish. The departure of 13-year company veteran Martin Taylor came shortly thereafter with no reasons disclosed. In his tenure at Microsoft, Taylor waged the "Get the Facts" campaing against linux adoption and served directly under Steve Ballmer. With the corporate loss of his long-time friend Bill and his principal aide Martin, will Steve exhibit the gusto needed to drive the megalithic company? According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the answer is NO, citing investor concerns at the direction MS has taken in the last few years. They have consistently lost rank in the crucial areas of internet business and digital music which have become dominanted by Google and Apple, respectively.

Steve Ballmer has already expressed his personal and business concerns about competition from the likes of Google, no doubt a major issue on his agenda. Will he exhibit wisdom in organizing the system and mustering the troops against the competition? Can he keep Vista on target? Does he have the leadership required to recoup the 60% loss in share value the company has incurred since he became CEO?

Ruby On Rails is empowering

2006-05-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

My birthday this year was enlivening, for multiple reasons. One of the most fun for me was the gift of David Heinemeier Hansson's Agile Web Development with Rails from my kind and generous friend Jamie. For those unfamiliar with the Ruby On Rails framework, it's a programming framework for developing web-based applications that relies on the Ruby scripting language (as opposed to PHP, .NET, or Perl, other popular net-languages) and a set of useful core functions called "Rails." It lets you quickly design, develop, and deploy database-backed web applications, and I'm finding it highly addictive.

First off, lemme (dis)qualify my stance with my programming background: I'm pretty much an amateur. Although I've done some Visual C++ programming 5 years back, it was never for production (was trying to make an isometric tiled game). My web-developer experience only reaches back about a year-and-a-half, when I started Skinyourscreen.com as a hobby endeavor. This consisted of dabbling with existing content management systems (CMSs) like Mambo, Joomla, e107, and Xoops, forums like MyPHPbb, SMF, and InvisionPowerBoard, as well as content-management frameworks like ModX, Drupal, and TextPattern. This was primarily to learn how to skin them (preferably using XHTML/CSS), but you get used to using all the little goodies included with each and appreciating the unique ways in which they approach the problem of dynamically publishing user and admin-contributed content (posts, articles, images, files, comments, etc...) over the net. All of these use the PHP scripting language to power their functions and MySQL databases to store and maintain the content.

Enter Ruby On Rails: Jamie and I have been working together on business solutions for the Life Science Nexus. Both of us have a tiny bit of web-development experience. I'm more of a templater, or graphic designer, and he is the concept guy. Trying to make concept reality has been frustrating at times, however, limited by the existing freeware or open-source solutions that exist. You can pick of a CMS, fall in love with certain features (how easily it accomodates comments, for instance) but can't get by with other features (like sluggish performance, poor plugins, or reliance upon sometimes buggy and poorly documented plugins). Eventually we realized we required custom solutions.

We had bantered back and forth for several months regarding the merits and faults of various systems for doing this, originally settling on learning PHP to accomplish our goals. Just looking at PHP code gave the the willies, though. We quickly became smitten by all the instant gratification and possible using AJAX. The simplicity and intuitiveness of web-interfaces we saw designed with these increasingly popular technologies further whetted our appetite. We also came to enjoy the business blog, productivity tools, and net-casts offered by 37Signals. Their free BaseCamp and BackPack productivity tools had much earlier become and integral part of how we work. They also happened to be the creators of Ruby On Rails.

Still, the idea of learning to code again seemed a little intimidating. With the Agile book, there was no longer any reason to hold off. And you know what? IT'S SO EASY!!! The worst parts of setting up basic apps with Ruby On Rails are all in MySQL (setting up tables, specifically). Ruby as a language is incredibly easy to learn, with simple syntax and structure that makes sense. Rails builds on this by using a convenient and quick architecture that uses a predefined application directory structure to partition specific components (known as favoring "convention" over "flexibility" - although Rails is still exquisitely tuneable). You create your app by calling a Ruby script, and then generate additional components with other scripts. Following an online tutorial, I was able to have a fully-functional To-Do list made from scratch in about 5-10 minutes, and a blog (complete with admin interface, validation, and Textile Markup language) in about 40 minutes... FROM SCRATCH!!! To me, this is incredible, especially considering my credentials presented earlier in this article.

So what's next? Admittedly, the above web setups created by following the tutorials are just the tip of the iceberg, both for my work with Jamie and for my personal hobbies. Suffice it to say, for the time being, that Skinyourscreen.com will likely undergo a radical alteration in site function - powered entirely by Ruby On Rails.

For more information, please consider the following resources:

"Microsoft dead in the water"

2006-05-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

John C. Dvorak, tech guru and regular of This Week in Tech and the Cranky Geeks podcast recently did a commentary opinion piece for MarketWatch on how Microsoft is currently dead in the water. In 8 points, he outlines how Microsoft has blown it with Office2007 and Windows Vista, its premier products, by repeatedly delaying release as well as lopping off all the features that stood to make either a significant upgrade.

I believe most of his points hold true merit with one exception: The Xbox360. From what financial reports bear witness of, the gaming division of Microsoft appears to be one of its most profitable divisions. Although not a hardcore gamer myself, the feedback I've heard from the unit has been phenomenal (minus the issue of the self-igniting behemoth power-block is uses). Dvorak's point #5 about the Xbox360 being produced in too few numbers way before Sony PS3 and Nintendo Revolution/Wii seems to be razzing MS for coming out with a product TOO EARLY(?). What he takes issue with, I am tempted to call smart marketing. MS is accomplishing two things by their early entry into the market and by supplying insufficient amounts of the hardware product: 1) They're gaining an earlier toe-hold in a competitive marketplace, something that will likely ENHANCE their market penetrance in the gaming division, and 2) They're reaping in dollars because they are maintaining its high market value. Supply-and-demand, right? Keep demand high by bottle-necking a luxury product.

I'd like to recharacterize the remainder of Dvorak's points, however. The mishaps with Longhorn/Vista, Office2007, and the constant struggle against Google are indicative of several things:

Complacency. Microsoft has become a large entity because of its prevalence in the market-place, but rather than using that momentum and funding to voraciously pursue and push new technologies, trends, and paradigms, they got somewhat complacent with their majority role. When other companies stepped up to the bar in remote application services, i.e.: Google, they spent several years dismissing these emergent technologies as a passing fad. When these competitors starting bearing rather large fruits, MS apparently woke from its stupor and moved straight to point #3 below.
Mismanagement. By now the greatest features originally touted in the OS that would replace XP have all but been stripped away. Although sporting a brand-new look and a revised Alt-Tab switching, the encouraging and allegedly quick WinFS will not be shipping with the plethora of Windows Vista versions to be sold (5+?). It does appear that the XAML/Avalon graphics engine will make it in, although there have been conflicting reports about its inclusion over the last two years. These kind of change-ups are dramatic: the company has invested thousands of man-hours in developing these technologies which were then deemed "not-ready" for implementation into the shipping version of the OS, which has now been further pushed back into 2007 past the Christmas season. These repeated blunders may be the result of poor communication between burdgeoning Microsoft divisions or short-sightedness/over-eagerness by higher-ups not understanding the true implications of the technologies in question. Regardless, these traits indicate a company where "the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing."
Panic. The rush to get MSN Live out the door seems a final realization that Google is really doing fantastic in the business sphere in the online search and application fields, moreso than Microsoft foresaw. Tension was already evident when Microsoft software engineer Mark Lukovsky resigned to seek work "elsewhere". This of course, lead to the infamous "chair-throwing" incident where Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft was quoted as saying he vowed "to kill Google," further clarifying his stance with "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again." - speaking of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The "imminent" (ha!) release of Windows Vista/Longhorn has become its own subject of mockery as the schedule is regular in only one thing - delaying eventual release. The loss of a significant proportion of the most advertised features due to unreadiness by internal developers may be a contributing factor to the appointment of Steve Sinofsky, previously the division head for Office development, a move to bring the perpetually delayed OS back on track. This was a sign MS was truly trying taking seriously the repetitive stalls in trying to get Vista out the door, pulling the head of one company division to lead up another. Unfortunately, there must have been some significant issues with the OS because it has again been pushed back, this time into early 2007 where it will miss the Christmas season. This attitude of panic was also evidenced by the recent Microsoft campaigns, spending an enormous $210 million to rid itself of the "big company image" and unspecified amounts to assert itself as a cheaper and safer to run than Linux in the server realm, a point of much contention and debate.

The pitious thing about all this is the myriad third-party developers and engineers, hardware producers, manufacturers and retailers that will hurt from The Microsoft Syndrome. PC sales are already slumping as people opt out of purchasing a new computer uncertain of whether or not it will run the next-gen OS that may, or may not, arrive next year. Although the computer-purchasing momentum has been building greatly for the last two decades, sales may be quite dismal this Christmas season when buyers realize they're still buying an operating system that's more than 5 years old.

In order to remedy their situation Microsoft will have to undergo some major internal renovations. The hardest changes will be psychological, in moving beyond the corporate mentality of invincibility that is beginning to crumble. If Microsoft seeks to legitimately defend itself from Google and the ever-increasing awareness to open-source solutions and innovative competitors like Apple, they will have to be ever-vigilant, more progressive, and become more security-minded.

Ubuntu Linux: Easier to install than Windows

2006-05-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

Interesting posting submitted at Digg regarding the beta version of Ubuntu Linux. The reviewer checking out the beta demonstrates how installing Ubuntu Dapper Drake is now easier than a Windows install. Essentially, they are adapting a LiveCD (one that runs Ubuntu Linux entirely off a CD) so they can utilized a graphical interface for the installation process. This is a significant upgrade, considering that previous installers were text-based, depending on your system's capabilities.

Before any Windows fanboys (i.e.: SacRat) go running off in a fury about how Ubuntu is allegedly "crap" be sure to read the comments in that Digg article and the comments for the blog reviewing Ubuntu. Before knocking it, I advise you to try it. However, be aware that this is a beta version - though installation is simple, don't try this unless you are comfortable repartitioning your hard-drive.

Here's the comments for the Digg submission.

Here is the blog reviewing the Beta of Ubuntu version Dapper Drake.

Nerio not out of the woods yet...

2006-04-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,

Received a saddening email from the family of Nerio describing yet another tragedy that has befallen them. It appears that while out of home because of his current recovery from the car accident they received word that his house was burned to the ground by arsonists. Police reports seem to indicate thiefs breaking and entering, possibly lured by the many gifts he has received from friends because of the accident and his subsequent recovery.

Nerio is not doing well as result. He is currently refusing to eat, attend physical therapy, open his eyes or even communicate with close loved ones because of the shock of the whole event.

Nerio, I wish I could be there with you. I wish none of this had happened, the accident, the fire, the hard recovery. I wish I had the power, ability and money to more directly assist you. Sometimes, I really wish I wasn't some poor graduate student but a more capable person to assist dear friends in need.

The previous paragraph is a rather depressing wish-list. As I mature, it becomes more evident to me that wishing for things often leads to disappointment when we cannot receive the things we wish for. Let me instead counter with some things that I never actually wished for, but have very gratefully been given:

Nerio, I never thought in getting to know you through the AstonShell forums that you'd turn out to be such a close friend and associate. I never envisioned that there were people out there who come to love their friends so unconditionally without ever having seen them, as you do so regularly. I never expected anyone to contribute so freely and amiably to an organization composed of people from so many different walks of life without ever expecting something in return. I never thought people of this kind of quality would ever be a part of my life, and yet here you are, and here is the remainder of the skinyourscreen.com community - united in friendship in a group you helped to form, Nerio!

In short, it's often the things we don't ask for that truly bring value to our lives, enrich our vision, and feed our souls. I could wish for a million things at this point, but it might overlook the tremendous gift it is that Nerio is still alive, that he's still my friend.

Nerio, if you get to read this, don't let this gift stop... don't close your eyes now. See the friends and loved ones who admire you. Eat your food so you can recover and come back to us. We miss you, friend, and anxiously await the day we can enjoy your regular conversation and friendship.

Get better, my friend.

Random SYS Site Updates - April 2006

2006-04-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

(wiping the grime off my brow) - Dang! It's been dirty workin' in the mines behind the skinyourscreen site, making changes, tweaks, and additions. Here's a little run-down of what the work has entailed.

Forum
Skinyourscreen.com once again has a functional forum available. Technically speaking, it's been up for a while, I just haven't published a link because the theme for it isn't quite finished yet. I'm hoping in another two weeks I can have a jim-crackin' dandy template up reminiscent of the non-disjunction style theme we used to have. Feel free to sign up!

More tutorials
I've still been parsing all the old tutorials into a format that is legible on this site. In the last two days I've been able to get 10 more tutorials up by various authors. Here's a run-down of the latest *re*-publishings:

Random site features

Download comments: Ultimately each theme and download will have a unique page where it gets its own comments. This is gonna be a slow project, so bear with me.
New Uploads/Tutorials: The front-page or side-bar will have some new boxes extolling our recently submitted content in tutorials and skins/themes.
Chatbox: That's right, our venerable chat-box will be back, reborn in an AJAXified manifestation.

Messages from Nerio

2006-04-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

Great news directly from Nerio! Here are two messages from our buddy:

Bonjour Mr Richard

we are glad to say that we are back home and we are fine, Nerio insist
that i write you this message :

Hi, Richard, i am happy to see that you never left me, never forget me
even on death, you are a miracle my friend. thank you and sacrat, and
all buddys that asked about my health.
am so sorry for what happened to our dear SYS project that we worked on
so hard, have you a backup of all our works? it's sad to loose all what
we done because of a minority of stupid peoples, am ashamed that these
peoples claim themselves from Islam, am ashamed that they done that to
someone that a lot of peoples wish to have as a friend. am so sorry and
ashamed for all things that happned since my accident,i probably will
never find a way to thank you enough for what you do...pass the greets
to all our friends from sys and astonshell communities.
thanks My Friend

This next one was received a day later on April 5th:

Bonjour Mr Richard

Nerio is really a rock!! he still want to write, even on bad
conditions, he can't write as yesterday as he must sleep a little after
doing a big exercises of re-education to walk again!!
he just was asking about some nice things that arrived from USA, and
was wondiring if you are the sender!! i have not understand what he was
say but he talk about diffrent things in relation with computer....

C'est pas grave, merci Mr Richard, my best salutation to your whife and
your childrens. send thanks to his all friends .

CSS Fixed location menu

2006-03-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

The observant reader may recognize that scrolling on this blog gets rid of the Blogger-bar at the top and retains a full-width menu for Skinyourscreen.com items that stays put in the browser, even while scrolling. That is, unless you're using the single largest security threat to MS Windows, Internet Explorer, which, unfortunately, doesn't comply to an ever-increasing amount of web standards.

While putting together new templates for Skinyourscreen after recovery from the hack attacks, I've been investigating some of the fun free goodies the web has to offer in the way of AJAX, script.aculo.us, and Ruby On Rails. I had previously attempted creating a dynamically loading horizontal set of menus using AJAX techniques but found them only working part of the time, inexplicably inoperative at others. Here's a simple rendition of the effect using just standard HTML/CSS.

It's a basic effect accomplished with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and a few HTML additions to a web template. Below are the CSS styles used in the header of this Blogger template. These are included in this template's header, although they could just as easily be employed in a separate style sheet:

/*===[ Top Navigation Bar Styles]===*/
.horzmenu {
position: fixed;
left: 0px;
top: 0px;
background-color: #222;
font-size: 12px;
width: 100%;
height: 1.3em;
border: 3px solid #777;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
}
.horzmenu li {
width: 142px;
height: 49px;
color: #fff;
display: inline;
}
.horzmenu a {
padding: 0px;
margin: 0px 5px;
border-bottom: 3px solid #444;
text-decoration: none;
}
.horzmenu a:link { /* unvisited link */
color: #aaa;
height: 49px;
width: 149px;
}
.horzmenu a:visited { /* visited link */
color: #889;
}
.horzmenu a:hover { /* mouse over link */
border-bottom: 3px solid #f90;
color: #fff;
}
.horzmenu a:active { /* selected link */
background-color: #333;
color: #fff;
border-bottom: 3px solid #444;
}

Now the addition to the HTML template (in this case, Blogger template)... Blogger doesn't seem to like certain HTML tags in a blog (tries to render 'em), so I'm going to use the [ and ] symbols instead of the sharp brackets usually used in HTML for the following example. (Google/Blogger appear to have this feature in beta-testing). Immediately after the tag insert the following:

[!-- My custom Skinyourscreen.com links --]
[div class="horzmenu"]
[ul class="nav_ul"]
[li][a href="http://skinyourscreen.com/site" alt="SYS"]Skinyourscreen[/a][/li]
[li][a href="http://skinyourscreen.com/podcasts" alt="Podcast"]SYS Podcast[/a][/li]
[li][a href="http://skinyourscreen.com/skinwiki" alt="SkinWiki"]SkinWiki[/a][/li]
[li][a href="mailto:mrbiotech@skinyourscreen.com" alt="Contact Me"]Contact me[/a][/li]
[/ul]
[/div]

Not to bad, 'eh? Sorry for the illegibility... Blogger doesn't like Tabs or extra spaces apparently, so the above code has no indents to help you view the structure. The CSS styles are essentially creating a box of fixed position at the top of the browser window containing an inline list of unordered items.

It's a nice way of keeping common options always available without making users scroll for them. Right now I'm experimenting with more graphical versions of this in both horizontal and vertical formats. I'm trying to use the graphics from my Singularity LiteStep OTS2 theme in this endeavor. Another goal is to create one that sits on the bottom of the screen but still stays put when the user scrolls.

News on Nerio

2006-03-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,

Got some more news on Nerio that I'd like to share with everybody. Again, thanks for your hopes, prayers, and wishes for our mutual friend. He's a fantastic human being, and the outpouring of friendship from so many of the community have evidenced your innate quality as well.

For those interested in sending cards, letters, flowers, etc. to Nerio... I DO have a dedicated work address for his work location (not the hospital) where these things can be sent, although it is a secure address due to his work contract. For this reason, I will not publically publish this information. If you are interested, please email me.

Here's the update on Nerio's condition as stated by his close friend Philip:

Bonjour Mr Richard

Some other news arrived by mail and phone..
Apparently gretha survived to the cauma, she's still alive, his hasben
told me that she will probably loose the ability of walking some
months, but not for ever, so after all, she's still alive, and this is
important..

For Nerio, Dr STAFFAN said today that his situation is very good now,
esspecially after his waking up, and could probably be transferred at
home, he charged sarah to make him some readucation movements in home,
to recover ability of walking and talking correctly! dont know exactly
where sarah will transfer him, because he have two brothers, one in
italy, and one in algeria they offered to have him at their homes
respectivly.
we received about 2000 mails/letters and other nice things from
diffrent countries, even from japan, algeria, cairo, Ausralia, Canada,
argentina, Israel, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, Burkina Fasso,
South Africa....and so much others, i dont really know if some of
these Nerio friends are with you, but we want to thank them for all
what they send all kind words and prayers, we dont know how to thank
them in deep, but Nerio seems to be a good person enough to have all
these friends around the world...he will be proud of that and we are
too.

Ur Quan Masters: Old-school fun

2006-03-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

What to do when your site's been trashed, your research gets intensive, the family gets ill and you feel like the planet's collapsing? Sit back and relax. Try something new. Or... try something old-skool.

Back in high school I really enjoyed some computer games called Star Control and Star Control II. Found out only recently that the developers of these (Atari) released the source code to Star Control II in 2002 and there's been an avid following who have created a thriving gaming community dedicated to these classics. Best yet, they've got it ported to Windows, Linux, BSD, and Mac OSX, so people of just about any system can play it. It'll run on just about anything.

It's fun to pull out your old favorite toys, and Ur-Quan Masters (formerly known as Star Control II) is no exception. Playing the super-melee mode with my kids has been a really fun experience and demonstrates that despite the killer gaming engines available these days, it all still boils down to how the game plays.

Check out Ur-Quan Masters here - it's a free download!

Nerio Alive and Conscious!

2006-03-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

Fantastic news!!! Nerio has been through three surguries to repair damage to veins and recently awoke from his coma to request water. BIG thanks to everyone who has been so faithful with your prayers and hopes for the recovery of our great friend. This is literally a miracle... ejected from a vehicle from a massive impact, major trauma to the head, and he's still alive and able to converse after many days of coma. Here's the official word I received:

Bonsoir Mr Richard

Am Sarah who write this message, this time i think i have good news for
you, because Philip is in another base for the work.

Nerio situation is more good now that he passed operation with success,
all veins recovred and he is completly out of danger, he have 3
operations in head wich take 6 hours in all, but Doctor Staffan say
that he is all good now and out of danger, this operations was very
expensive but nothing is more then Nerio, your friend, my hasben.

yesterday at 19h he oppned his eyes and looked at me, then got a little
smile and say : need water! i cant keep my self and cry a lot that he
is still a live!! you hear me Mr Richard...he is still a live!!!!!!!

sade that ahmed was dead, but greatha is still fighting in cauma, i
dont what will happen to she. his hasben will take her to Cologne in
germany this next days.

Me and Nerio, and all his familly here we thank you a lot but never
much for what you do, we thank you for all prayers and kind words you
say, we are sade for what happen to your site and i present you my
homages...please give all Nerio friends my best salutations from here.

Dieu vous bénisse

For those of you who wish to send your best wishes to Nerio, feel free to fill his mailbox at nerio@skinyourscreen.com - that's where family and friends are keeping tabs. Thanks again, my kind and generous friends.

SYS Downloads up

2006-03-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

SYS Downloads are up here.

Just to ensure that theme downloads are up, I've set up a VERY BASIC solution - akin to not much but static pages, but at least the files are accessible. This is by no means the final solution for the site, just a quick and dirty way of making sure everyone's contributions are still online. I'm working on the tutorials next.

If you have a submission you'd like to make to the site, I'll have to add it manually, so send it to me via email.

Hacker Update.
Curious chain of events, this is: Got this message yesterday to my skinyourscreen.com mail account:

hi, i want to talk with you about your site.
I am in ErrorHack team and i want to talk something about your site..
could u add me to ur messenger ?

Messenger : fenerli@hotmail.com

see you

To which I responded:

Sorry, don't use messenger. Contact by email is just fine.

He quickly replied:

any other chat programs ? like icq mirc ?

By this time I'm thinking that there are only a few reasons any hacker from the diabolical ErrorHack group would want to contact me: 1) Get a direct link to my computer to do more harm, 2) Rant about their shady aims, 3) Apologize and offer to fix the site. Seeing that they've done nothing but malicious acts, I quickly ruled out option #3 and wrote the following response:

I have a chat account but it's reserved exclusively for contact with my wife. I'm also at work right now, meaning a dedicated chat can't happen right now.

I must admit, I'm curious as to why a group so bent on making sure my site stays down is even interested in contact at all. But put yourself in my shoes for just a sec... the group claiming responsibility for repeatedly taking your site down suddenly wants to chat without stating their intentions. Would you trust anyone who broke into your house and trashed the place on multiple occasions?

You must realize that I greet your approach with utmost skepticism and distrust considering the actions of the group you claim allegiance with. Just being honest with you. I've layed aside my anger and determined that I just want to run my site and provide a fun place for some skinning buddies to get together. That does not mean that I feel you or your group are to be trusted, however. See my reluctance to converse? Why would I want to speak to the group that broke into my website and trashed the place? Why speak with people who have done nothing but exhibit undirected malice at something I've helped to create?

I've pinpointed that most of their activity came from two domains in Turkey, and this is also where dewe/fenerli of the errorhack group hails from. The initial instinct was to IP ban all of the turkish telecom services, as has been done elsewhere on the net to deal with this recent and persistent hacking threat. However, trawling the site logs, we do have people from Turkey who legitimately browser the tutorials, making that an unfair solution.

We'll just proceed as we can. Hopefully the errorhack group feels they have made their point and will not cause additional malicious problems.

DL solution within the week

2006-03-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

For a recap on why you've been directed to this blog instead of skinyourscreen.com, read this entry.

I love the skinyourscreen.com and Astonshell communities. You guys are truly an amazing bunch! Your support for the skinyourscreen.com site has been greatly appreciated.

I've been crunching like mad behind the scenes (my bloodshot eyes will attest) to get a working solution for downloads up and running before the week is done. Every theme, skin and wallpaper will be up and running with its appropriate screenshots and descriptions. This will hopefully be a temporary solution as more permanent alternatives are considered.

Next on the agenda will be putting up all the tutorials.

Again, thanks for the continued interest. Working to keep SYS alive!

SYS Progress report

2006-02-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post some updates on my themes, my site, and the Skinyourscreen.com community:

Current SYS Site Status
Skinyourscreen.com is broken. All the downloads, tutorials and images are fine, but the site is nonfunctional due to the activity of the MaxPowerhack group of net-hackers and their buddy ErrorHack. Not even the restoration of the MySQL database or the site files has been able to repair what they've done. Frustrating to see a project that you and your friends have invested thousands of man-hours into broken because of some other person's non-related fanatical crusade. C'est la vie.

Many other e107-web-software based sites are also under attack. There were some significant flaws under the previous version of the web-software that have facilitated the compromisation of my server. I don't know how far this reaches, although they have thrice been able to employ it to take the site down. I trust that they would continue to do so even if I reinstalled from scratch.

The Good: SkinWiki and the Skinyourscreen Podcast sites are still completely operational and uncompromised. The only significant downtime these sites experienced was on the 19th and 20th of February, 2006, when a dedicated denial of service attack brought the whole domain down.

Furthermore, since the previous attacks and the subsequent shutdown of the e107-based skinyourscreen site no further attacks have occurred. Though devastating to our site, the work of ErrorHack was still fairly amateur, given the fact that he had to employ existing hacks to e107 published on Russian security sites. He was simply exploiting a technique developed by someone else.

Resolving the SYS Site
First and foremost, I thank all those who contributed their time, talents, interests, personalities, and hard work for the Skinyourscreen.com community. My principle goal now is to ensure that every creative work previously published on the site remains available to the community somehow. That includes every theme, skin, template, graphic, image, tutorial or review that had been available preceding the site attacks.

However, it is evident that the site cannot be maintained using the same server software used since the early days of the site because of security concerns. This means the loss of our forums, chat-box, user accounts and private messenging facilities, which were all previously integrated into the e107 package. This means that Skinyourscreen.com is going to have to streamline to the essential functions: the ability to publish themes, skins, tutorials, and images while providing facilities for users to share their works while giving the community opportunity for feedback on that content.

The following are some options I've been considering. I've been putting together a few web-templates, too to explore these options (hence the iCan mini-icon pack released today). There are likely other options not mentioned here. If you think of something, feel free to comment:

Reinstall latest version of e107 from scratch and manually reinstall all themes, skins, etc.
Move the entire site into a Blogger blog and just bring on contributors. The principle SYS domain would just become a repository of files while Blogger provided the front-end.
Investigate the use of other content management solutions (Xoops, PHP-Fusion, Exponent, TextPattern, ModX, Typo3, DragonFly, JetBox, Geeklog, etc...).
Create static HTML pages for each theme and the main-page.

Obviously, this is all a work in progress.

Skinning progress
I'm now working completely on a Mac. My wife sold my two-year old 2.8Mhz P4 Toshiba laptop to some fellow student friends for $300. With an offer like that, they purchased pretty quick. It's kind of a mixed bag. I didn't want to sell it for that price, but it was to friends who were in dire need of something like that. I'm now without a direct Windows platform I can skin, leaving my LiteStep projects dead in the water.

I have installed VirtualPC for the Mac and installed WinXP, although performance running through an emulation layer is incredibly hampered. It is probably sufficient for testing purposes, however.

So, in short, 2006 is turning out to be a pretty bum year. I haven't even mentioned my academic research, which is roller-coaster as well. Hopefully things get better, especially for our friend Nerio.

iCan mini-icon pack released

2006-02-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

I've just put together and released my first mini-icon pack. It was designed principally for use on the web, and was made in the course of an hour for my new blog template using Photoshop 6.0. Included are 26 icons in 16x16 and 32x32 pixel sizes, all in 24-bit PNG format with alpha-transparency enabled (so you can use 'em over whatever colored background you want).

This pack is released for free under the Creative Commons License, and is available for download here.

Nerio in surgery, stabilized

2006-02-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

Friends, just received this information abour Nerio... I'll share it with you directly:

Good Morning Mr Richard

Am Philip again,i used an online traducer to talk, sarah charged me to
notify you on any new details about Nerio, and here explanations :

Sad to say that even his situation is stable, Nerio have some critical
shocks to the head, and therfore, he must be operated as fast as
possible, because the caumotions in the head caused a tearing in the
veins, so they must be closed again to avoid a cerebral crisis or other
incidents.
Yesterday, at 23h he just opened eyes and reclosed them he manifested
something but sarah haven't understand something noticeable..

it's a honnor to see what kind of friends you are, you asked on his
conditions better then his real friends, sarah is passing you the hello
from here.
thank you MR Richard, thanks to all his friends from us, we keep
contact.

Again, friends, sincerest thanks for your hopes and prayers for Nerio. He's fighting, he's attempting to communicate. He can make it, friends, he can make it!

Skinyourscreen.com under attack

2006-02-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's become apparent to me that there is an individual, or individuals, who are determined to keep Skinyourscreen.com offline. Sunday afternoon I discovered that the site was once again comprimised, this time large portions of files were erased, rather than simple removal of the site template. After repairing the data and upgrading the site to e107 v0.72, I felt relatively confident that security would be enhanced.

Tuesday morning the site was closed by the web-host because of a massive dedicated denial of service attack. I am in talks with MidPhase and they are tracking the perpetrators. Needless to say, the incursions did leave tracks previous to the attack that are being tracked in the logs and forwarded to law enforcement agencies.

I can't say I understand why anyone would get so much pleasure out of repeatedly demonstrating that they can take down a hobbyist skinning site. Obviously it is something that is important to the perpetrators, otherwise they would have stopped after the first or second incursions and gotten their laughs. The only clue I have to their intentions is the original hacked banner by Error slopped onto the front-page stating that the "Danes and Swiss will kneel before our prophet," a reference to the recent cartoon in Denmark depicting the islamic prophet Muhammed wearing a bomb in his turban.

Unfortunately, what ErrorHack and his group, MaxPowerHack fail to realize is that they are themselves spitting on their beloved prophet (p.b.u.h.) by their actions. From my readings of the Noble Qu'ran, all members of the islamic faith are to set good examples that they might convert others to the faith. I read of peace being spread to all the children of God. What ErrorHack and his juvenile friends are spreading is malicious, unwarranted, and unprovoked hatred, a response that is anything but godly. Rather than uniting people with their cause, they are simply building more enemies, against themselves, against their cause, against Islam itself.

ErrorHack, there are more effective ways to make a point. Digital Terrorism just decreases understanding. You're a disgrace to the peaceful faith from which you profess to fight.

Update on Nerio and Skinyourscreen.com

2006-02-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

Friends, an update on Nerio: Nerio has been airlifted to a hospital in Paris and successfully arrived at 00:30 GMT this morning (Sunday) and his condition has been stabilized, although his condition is still listed as serious. There has been significant head trauma, and once his condition stabilizes further he may be airlifted to a specialist in either Germany or Canada that deals with closed head trauma. Lets all continue our vigil for this dear friend and colleague, praying daily for his safety and recovery, and for the comfort of his family and friends.

Regarding Skinyourscreen.com - it seems my site has been a target for repetitive hacking as of late, and the site is again down. Luckily the satellite sites for skinwiki, the podcast, and this blog are still operational. The existing site is based off of an older e107 content-management system which I have not upgraded due to a burgeoning schedule at my laboratory. Whether it is the work of the same ErrorHack who displayed his lame protest to the Danish cartoon or the work of some other shady unscrupulous moron I don't know - I'm GREPping the raw site logs at the moment to determine whats up and restoring a backup of the site. They can continue to hack, and I will continue to restore. This type of illicit, and illegal behavior by anonymous cowards will not be met by the closing of the site. They can break the site, but they can't break our spirit.

Nerio greatly injured, please pray for him.

2006-02-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

I received an email today from a person very close to my good friend and fellow admin at skinyourscreen.com, the humble Nerio, informing me that he has been in a serious car accident and is in critical condition. I don't know the specifics of the accident, nor do I know his exact condition, although it must be grave considering he's in critical condition.

Nerio has been a dear friend, a person of exceptional personal quality and honor since I met him by way of the AstonShell forums. His work has brought him to a distant location, preventing immediate access to him. I call upon our users, readers, and friends of Nerio around the world to pray in faith for Nerio's well-being and speedy recovery. No matter what religion, faith, creed or persuasion you may be, I ask you to call upon your higher powers to watch over and assist our mutual friend since we cannot be there with him.

Thank you.

Back to Singularity

2006-01-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, vacations over. Had some fun with my wife's parents in North Carolina over the holidays. Kids had fun. I had fun. Got the wife a minivan. Back to work harvesting bacterial RNA for a microarray project... and Singularity (Mulestem, I haven't forgotten!)

Two theme-related functions are on my mind: 1) Making the Shortcuts on the left screen edge function, and 2) Making the lower-right media module for the theme. Here's what's going on in these areas:

The Shortcuts section: So the fold-out Command skin for LSXCommand and the icon-ridden xPopup shortcut skin are completed and functional within the theme. The next major thing to address is their activation. Presumably, pressing one of the vertically oriented tabs will open these things. Graphically identifying the function of each tab, however, is proving problematic. The way the graphic design is currently set, there's little room to apply an kind of icon or text to signify what each tab does.

To assist with identification I currently have the tabs partially unfold when the mouse cursor hovers over them. The partially unfolded region could contain either text or a small icon. This leaves the inactive state of each button relatively undiscernable. Any ideas on how to make 'em more recognizable?

The Media Module: The original Singularity theme had a lower-right cornered set of controls for the WinAmp media player. Although a few of the controls were pushable buttons, the bulk of the controls had a digital feel over another blue orb. Long flanges extended from the top and bottom of this region to provide vertical controls for volume and a horizontal gel area to display the song title, time, and other media information. This time I wanted the media controls to be larger, more visible, and more accessible - but still digital looking. This required a larger control cluster. Here's an early rendering of what the center part of the media pod will resemble.
The area to display song information could be placed to the left, or perhaps shrunk to actually scroll across the sphere itself: either option is possible. Ultimately, I'm trying to make the metal cover open over the eye of it through animation, although the exact method of animation has not been settled upon. (Suggestions for animation scripting welcome).

Lastly, I'm still intrigued with color variations for this theme, not just of the blue digital areas, but for the metallic background as well. Applying a red overlay to the metal yielded an interesting japanimation-type feel to the theme, especially when used in conjunction with an orange or greenish coloration to the glass. This tangent originally started when I attempted to make the metal background much lighter and the glass red - to mimic my NonDisjunction suite. The light metal variations turned out quite tasty, as did variations employing a general black overlay. I dunno though: I kind of like 'em all, but it'd be a pain to include each of these variations in the final theme. Any preferences?

Singularity: Corner Shortcuts

2005-11-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Working on the graphics and concepts of the Singularity for LiteStep theme, I realized that the three shortcuts present in the upper-leftmost corner (shown in the first pane of the image at left) would be hard to find a purpose for. Thinking of what SacRat might say if he looked at this ("too many controls! Too complicated! Controls with similar functions should be grouped together! Group functions by what they control!), the realization dawned on me that making this shortcuts to typical LiteStep E-vars would be really random. That's what the fold-out shortcuts above the system tray should be used for.

The way the theme currently works, the upper 30px and the left 30px of the desktop are reserved for the taskbar and system tray. When an application window is full-sized, it covers up the graphic VWM, precluding mouse-click access to other virtual desktops. In the 2003 incarnation of this theme this function was compensated for by the inclusion of buttons above the tray (then at the upper-right corner of the desktop) directly accessing each virtual desktop. Since the tray was moved in this remake, this location is no longer available for shortcuts.

The little SacRat that sits on my right shoulder then piped in "Make the existing 3 shortcut buttons into 4 and have THEM access different virtual desktops!" This was quickly countered by the Goat-Demon which sits on my left shoulder who barked "Make it more complicated, Mortal!" Needless to say, I gave in to the virtual SacRat. The second pane in the image above shows what resulted, 4 buttons to quickly access different VWMs when an application is maximized. Of course, VWM switching will also be an option users can select for the configurable corner mouse hotspots, although not everyone will select that option, necessitating an alternate method of switching desktops.

Next focus: Get all current theme shortcuts functional. Also need to put together the lower-right corner control module for media controls. I want it to be able to control either WinAmp or iTunes (since the iTunes module is available, and I haven't touched WinAmp in years).

REQUEST: It's becoming time to start scripting this thing. Anyone interested in doing some scripting for this? I can do it if I have to, but I really prefer not to. I'm kind of a sloppy, inelegant coder.

SYSPodcast #8 released

2005-11-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

Checkout the podcast here.
Subscribe to the SYSPodcast with this feed.

Skinning News

Happy Thanksgiving!
New Tutorials at Skinyourscreen.com by Nerio and KaRaZyJeW.
A Windows Skinning Primer at Wincustomize.
liqachu interview at Customize.org.
7zip new version.
Nerd Proliferator.
Good Color Harmony Generator.
SNES powered tunes, baby!
DotWidget RC.
PodXP widget engine download available.
Free goodies for Photoshop.
Linux ain't just a terminal

User Feedback
Stardock CEO writes in some good, some lame points of comparison between WindowBlinds and StyleXP.

Polymerase for AstonShell

2005-11-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

The new theme I gave a preview of in the last blog entry has been released. Every striving for a scientific name, I entitled it "Polymerase," the enzyme that polymerizes additional nucleic acids into a strand of DNA or RNA.

Download Polymerase for AstonShell here.

Download Polymerase for ObjectDock here.

New Aston Theme: Polymerase

2005-11-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've been quite ill for about a week, some nasty kind of bronchitis/laryngitis/cold combo. In addition to playing MegaMan Battle Network 3: White way more than I should, I started to whip together a theme for AstonShell. It's been a while, and I wanted something dark and shiny. After putting it together I found a suite called Xenon by a Russian (i think) skinner named Vlad. He's got a really nice looking site, too. You can find it at vladstudio.com. Kind of defeats the purpose of releasing a theme if someone else's already got something very similar, so i'm heartlessly modding it at the moment. There's a clock module in the screenshot towards the lower-right which will be more of an emphasis. The goal is a shiny black theme accentuated by chrome accents and periodic splashes of blue or red.

Thank goodness the Thanksgiving holiday is approaching this Thursday. Will have some time to recuperate, some time to theme, some time to make web-templates, and some time to work on another SYS podcast (also working on the first Podcast Wasteland podcast with a good friend). Hope to release a simple version of the theme before the end of this week.

Singularity: QuickLaunch

2005-11-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

The original Singularity theme had a few button-tabs at the left edge of the screen to access custom menus like the quicklaunch, games, options, etc. Previously, the bpopup2 module was used to permit the creation of this quicklaunch with a secondary popup. Andymon's xPopup, however, one-ups this by permitting multiple popup styles via one module. It also included a feature for creating text-less quicklaunch popups in either horizontal or vertical formats.

As a big fan of AstonShell, I'm very fond of "Toolbars" a.k.a.: wharfs a.k.a.: docks at the left and right screen edges. They're a great way to access common shortcuts. Rather than using the vertical-menu methodology common to other shells, the Aston toolbars use staggered layouts: that is, the first level of shorcuts are vertical, but the second-tier comes out of the first horizontally. I wanted to employ something similar in this theme, with the tabs representing the first-tier, and the fold-out shortcuts coming out horizontally. Tossing some stuff around in Photoshop, I came up with this prototype picture to the right. Wanted it to look like the smaller bud pictured first opening up. Didn't end up as successful as I had hoped, but it's still fun to look at in its own right. Seems to work, too.

Perhaps I'll make a vertical version as well, just to suit user taste.

VMware Player and Front-Row for Mac

2005-11-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

The VMware Player/Fedora Experience
Last blog I reported that VMware Player was turning out to be a fun toy. The Browser Appliance that VMware makes freely available turned out to be a stripped-down Ubuntu Linux distro set to their own login, to be used exclusively for "safe" web-browsing. Turns out they left the Synaptic package manager in it, meaning you could install The GiMP, KDE, media-players, games, web-editors, and the thousands of other freely available Linux programs for completely free.

Last night I tinkered a little further, using a hack found at Hack-a-day.com to create my own operating system environment for VMware Player. Took the challenge, jumped in hacking the VMX file of the Browser Appliance virtual environment, and used FreeDOS to clear the virtual partition. Once the virtual partition was cleared I was able to load my favorite Linux Distro, Fedora Core, into the virtual hard-drive/partition. It takes a while because the VMware Player is emulating another complete computer under Windows, but it all pulled up just fine and installed. Right now I'm running the Yum updater to update all existing file packages, including the kernel, and also install KDE, my preferred linux graphical environment.

It's been kind of bizarre working in a full-fledged linux environment in a window in Windows. VERY nice, though, especially for web-development or network integration. The cool part is it doesn't have to make a separate hard-drive partition: VMware player makes a file that is interpreted as a partition. Here's a screenshot of a dual-monitor setup on my crappy Toshiba laptop running Fedora Core 4 in a VMware Player window on the right. It's using the Yum updater to update every installed program (one of the beauties of Fedora Core... imagine typing one command and having Windows update Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Windows, Roxio, Illustrator, and Windows Media Player all at once):

Front-Row Hack for Mac
One of my good friends in the lab I work in wanted some help installing a hack of Apples new Front-Row program on his several-month-old iMac G5 (old enough that it doesn't come with Front-Row by default). For the uninitiated, Front-Row is Apple's much more enjoyable response to Windows Media Center Edition. It doesn't yet require a TV card, although it does come with an infrared remote, and is a lot more pleasing to look at and use. It's not commercially available, either, and the only way to obtain it legitimately is buy purchasing a brand new iMac G5 (new as in released just a few weeks ago).

It's release is both a blessing and a curse. Front-Row is a great piece of software that functions nicely. The fact that Apple released it only on new iMac G5's (not even its high-end G5 towers), however, has come with a sharp sting to millions of dedicated Apple fans who bought their iMacs or other Apple products just a few months ago. Not releasing it commercially was another dunce move who's intentions can only be guessed.

To counter this, several sources have released patched versions online that don't require the infrared remote in order to function. After helping my buddy install it, all I can say is "WOW!" It really is amazing to watch. Mac's are full of "got-your-attention-now-don't-I!" features, like Expose, the Dock, and Genie effects, and the Dashboard Ripples. Front-Row is another one of those things that has to be seen to be appreciated.

VMware Player hack

2005-11-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with VMware's virtual PC environment, VMware Player, lately. It's free, and you can get it here. In brevity, VMware makes software that will permit you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Their full-fledged package is rather pricey (even for students it costs more than $150). They've been gracious enough recently to release VMware Player, a freeware version that will permit you to run precompiled environments, or environments saved using the full version.

What does this mean exactly? I guess the best analogy would be a Nintendo emulator (I prefer Nesticle). Nesticle creates a virtual Nintendo in Windows, emulating the processor, the hardware, etc... You can download hundreds of the old Nintendo games as ROMs, pre-packaged little files that contain an entire game. These are then loaded into the emulator where they can be played. Now the beauty of this system is that you can save the games wherever you want, the software takes a snapshot of the processor running the game, which can be started up quickly the next time. VMware Player works the same, except it emulates an x86 processor and snags a bit of physical RAM from your computer. This means you can run Linux on your Windows desktop.

There are a variety of precompiled OSes/environments you can use. I've settled on the smallest one offered by VMware, the Browser Appliance. Turns out the Browser Appliance is actually Ubuntu Linux, and it includes the Synaptic Package Manager, so you can dynamically add additional software from the net easily (via download). There are literally thousands of packages available, and within an hour of plinking around I was able to install the KDE desktop environment (Gnome Desktop is the default), the Xfce desktop environment, the GiMP editor, and a couple different Office-type programs. (Here's a hint: the root login is "vmware" and the password is also "vmware"). It generally works for what I need it to, and although a tad slow, the command-line works the way it should, meaning I can actually use the FTP commands. I'm so used to doing this on my Mac, that using the crippled crappy commands included with the Windows command-line becomes an exercise in frustration.

Anyway, there's a hack available that will let you install whatever operating system on it that you want. That's the functionality of the full-blown VMware software, for free. This is on the to-do list for the evening. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000153064739/

Singularity: LSXCommand, & Goodbye TiddlyWiki

2005-11-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

LSXCommand Have been working on getting the shortcuts and LSXCommand up and running on the left side of Singularity.

The fold-out shortcuts (quicklaunch, etc...) are still pretty messy looking, so I'll show those later. Here's the LSXCommand area, though:
There are two versions in the image. The top was the original sketch I threw together in Photoshop. I wanted it to look like the top and bottom panels kind of swung-out from the center, but the pointy areas to the left and right just looked crappy, didn't match the rest of the theme. The other is approaching the final version. Again, the swing-out panels are present, as are struts to attach them to the rest of the structure. The sharp lines on the inside of the panels, however, strike me as unlike the rest of the theme as well: not the sweeping curves and rounded shapes. It may undergo another revision, but it's getting closer to what I want.

Will be working on the shortcuts/quicklaunch things next.

Goodbye TiddlyWiki
All the LiteStep-based content of this blog was originally hosted on a TiddlyWiki-based site on my Skinyourscreen.com server. I've decided to move it off-site to Blogger because it's just a better solution. TiddlyWiki's a great program, and I still recommend it to anyone, it's just cumbersome to use for blogging or for image-laden content. A server-side solution was certainly the way to go, and so I demoed a few options for blogs like b2Evolution and WordPress. On an unadvertised portion of my site, however, b2 and WordPress accumulated a fantastically bad array of referrals designed to point users to sites dealing with Viagra and the like. I opted out of that. Blogger is free, I can customize the template, and it permits comments and track-back. We'll try it for a while, anyway. So far, I'm duly impressed.

Microsoft XPS vs. Adobe PDF

2005-11-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

It appears that Microsoft is officially entering the portable document market, as screenshots of the XPS save-file dialog appear on the net. The XPS format-previously-know-as-"Metro" makes use of a zip container with XML file content, and is intended to compete directly with Adobe's PDF file format. You can find out more about the XPS (or "XML Paper Specification") here.

XPS appears to address several inefficiencies with the popular PDF portable document format, such as reducing file size and creating an XML-based structure. I still have to ask, however:

"Microsoft, why?"

I believe their XPS format will not penetrate beyond 2% of the portable document market, and here's why:

The PDF format portable document is ubiquitous. It's already the de-facto standard for academia and business alike. It's easy to use, make, and view. Of course, I am coming from an academic perspective on this, but I'd wager that more than 60% of the PDFs circulated daily on the net are from scientific and professional journals, like Science, Nature, Cell, and about 500 more that show up yearly on the impact-factor rankings. Whenever someone publishes a paper, review, news-brief, or article in one of these, it's converted to a PDF format. The magazine Science likely circulates over 50,000 PDFs in a day, conservatively (the actual figure may be more than 10 times that amount). That's just one journal! Science has an expensive infrastructure it's worked on for years to hone the production and information dissemination process, a significant investment in time and funds. To believe that a new format will simply sweep over a previously entrenched one is folly, even from a company that owns the principle market-share for operating system. For a magazine like Science to replace this infrastructure is just not a feasible option. The submissions processes for the major journals generally entail submitting PDF formatted documents, as well. The journals' heuristics then tease out the essential bits of info (like author, date, title, and abstract) and do some basic pre-formatting before presentation before the editors, and before being parcelled out to peer-reviewers. This is an automated process performed directly upon the PDF upon submission, and is a part of the costly infrastructure in place to facilitate a paperless process for the manuscripts submitted. XPS simply can't begin to compete with the well-established PDF format.

XPS isn't a vast improvement over the PDF format. If it were dramatically smaller, easier to parse, easier to send, easier to make or use, it might present a contender against PDF. However, the XPS is a marginal improvement, at best. File sizes for documents may decrease 10%. You'll have to download and use entirely different software to make 'em and view 'em. In short, there's real reason to switch to the XPS format. Sure, it's cute, it's new, but there's really no reason.

Now compare this to the Internet Explorer vs. Mozilla Firefox foray: Microsoft had the upper hand in market-share and market penetrance. The Firefox browser was a heck of a lot more innovative, however, with its plugin architecture, skinnability, tabbed-browsing, and enhanced security. Unfortuantely, Internet Explorer has become synonymous with "open-portal for malicious hackers to override and zombify my computer, whilst filling it with spyware and other security threats" (OPFMHTOAZMCWFIWSAOST, as I like to call it). This helped get Firefox well on its way to obtaining a significant market-share very quickly. XPS just doesn't have the innovation and drive to push past PDF.

Singularity: Color Variations

2005-10-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Dang!!! Why doesn't Blogger process PNG images right? There's not supposed to be any Purple-Haze around each of the above images, although Jimi Hendrix an Andy Warhol might both enjoy the effect.

Yup, I realize I've been lax on updating this. At work I'm trying to get a manuscript ready for publication in the Journal of Bacteriology, been working on a corporate site and obtaining sponsors for the site and podcast. Its been a lot to do lately. Haven't forgotten the LiteStep stuff, however, and have been trying to get some of my fellow themers interested in LiteStep. I think Nerio will give it a go (good for you Nerio!!).

Anyway, above are some color variations I'm putting together for the theme. The original Singularity just offered the one color. Once I offered the NonDisjunction theme, requests for color-variations on the other themes started building. Four color variations are shown above, These were simple bulk recolorizations using the Hue/Saturation tool in Photoshop 6.0, so they're pretty crude interpretations of what the final colors will be, but it does give an idea. There will also be a 5th color variation that will be much darker, something more foreboding. That will require more than a simple Hue/Saturation workup... will have to remake all the colored features by hand for that one, but I'm pleased with how it's turning out (I'll save a preview for my beta-testers).

Off to my GameBoy... MegaMan Network3 is beckoning...

Uh, blogspot?

2005-10-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I, um, got an account at blogspot simply so I can make comments on Sacrat's blog.

The skinny on the skinning

2005-10-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

Didn't think producing Podcasts would be as time consuming as it is. Lots o' post-production work. Still fun, though.

I've taken another unplanned hiatus from skinning to work on, well, my job, but also goofing around with CSS and Strict XHTML. I'm thinking the Google/Sun partnership may be telling of the future of skinning... If we'll all eventually be using standards-compliant web-interfaces for even full-blown desktop applications, makes sense to learn the GUI intricacies of 'em, 'cuz that's what we'll be skinning in a decade.

Here's a mock-up of the new podcast site interface I'm piecing together as an experiment:
Tonight, I'm gonna try and get the secondary xPopups and shortcuts configured for the upper-left control module. Then I'll try putting some RainMeter stuff together for the two smaller blue orbs.

Singularity: Yes, I'm lazy...

2005-10-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit since my last entry, and mulestem's been kindly checking for updates on the Singularity theme. Here's a brief update on some stuff I did last night:

Have been working on pull-out tabs for the shortcuts on the left-side of the screen:
Eventually, I'd like to use a second xPopup config to create user-configured popups in more of a holographic style. The top part, and perhaps bottom, would be metallic, as seen in the above image. The middle, however would be more digital blue stuff with liberal transparency. Haven't sketched it out in Photoshop yet, but I have a clear idea in mind.

Once these shortcuts are figured out I can start work on the scripting required to swap the theme's Z-order, hide/reappear, etc. Can't wait to start coding the hotspots! That's the core functionality of the theme, after all.

The other graphical item I've been working on is a second form of the taskbar. Eventually the little button to the left of the taskbar will switch between different taskbar forms. Below is a prototype for a taskbar containing just 32x32 icons, no text:
For the inactive-state I'm imagining it containing just a 24x24 icon that will sit in the old taskbar. This way the active task will be very readily discernible.

Busy weekend?

2005-09-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a busy weekend. I seem to skin the most when I'm sick, and this weekend unveiled a massive kidney-stone attack. At 29 years old, this shouldn't even be happening, but it's a pain that's unrivaled. Tried to be productive, however.

In brief, Singularity now has a working taskbar, albeit basic, some of the graphics blitted to the screen via LayerCuts, and a functional VWM using RabidVWM. Here are the details:

Taskbar Setting up xTaskbar requires more parameters than any other module I've ever set up, but the degree of control is truly impressive. I daresay I'll not use another taskbar module. It's got so much control over each button state (normal, active, minimized, hover, group, and flash). Once I grouped all the parameters together according to my scheme in the previous blog, it becomes a lot easier to deal with. Here's an example of the Active button state:
;----Active button state----
;tasks1ButtonBorderMethod .none
;tasks1ButtonAlphaTransparency 255
;tasks1ButtonTrueTransparent
tasks1ActiveButtonImage $LSimagefolder$taskbtn2.png
tasks1ActiveButtonImageLeftEdge 34
tasks1ActiveButtonImageRightEdge 1
tasks1ActiveButtonImageTopEdge 0
tasks1ActiveButtonImageBottomEdge 0
tasks1ActiveButtonImageMode
tile-horizontal
;tasks1ButtonSaturationIntensity 255
;tasks1ButtonHueIntensity 0
;tasks1ButtonHueColor ffffff
tasks1ActiveIconX 4
tasks1ActiveIconY 4
tasks1ActiveIconSize 24
tasks1ActiveIconSaturationIntensity 255
tasks1ActiveIconHueIntensity 0
tasks1ActiveIconHueColor ffffff
tasks1ActiveFont Arial
tasks1ActiveFontSmoothing
tasks1ActiveFontHeight 14
tasks1ActiveFontLeftBorder 34
tasks1ActiveFontTopBorder 4
tasks1ActiveFontBottomBorder 10
tasks1ActiveFontColor ffffff
tasks1ActiveFontBold
tasks1ActiveFontItalic false
tasks1ActiveFontUnderline false
tasks1ActiveFontShadow
tasks1ActiveFontShadowColor 444444
tasks1ActiveFontShadowX 1
tasks1ActiveFontShadowY 1
;tasks1ActiveFontOutline
;tasks1ActiveFontOutlineColor 555555
;tasks1ActiveFontNoEllipsis false
tasks1ActiveFontAlign left
tasks1ActiveFontVertAlign center

Something else that's becoming entertaining is that xTaskbar permits multiple taskbars. In the above example, you can see that each line is preceded by tasks1.This means I can fulfill my vision of having 3 taskbar types that the user can select between on-the-fly. The first version I implemented has 24x24 icons and text, the next will just be 32x32 icons, and perhaps a final version just showing 24x24 icons.

The hardest part of setting up the taskbar was getting the graphics set right. Below are two graphics, the first corresponding to the normal button state and the second to the active button state:
To give each kind of a "chiselled" appearance, I used a Photoshop layer which was set to the "overlay" blending method and 25-50% opacity and drew a white vertical line along the left edge of each graphic, and a black line against the right. This meant that to complete the look, a similar dark line must be drawn on the graphic that will appear immediately to the left of the taskbar, and a similar white line must be drawn on the end-part of the taskbar background graphic. Took a bit to decide where the lines should be positioned to maximize the effect with the minimum of effort. Ended up being the long way after all.

Here's what the current taskbar actually looks like when implemented:

Graphic shortcuts using LayerCuts Started carving up graphics from the Photoshop file into PNG images with AlphaTransparency to start plunking graphics onto the desktop. My next blog will probably be a review of the techniques I use to slice the images. I should also mention that although LayerCuts is a shortcut module, not all of the graphics I'm sticking on the desktop are active buttons. There are quite a few I'm using just as graphics; this is a common method with many graphically-rich themes. Some will eventually become buttons, but there are some just to look pretty and provide visual continuity between the buttons. The graphics below are non-functional types inserted just to provide drop-shadows and fill in graphics between the buttons:
*shortcut "ac1":ac1 175 34 ac1.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac2":ac2 141 34 ac2.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac3":ac3 91 18 ac3.bmp .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac4":ac4 102 62 ac4.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac5":ac5 91 81 ac5.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac6":ac6 58 101 ac6.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none
*shortcut "ac7":ac7 0 156 ac7.png .none .none #1 a:255 .none .none .none

These are just non-functional shortcuts used as eye-candy. Just wanted to see how things are going to look in relation to one another on the screen. Here's how they look altogether:

Setting up RabidVWM The center of that largest sphere will be the VWM, 4 virtual desktops presented in a square configuration. Many themers use the same graphic tiled to represent each desktop, but that won't float in this theme because the VWM background must look seemless to the rest of the sphere.

Luckily, RabidVWM provides all this flexibility. The VWM here is just represented by one indexed bitmap:
The miniwindows (graphics drawn to resemble windows on a given desktop) will be drawn dynamically using transparent flat-color boxes.

When coding, a key point I had to look our for is that OTS2 themes now store some RabidVWM settings in the user's personal.rc file, something that's getting my old OTS1 themes in trouble when users try to use them with the new installer. The settings used for the VWM in this theme just specify the graphics, none of the behaviors. This way the user can tweak their own file to change behavior for each theme, rather than hacking each theme to get the behavior they want. Here's the coding in Singularity's ''theme.rc'':
;----[ rabidvwm ]----
VWMPos 31 41
VWMSize 60 40
VWMDesks 2 2
VWMBackBmp vwmbg.bmp
VWMWinColor aaaaaa
VWMWinBorderColor ffffff
VWMWinBevel 1
VWMWinAlpha 180
VWMTitleColor ffffff
VWMSelColor cccccc
VWMSelBorderColor ffffff
VWMSelBorder 1
VWMSelAlpha 100
VWMShowIcons
VWMScaleIconToFit

Just 15 parameters! Not bad.

Reorganizing xModule Settings

2005-09-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm discovering that the documentation for modules like xTray and xTaskbar could be made easier to follow. After being away from LiteStep coding for so long, the documentation looked alien.

One of the problems/tools I've run up against is that of multiple states on multiple taskbars. I initially put together a template xTaskbar parameters file that contained empty parameters for the module that could be copied and pasted into new themes as they're being made. Unfortunately, when I made these templates, I entered all the parameters in a linear fashion for each particular button state.

Here's an example:
tasks1NormalFontAlign left
tasks1ActiveFontAlign left
tasks1MinimizedFontAlign left
tasks1FlashingFontAlign left
tasks1HoverFontAlign left
tasks1GroupedFontAlign left

tasks1NormalFontVertAlign center
tasks1ActiveFontVertAlign center
tasks1MinimizedFontVertAlign center
tasks1FlashingFontVertAlign center
tasks1HoverFontVertAlign center
tasks1GroupedFontVertAlign center

The problem with this is that when I'm tweaking the settings, I'll typically do it one element at a time, in this case, the hover state button, or the normal button state. For this reason, I've been rebuilding the structure of the module parameters. Here's what happens to the above code:
tasks1NormalFontAlign left
tasks1NormalFontVertAlign center

tasks1ActiveFontAlign left
tasks1ActiveFontVertAlign center

tasks1MinimizedFontAlign left
tasks1MinimizedFontVertAlign center

tasks1FlashingFontAlign left
tasks1FlashingFontVertAlign center

tasks1HoverFontAlign left
tasks1HoverFontVertAlign center

tasks1GroupedFontAlign left
tasks1GroupedFontVertAlign center

Now if I want to edit just a particular button, all the parameters are grouped, rather than hunting for the shadow settings here, the outline settings there...

It's a small change in design paradigm, but it's dramatically improved the speed at which I can tweak the xTaskbar parameters.

Singularity: System Tray

2005-09-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Making the System Tray Creating the system tray for Singularity was probably one of the easiest parts. Andymon's xTray module is really easy to setup, but still provides a lot of flexibility that previous tray modules didn't necessarily offer.

Desired System Tray Features

Want the graphic to use AlphaTransparency.

Will require drop-shadows and anti-aliased edges.
Here's the graphic:

Want the system tray against the left-side of the screen, like the early Photoshop mockup image demonstrated.
Graphic must auto-size.

Middle part of image must tile (more efficient to render).
Top 18 pixels (where it says "TRAY") must remain fixed.
Bottom 29 pixels should remained fixed and outside icon area for the bottom shadow and curved part to be rendered properly.

Would be nice if the icons could be dimmed, somehow, to make them less visible.

Putting the mouse cursor over a tray icon should highlight it, probably by brightening it up to its default appearance.

Getting the tray image situated.

The above graphic for the tray was selectively copied from my Photoshop file.

The selection was done by turning off any bottom layers so that the grid indicating transparency was visible.
The rectangular marquee selection tool was then used to create a big rectangle surrounding the desired part of the graphic, starting a little above where it says TRAY, but going very wide to the right and to the bottom of the image (to preserve any drop-shadow).
The Copy-Merged option was then used.
A new file was created (CTRL+N). New files are, by default, sized to the same dimensions as the current image in the clipboard. This will be the minimum area required to properly render the drop-shadow.
The copied section was then pasted into this new file, and the file saved as a 24-bit PNG image.

The traybg.png image was then copied to the ''images'' folder of the theme.

Coding in Theme.RC
This is the part I tend to do by trial and error. Generally, I start off by sticking in every single configuration parameter for the module, getting the positions of everything set right, and then selectively chopping unnecessary parameters. Probably not the most efficient method, but I'm no coder, and this is the method that seems to work for me.

These parameters tell the tray where to position on the screen and how big to make it. I knew where to put it onscreen because I sized things out in Photoshop first:
;----[ xTray ]----
xTrayX 0
xTrayY 320
xTrayAutoSize 20 20
xTrayWidth 38
xTrayHeight 300

These parameters tell xTray where to find the image and how to tile it. The tray will be dynamically sized vertically to contain the tray items. The different xxxxxEdge parameters tell the module what part not to tile. For instance, because I want the top of the image to say "TRAY", but not have that part tiled, the image doesn't start to tile until the 19th pixel from the top (xTrayImageTopEdge is set to 18):
xTrayImage $LSImageFolder$traybg.png
xTrayImageMode tile
xTrayImageLeftEdge 15
xTrayImageRightEdge 22
xTrayImageTopEdge 18
xTrayImageBottomEdge 39

These are a lot of the basic configuration options. Of note, the xTrayAlphaMap setting is critical here because our PNG image uses AlphaTransparency. The borders determine where the icons are actually drawn in our image. The spacing and wrap parameters determine some of the tray behaviors as icons are added or removed. The tooltip parameters have been specified here, 'cuz I like to be able to find out what an icon's for without having to activate it. Read the xTray documentation for a more detailed description of parameters.
xTrayAlphaMap
xTrayBorders 8 12 14 30
xTrayLines 1
xTrayMaxLines 2
xTrayXSpacing 2
xTrayYSpacing 4
xTrayLayout .vertical
xTrayDirection .right
xTrayWrapDirection .top
xTrayWrapCount 10
xTrayShowTooltip
xTrayShowInfoTip
xTrayBalloonTooltip
xTrayTooltipDurations 100 1000
xTrayToolTipColor c1c1c1
xTrayTooltipTextColor 111111
xTrayCleanUpInterval 10000

...And these parameters dim the color and brightness of normal tray icons, but change to full color and brightness if the mouse hovers over them:
xTrayIconSize 16
xTrayIconHueIntensity 150
xTrayIconHueColor 000000
xTrayHoverIconHueIntensity 00
xTrayHoverIconHueColor ffffff

That's it for the tray! If the rest of Andymon's ''x'' modules configure this intuitively, the theme should be well on its way to completion (wish he had a shortcut module).

Next blog will probably tackle at least a basic rendition of the taskbar.

Quick progress check

2005-09-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

More updates to come shortly. Have been busy in the lab trying to get presentations ready and finish experiments. Also got up Skinyourscreen.com's first Podcast. The AstonShell guys are expecting Nerio and I to hand over SkinWiki for some reason (I'm still a little stymied by their motivations)... needless to say, been a busy week.

Have started coding the system-tray and the taskbar for Singularity, however. The tray is very simple, so my next blog will cover that. As I worked on the taskbar, however, I decided it would be more fun to present several taskbar variations. The xTaskbar module also permits "on-the-fly" parameter changing, so theoretically a user could switch taskbar themes instantly, without recycling. I'm really curious to try out this feature.

More to come. Big presentation on Thursday, September 15th, and after that I should be able to devote more time to Singularity.

Singularity: Starting to code

2005-09-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

Starting some coding Now that some of the graphics have been generated, I want to try 'em out. This means starting the coding of the OTS2 compliant theme. Approaching it from scratch, I layed out the following directory structure in my ''litestep\profiles\shelltest\themes'' folder:

Folder: SingularityV0.004

Folder: images
Folder: config
New Text File: ''theme.rc''
Copied File: ''Singularity-ReadMe.txt''

Within the theme.rc file (which I edit using jEdit) I added the following text:

OTSMajorVersion 2 OTSMinorVersion 0 ThemeName "Singularity v0.004" ThemeAuthor "mrbiotech" ConfigDir "$ThemeDir$config\" LSImageFolder "$ThemeDir$images\"
We're essentially setting LiteStep variables here. The variable name is on the left, while the contents are on the right. Spaces and tabs between the variable and its data don't matter.

The first two, OTSMajorVersion and OTS2MinorVersion help LiteStep know that the theme should be OTS2 compatible. The next two provide information onwho the author is, what the name of the theme is. The last two define the location of the folders created earlier ConfigDir and LSImageFolder. The variables come in quite handy, as they will eliminate the need to continually rewrite entire paths to configuration and graphic files needed by the theme. You'll notice that the last two pieces of data actually contain a LiteStep variable themselves (the $ThemeDir variable, which defines the SingularityV0.004 folder).

After this are three statements to include outside files that will be created later:

include "$ConfigDir$qlpopup.rc" include "$ConfigDir$popuptheme.rc" include "$ConfigDir$popup-$popupStyle$.rc"

The first will load any settings present in a file called qlpopup.rc that will be created in the theme's config folder, containing settings pertaining to a quicklaunch menu The other two will load settings pertaining to the theme's configuration popup-menu, and a theme-style specific menu configuration (this theme may have more than one style of menu).

After this, it's time to load a module. I think the bare minimum modules that any theme should include are a popup-menu module and a desktop module to activate the popup-menu. I've been dying to try Andymon's xPopup and already am fond of the jdesk module, so here's the code to get them loaded at theme startup:

*NetLoadModule jdesk-0.73 *NetLoadModule xpopup-1.1.9
Configuring jDesk Luckily, the OTS2 setup centralizes some of the Jdesk settings to the user's personal.rc folder. This means that all we really need to configure for this module is the size of the desktop that applications can take up. From the graphics I made for the theme I have an idea that the taskbar at the screen top will be about 30 pixels high, and the vertical system tray at the screen's left will be about 30 pixels wide. I'd like at least the taskbar visible at all times meaning the screen area will be 30 pixels shorter on top. If I want both the Tray and the Taskbar visible at all times, I'll need to reduce the area of the screen useable by applications by 30 pixels from the left side as well.

Here are the entries in the theme.rc file:

;----[ jDesk ]---- jDeskWorkArea "30,30,0, 0" *jDeskMButton3 [.none;!popupql;!none;!none]

The first line is simply a comment, a title to let me know what configuration this section is for. The next button instructs the jDesk module to leave 30 pixels of space on the left and top of the screen for the tray and taskbar. Maximized applications will not move into those territories. The last line is something I added for testing purposes, allowing me to test a second popup-menu type devoted directly to quicklaunch items that will be accessible by middle-clicking the desktop.

Configuring xPopup Let the fun begin: This is where I apply the theme's first graphic. The xPopup module functions quite a bit differently than earlier popup modules. It permits full Alpha-Transparency, meaning I can create a popup with Anti-Aliased edges and drop shadows. It also can use just a single graphic and stretch or tile it. Here's are two Photoshop mockup of what I want the popup to look like:
The top one was my first idea, and I actually implemented all the code on it before realizing the design sucked. The second was the one I settled on, and the one I'll show the code for. Both will actually be included in the theme, for user preference.

Here's the xPopup configuration code for the second popup prototype:

;----[ xpopup ]----
; These settings are in the POPUP-V.RC and POPUP-H.RC files in $configdir$
xpopupcompatibilitymode
xpopupAutoMenuBreak true
xpopupmoveable
xPopupFolderOpenDelay 150
xPopupAlphaMap
xPopupBalloonTip true
xPopupTooltipDurations 200 1000
xPopupAutoMenuBreak
xPopupEnableDragnDrop
xPopupShadeable
xPopupCloseAfterAction

qlAddToGroup ""
qlAlphaMap
qlQuickLaunchMode .horizontal
qlEntryUseBigIcon
qlEntryIconSize 32
qlQuickLaunchItemSize 64
qlQuickLaunchOpenTo .right
qlQuickLaunchWrapCount 10
qlImage $LSImageFolder$qlbg.png
qlActiveEntryImage $LSImageFolder$qlactive.png

qlEntryIconX 16

qlImageMode tile
qlImageLeftEdge 16
qlImageRightEdge 16
qlImageTopEdge 26
qlImageBottomEdge 26

qlActiveEntryImageMode tile-horizontal
qlActiveEntryImageLeftEdge 22
qlActiveEntryImageRightEdge 22

qlOverlapY 10

qlBalloonTooltip true
qlTooltipMode .all

This contains some of the general module parameters at the top and then the definition of the quicklaunch test popup. (Note: I'm still experimenting at this point, so although the quicklaunch is implemented here using graphics from another one of my themes, it will change significantly. The location of the quicklaunch configuration will also likely be moved to an external file).

Inside the config folder of the theme I created a new file called popup-1.rc. This contains the configuration parameters for the second (preferred) popup prototype, which I show below:

;-----[ xPopup settings for popup style 2 ]-----
xPopupImage $LSImageFolder$popupbg-v.png
;xPopupActiveEntryImage $LSImageFolder$popup_a2.png
;xPopupSeparatorImage $LSImageFolder$popup_sep.png

;xPopupImageTrueTransparent false
xPopupImageMode tile
xPopupImageTopEdge 54
xPopupImageBottomEdge 26
xPopupImageLeftEdge 68
xPopupImageRightEdge 26

;xPopupActiveEntryImageMode tile
;xPopupActiveEntryImageLeftEdge 22
;xPopupActiveEntryImageRightEdge 22
;xPopupActiveEntryImageTopEdge 0
;xPopupActiveEntryImageBottomEdge 0

;xPopupSeparatorImageMode tile-horizontal
;xPopupSeparatorImageLeftEdge 30
;xPopupSeparatorImageRightEdge 30

xPopupTitleHeight 54
xPopupTitleFont "Tahoma"
xPopupTitleFontColor c1c1c1
xPopupTitleFontHeight 16
xPopupTitleFontLeftBorder 45
xPopupTitleFontRightBorder 25
xPopupTitleFontTopBorder 14
xPopupTitleFontBottomBorder 5
xPopupTitleFontAlign center
;xPopupTitleFontOutline
;xPopupTitleFontOutline Color ffffff
xPopupTitleFontShadow
xPopupTitleFontShadowColor 111111
xPopupTitleFontBold

xPopupEntryFont "Tahoma"
xPopupEntryFontHeight 12
xPopupEntryFontColor c1c1c1
xPopupEntryFontAlign left
;xPopupEntryFontTopBorder 48
;xPopupEntryFontBottomBorder 36
xPopupEntryFontLeftBorder 36
xPopupEntryFontRightBorder 26
xPopupEntryFontShadow true
xPopupEntryFontShadowColor 000000
xPopupEntryFontShadowX 1
xPopupEntryFontShadowY 1
xPopupEntryIconX 10

xPopupActiveEntryFontColor ffffff
xPopupActiveEntryFontAlign left
xPopupActiveEntryFontBold
xPopupActiveEntryShowIcon
xPopupActiveEntryFontOutline true
xPopupActiveEntryFontOutline Color 333333
xPopupActiveEntryIconSize 24

xPopupFolderShowIcon

;xPopupOverlapX 0

xPopupEntryHeight 20
xPopupActiveEntryHeight 20
xPopupFolderHeight 20
xPopupActiveFolderHeight 20

xPopupMaxWidth 500
xPopupMinWidth 140
xPopupTopBorder 50
xPopupBottomBorder 28
;xPopupLeftBorder 50
;xPopupRightBorder 12
;xPopupAlphaFade
;xPopupCustomAlphaFade 20 20

xPopupArrowImage $LSImageFolder$popupfolder.png
xPopupArrowOffset 9
xPopupArrowOnLeft false
xPopupActiveArrowImage $LSImageFolder$popupfolderactive.png
;xPopupActiveArrowOffset 6
;xPopupArrowOnLeft false

You'll see that there are a lot of commented lines (nonfunctional lines preceded by ";"). I tend to throw in more options than are necessary at the beginning, using a template file that contains ALL the configuration parameters for a given module. Then later I can delete what I don't need. The code as it stands here is capable of rendering the popup the way I want, so the commented lines will probably get the axe soon.

There is also a similar configuration file called popup-2.rc which contains the parameters and definitions required for the initial popup design, should the user select them.

Conclusion
Something that's very difficult to capture in a blog is the trial-and-error nature of this. To get to the settings you see above took about 2 days of tweaking, changing single parameters and recycling the theme to see what the end effect is. After about 100 recycles, it ended up the way I wanted, at least for now. I suppose I could have been more organized in the Photoshop mockup, measuring out exactly where I wanted the text and icons to sit, but it seemed like too much trouble. In 20/20 hindsight, however... Oh well.

At least there's a working popup.

Next time I'll make a system tray and a basic taskbar.

Singularity: Graphic Design 2

2005-09-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

Purpose
The previous blog outlined the shapes that will make up the new Singularity theme. This entry will focus on the LayerStyles applied to these shapes to create the 3-dimensional feel.

Rather than describing each Layer Style used in this theme in excruciating detail, I'm going to demonstrate some of the usage principals of LayerStyles. This way I don't end up with a ton of instant imitators. More importantly, however, this should assist individual users in coming up with their own characteristic styles and designs.

The LayerStyles
LayerStyles are non-destructive, dynamic effects that can be added, altered, and removed from individual layers in Adobe Photoshop. They're convenient because they can be stored in a palette, applied on a whim, or exported to libraries of layer styles. The true power, however, resides in their infinite variation and their non-destructive nature. This is why my themes are composed as groups of shapes that can then be stylized later. Access the LayerStyles options for a layer by double-clicking it, or right-clicking and selecting "Blending Options".

Below are descriptions of some of the LayerStyles employed to make this theme:

Blending Options
The BlendingOptions panel of LayerStyles provides access to the layer opacity and blend mode (overlay, multiply, etc.) for a given layer. It can do much more, however.

In addition to altering a layer's Opacity, you can use the Fill Opacity settings to have only the LayerStyles for a layer show, while the actual layer graphics are invisible. This permits the designer to use the same layer-style type (i.e. Bevel And Emboss) multiple times for one graphic. The initial layer containing the graphic is simply duplicated, the duplicate layer's Fill Opacity set to 0, and the additional layer-styles applied.
Below is an example showing the base layer with a Bevel And Emboss style applied, and the next 3 images showing duplicated or alternate Beveling set through this method:

The BlendingOptions can also be used to Knock Out layers beneath. The Knockout mode can be set to shallow (knock out the layer immediately under this one) or deep (knock out all layers in this layer folder). This can be beneficial if you have a nice smooth layer-style applied to one layer, but want to punch through it to see a layer below. In the below example, Part A is the shape that will knock out part of the layer in Part B. Part C demonstrates the completed knock out. Part D demonstrates the unfavorable result of simply erasing Part B instead of knocking it out. Notice how the Bevel is affected?:

Drop Shadows
Adding a drop-shadow to your graphics can improve the perception of depth, especially when the graphic is composed of multiple parts on different Z-orders. The key is to keep it just light enough that it's believable, as not to obscure features beneath. (I tend to gob my drop-shadows on liberally, or at least that's what people tell me).

Below is an example image containing variations of drop-shadows. No, your shadow doesn't have to be black, and no, the standard curve isn't always the most interesting one.
Descriptions:
1: No layer-style applied.
2: Photoshop's default drop-shadow.
3: Distance=3px, Size=3px, Contour=Guassian.
4: Blend Mode=Screen, Color=White, Distance=3px, Spread=100%, Size=7px, Contour=Guassian.
5: Angle=-60 (Global Light unchecked).
6: Distance=1px, Size=0px.
7: Two layers, 1st with Blend Mode=Screen, Color=White, Distance=2px, Size=7px contour=Guassian; 2nd with Multiply, Black, Angle=-60 (Global Light unchecked), Distance=2px, Size=7px, Contour=Guassian.
8: Opacity=100%, Size=9px, Noise=19%.

Using the Blending Options technique to employ multiple drop-shadows on item 7 yields an artificial beveling technique. Doing this permits greater flexibility in the distance, spread and size of the dark part of a bevel versus the light part. I've used this technique in situations where an odd-shaped bevel is on the underside of a 3-dimensional shape and I want to emphasize one of the shine differently than the shadow.

Inner Shadow
The ''Inner Shadow'' style can be applied for a variety of purposes beyond just creating inset depth.

The InnerShadow style can assist metallic layer-styles by providing angle-specific highlighting or shadowing.
It can create greater depth when used in conjunction with gel or glass effects.
It can render quick-and-dirty 3D-effects without the use of the gradient tool.

Descriptions:
1: No layer-style applied.
2: Photoshop's default inner-shadow.
3: Angle=-60 (Global Light unchecked), Distance=7px, Size=16px, Contour=Guassian.
4: Opacity=35%, Angle=-90 (Global Light unchecked), Distance=11px, Size=13px, Contour=Ring.
5: Blend Mode=Screen, Color=White, Opacity=80%,Angle=90 (Global Light unchecked), Contour=Cone, OuterGlow set to Multiply and Black, and default GradientOverlay.
6: Angle=-60 (Global Light unchecked), Distance=8px, Size=13px, Contour=Cone, Custom InnerGlow and ColorOverlay.
7: Distance=10px, Size=13px, DropShadow, BevelAndEmboss, and a ContourEffect.
8: Distance=3, Size=6, BevelAndEmboss set to Down.

Note: Variations 1-4 contain just the Inner Shadow effects alone. Variations 5-6 use InnerShadow styles in conjunction with other LayerStyles to demonstrate how they work synergistically.

Outer Glow
Key thing to note about the Outer Glow: the default settings suck. I've used the light glow a few times for digital buttons or controls, but a far more effective use of this style is the creation of slight shadows. This is great for offsetting overlapping features, like a very subtle spank shadow. Use it with the Mode set to Multiply or Normal and the Color set to black. This style is a condiment, use just a dash in your graphics to dimensionalize overlapping graphics.
Description: 1: No layer-style applied. 2: Photoshop's default outer glow. 3: Mode=Multiply, Color=Black. 4: Mode=Multiply, Color=Black, combined with SatinEffect and GradientOverlay styles.

Inner-Glow
The InnerGlow style, like the Outer-Glow style, seeme to work best if you DON'T use the default settings. As demonstrated in the Inner Shadow write-up, when the color is set to black and the mode to multiply it can render some convincing spherical effects. Subtle use of this style in this manner can add additional depth to your graphics.

When multiple inner glows are overlapped (using the Blending Options technique), one can generate pseudo-metallic effects (example #4).
Descriptions: 1: No layer-style applied. 2: Photoshop's default inner glow. 3: Mode=Multiply, Color=Black. 4: Layer 1: Mode=Multiply, Color=Black, size=16. Layer 2 (top): Fill Opacity=0%, size=16, Contour=Cone.

Bevel And Emboss
One of the most versatile, attractive, and useful LayerStyles you will use is the BevelAndEmboss style, coupled to the ContourEffect and perhaps the TextureEffect styles.

Samples 1-5 show essentially the default bevels possible by simply trying different combinations of Up/Down and Inner/Outer bevel. These are pretty common (a.k.a. "boring") applications of the bevel effect. By themselves, these styles are frequently used for basic web-buttons, and varying from the up vs. down bevel methods can yield convincing unpressed and pressed states.

The true power of the bevel, however, lies in the Angle and Altitude. Try taking the default inner/up bevel settings, unchecking Use Global Light and then setting the altitude to 60. It should make the shine appear like it's more towards the center of the shape. If you activate the Contour-Effect layer style and select the "Half Round" contour, it should create an ever more believable effect, almost like a drop of water. Varying the Depth and the Size of the Bevel can create some very believable jelly/glass effects. This is the principle technique of my style in Photoshop.

In addition to glassy effects, this method can be used for broad, subtle insets, or even raised/recessed combo features (as seen in example 7).

If you use a brush (like the air-brush tool) with reduced drawing opacity and a bevel effect added, you can create some interesting subtle features. For more details on this particular technique, consult my Subtle Insets and Bevels Tutorial.
Descriptions:
1: No layer-style applied. 2: Photoshop's default bevel (inner bevel, up). 3: Inner bevel, direction=down. 4: Outer bevel, direction=up. 5: Outer bevel, direction=down. 6: Inner bevel, direction=up, Depth=41%, Size=21px, Use Global Light unchecked, Altitude 63. Contour Layer-style: Contour=Half Round. 7: Advanced layer-style: Outer bevel, Depth=51%, Direction=up, Size=27px. Dark inner-glow, GradientOverlay, and an inner gradient stroke of 3-pixels were also added. This style is all over the Singularity theme. 8: Advanced layer-style: Many layerstyles on at least 2 different layers creating an inset glass button with a shine bevel, and a reflected shine bevel.

Contour Effect
The Contour layer-style can only be used in conjunction with the Bevel And Emboss layer-style. All it really does is determine the "curvature" or shape of the bevel itself. Think of the Contour as the drill-bit that would be used in a routing machine to create moulding for a wall or piece of furniture: it determines the cross-section of the bevel.

As far as my glass-effects go, I stick to the Half Round contour.

Texture Effect
The Texture option only affects the Bevel And Emboss layerstyle. It will apply any texture in your texture to the bevel. Interesting if you want a gritty bevel, I suppose. Have never used this in a theme, however.

Satin Effect
The Satin Effect can be used for a variety of metallic textures, or to produce symmetrical shines on rounded or irregularly-shaped objects, like text.

I prefer to use the Contour=Cone settings for these, using either the multiply mode with black, or the screen mode with white. The size and distance are adjusted for the size of the shape in question: text will require different settings than small spheres. Hint: these are great for small metallic buttons or screws.
Descriptions:
1: No layer-style applied.
2: Photoshop's default satin effect.
3: Angle=-60, Distance=3px, Size=10px, Contour=Cone, Invert is checked.
4: Mode=Screen, Color=White, Angle=-60, Distance=4px, Size=10px, Contour=Cone, Invert is unchecked. Dark OuterGlow, Dark and InnerGlow added to enhance appearance as a button.
5: It's a baseball: Mode=Screen, Color=white, Angle=-42, Distance=28, Size=1, Contour=Cone, Invert is checked.
6: Psychedelic design using wierd contour.
7: Another psychedelic design using the contours.
8: Same as #4, but using a high-angle BevelAndEmboss/ContourEffect, some ColorOverlay, and a 3px external StrokeEffect using the gradient option.

Color Overlay
In my skins, the Color-Overlay style serves three primary purposes:

Lightening or darkening of a layer, using either the Multiply, Screen, or Overlay modes with either White or Black. It's a quick easy, non-destructive way of quickly changing the luminescence of a particular layer without permanently altering it.
Swapping out colors for color-schemes: Typically I'll create all my shapes layers in shades of grey so that color applications don't end up with semi-unpredictable results.
Alternate Button States: Simply lightening, darkening, or changing the color of a button or graphic can be enough to indicate a hover, active, or clicked state. Although this is really just a variation of the first two uses, I do use it A LOT. Rather than creating a separate set of graphics on different layers and applying all-new layer-styles to represent the clicked state of buttons, I simply turn on a ColorOverlay style and VOILA!

Gradient Overlay
This is another versatile little effect that makes its way into so many of my skins. Believe it or not, I typically use this one with almost the default settings! (Okay, minor variations).

Metallic Tubes: (Example 1) Rather than use the formal Gradient Tool to apply gradients in a selection area, it's much easier (and non-destructive) to use the GradientOverlay style to create unidirectional tubes and hoses.

The gradient editor for the GradientOverlay style is the same as that used for the Gradient Tool.
Using this style applies gradients dynamically, so if you're not totally satisfied with your gradient, you can change it at a whim, days later even.

Chisels, insets, and divits:' (Example 2) Using the basic black to white fade, existing shapes can be made to appear as though chiselled out of a layer beneath them.

The direction of the Gradient should be applied to the layer such that the black part of the gradient is in the direction of the light-source.
I commonly use the Overlay mode with this, provided I'm applying the gradient to a layer with a color other than black.

Glass effects: (Example 3) To create truly cool glass shine effects, I'll often use the BevelAndEmboss method coupled to a layer that uses a manually drawn shine. This is just another shape layer with LayerStyles applied to it.

The shine graphic itself is usually drawn in white.
The //Fill Opacity is reduced to 0-20%.
A GradientOverlay is set from White to Black, White in the direction of the light source.
The GradientOverlay mode is set to Screen.

Pattern Overlay
Another one of my favorite LayerStyles. I've created probably 10-20 patterns that I use regularly in my themes. typically, these are applied to a layer using the Overlay mode, or perhaps Screen or Multiply. Most of these are simply geometric patterns composed in boxes of between 2x2 up to 40x40 pixels, things which are easy to tile or repeat.

One of my favorite patterns to apply are T.V. Lines, the simplest pattern. Create a new graphic that is 2 pixels tall by 1 wide, and fill the top pixel with black. Select the whole thing and save it as a pattern. BAM!! Instant lined pattern. Quite often I'll save a version using black, and then using white, just in case I want to use the Screen vs. Multiply modes.

Think simple in making your patterns. Most of mine are simply repeating boxes, circles, or other geometric shapes. Try using both White and Black and then setting the PatternOverlay mode to Overlay. Take a look at Treetog's Sputnik theme and you'll see a variation of this all over.

Stroke Effect
The StrokeEffect can also be used to produce external or internal chiselled areas by setting it to produce a gradient. The inset look around some of the blue orbs was generated this way.

In Singularity, the Stroke effect was used to generate some of the dark rings present around the blue orbs. This was accomplished by setting the stroke color to black, the mode to Overlay or Multiply and then tweaking the size until the desired effect was reached.

This style can also be used to create tubes, if you think creatively enough. By setting the stroke to produce a Shape-burst Gradient, and selecting something as simple as the black-to-white gradient, any shapes you draw will create a tubular outline. For this to be most effective, you need to reduce the layer's Fill Opacity to 0, and be sure to use an anti-aliased tool, such as a hard-edged paintbrush.

Hopefully after reading all those entries you'll be able to look at my themes and tell me what Layerstyles you suspect were applied. The key here is to not be limited by your tools. The stock bevel makes me sick, and yet it ends up in so many themes around the web. If you just tweak things a little bit you'll end up with some nice variety. If you try changing the entire paradigm of a style (like using inner-glows to darken instead of lighten) you might surprise yourself with what you can do!

Singularity: Graphic Design 1

2005-09-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

The Original Singularity Let's take a look at how the original Singularity graphics were composed:

Circular and Rectangular Marquee tools were used to create blocky grey shapes in Adobe Photoshop.
The blocky shapes were then refined by using circular selection tools and the erase tool to round edges.
Once the shapes were settled upon, the layer-styles were applied and successively refined.

Below is a snapshot from the original Singularity Photoshop file, showing the design at step 2. All the shapes are essentially refined to what they will be in the final rendering.

Note: There are quite a few overlapping shapes that are exactly the same color, so some theme elements aren't visible here, but will be when the LayerStyles are applied:
Now, here is the same image with the LayerStyles activated and finalized (step 3 of the graphic design):
The NEW Singularity In the previous blog I outlined the goals of the revised theme. Specifically, a more rounded/organic shaping of the theme was desired. Here's my mockup in Photoshop, showing the shapes that will become the theme:
Now here's a preview of the new design, showing the upper-left control cluster and the new popup-menu:
As you can see, the general form and style of the theme are all still there. The graphics have changed slightly, as my skills have (hopefully) improved from where they were 4 years ago.

Making the Graphics: Rounding Technique
Now, let's see in more detail how this is done. We'll go over Steps 1 and 2 for the time being, and I'll try to pick up more on the LayerStyles (Step 3) for the next blog.

In Adobe Photoshop I created a file 500 pixels by 500 pixels with a transparent background. The first (and only) layer was then filled in with a uniform grey, although any color will suffice. The Circular Marquee Tool was then selected with the following parameters: Mode: Fixed, Width: 80px, Height: 80px. On a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) I made the selection and then filled it in with a blue color. This shape was then moved to the upper left of the image, equidistant from both the top and left edges of the image. Yup, you guessed right: it will be the big-blue orb characteristic of the theme:

In advance, I know that this theme will have elements designed that may go beyond the edge of the Photoshop image. when Photoshop tries to process LayerStyles on layers that lay on the border of the image, wierd things can happen (especially with bevels). To compensate for this, I'll often create a total-image border that will represent the actual screen-edge for the finished theme graphics. On a new layer I created a 40px border around the entire image using the Rectangular Marquee Tool.
What would Singularity be without some cool looking metal? Let's start making it by first creating a circular area on a new layer that's 130px by 130 px and filling it with a medium-grey color:
Now the circle that will be metal should be moved underneath the blue orb layer, and centered relative to the blue orb layer.
Now that the metal circle is centered to the blue orb and behind it, the metallic shape is expanded. You could use marquee selection tools for this, but I just used a brush set on pencil mode and boosted up the thickness to around 20-30 pixels. Then I started from the top center of the metal ring and drew out to the right of it, or down from it, both lines drawn flush to the artificial screen-edge (the red part).
To round this shape off I used some oval selections, sized either 200x100 pixels, or 100x200 pixels. In the below image, the selection areas are simple shown as black ovals. These selections were positioned to that one edge butts up against the lines we created in the last step, while one of the pointed ends touches the metallic-grey shapes.
The selection area is reversed (Ctrl+Shift+I) so that everything outside our ovals is selected. Then using another pencil/brush tool, I stroked in the empty area on the metal layer to round out the shape:
Next blog will likely be on the use of LayerStyles. Below is a test-render of the image applying some of my favorite LayerStyles. LayerStyles are so effective because they simply change the effect of a shape in real-time, permitting fine-tuning. They're also non-destructive, and may be turned off at any point or deleted without effecting the actual layer contents.

Singularity: Getting Started

2005-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Preface
Let me preface this entry by stating that I've been working on the rebuild of the Singularity theme for two weeks already, so what I'm writing here is, in actuality, old news. It's still going to be included, however, to give anyone interested a sense of the overall work-flow.

Design intentions
Before even touching the computer for graphic or code design I try to envision what I want it to do, how the theme should work. Luckily, because this is a remake of an older theme, much of this guess-work has already been accomplished. Here are some of the things I wanted this time.

I want the re-created theme to retain much of the functionality of the original:

The ConfigurableHotspots must remain.
The ConfigurableHotspots must retain their original configuration via a popup GUI.
The ConfigurableHotspots should activate after a predetermined amount of time, so not every casual bump into the corner of the screen activates them.
This will require the Timer module and ckHotSpots.
The configurable nature of the theme will require scripting:
MzScript is my scripting module of choice.
LsLua is an alternate scripting module, although using it will require me to learn a new scripting language.
TextEdit2 may be needed.
Would prefer the theme "remembers" the users settings so they don't have to continually reselect theme options when they recycle.

The graphic-feel of the theme should remain similar:

I'd prefer something a little more rounded, more organic in shape.
The corner-based orientation of GUI elements should be retained.
Many of the same LayerStyles from the original Photoshop images can be used here, with some additional tweaking.
Still needs to be blue crytalline thingies over a metallic base.
AlphaTransparency will again be required, due to the curved shapes and drop-shadows employed by the theme elements.
This will require the use of either the ShortCut3 module, or the LayerCuts module.

Some theme elements will have to be changed altogether:

The bPopup module used for the quicklaunch icons (the tabs at the left side of the theme) is obsolete now that Andymon has published the all-powerful xPopup.dll module, which supports multiple popup formats.
While using xPopup, might as well recreate a better-looking primary popup menu.
The new popup-menu can use AlphaTransparency with xPopup!
I want desktop icons! Need to implement a module that will allow this, perhaps Andymon's xDeskTop module.
Probably don't need a second WinAmp control in the upper-left control cluster.
Can use xLabel to display song information instead of the ever-buggy JampToo module.
MUST be truly OTS2 compliant.

Required tools
So now that I know what the theme should do in relation to the previous version, we need to know what tools I'll have to employ to get this thing assembled and functional.
LiteStep

You're not going to get very far making LiteStep themes if you don't have LiteStep. If you click on LiteStep, you'll find a link to Omar Hussain's excellent installer package.

Graphical Editor

I prefer Adobe Photoshop. Specifically, I use version 6.0 because it's what I've had for years and does well (coupled to the fact that I can't afford the full CS2 version). My style makes heavy use of the LayerStyles in Photoshop to accomplish the visual effects.

Text/Code Editor

I've switched almost entirely to jEdit for my code-editing purposes. It's syntax-highlighting and expandability are literally amazing, like an Emacs that's easy to use and configure. Because it's JAVA based, it'll run on my Mac or my PCs, or in Linux.
I used to use Stardock's ObjectEdit for editing code and LiteStep RC files, but setting up it's syntax-highlighting was a pain, and more often than not, it simply displayed everything in plain black-and-white anyway.

So now that we know what's needed, I'll try and cover several of the graphical design aspects of the Singularity theme.

In the beginning

2005-09-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

My first themes for LiteStep, SEQ(uencer) and Singularity were made around 2002. They were developed under LiteStep 0.24.6 using OTS1 standards.

SEQ(uencer) started off around the concept of a curved taskbar. I wanted a feature-rich but simple theme, one that would provide access to a few EVARs, require minimal scripting, but still be able to have plenty of configurability for wallpapers and color themes. The goals were met, but it still lacked certain features I would have preferred, such as AntiAliasing in the graphics, AlphaTransparency, and true ResolutionIndependence.

Singularity was my second theme, and a much more ambitious project. It made heavy use of the AntiAliasing desired for SEQ(uencer). The primary concept, however, was not the unique graphics. The core reason the theme was made was to accentuate the GUI concept of ConfigurableHotspots, in accordance with FittsLaw about interface design. This entailed creating shortcuts to programs or system-functions which could be the most easy to reach. This meant using the corners of the screen as HotSpots, hover the mouse over them and they activate. They gain their efficiency from the fact that no click is required, and the mouse is naturally collected at any screen corner if you move the mouse with sufficient velocity in any direction. These HotSpots could then be configured by the user to control various functions, like activating WinAmp, switching VWMs, or more. This concept functioned quite well with the heavy graphics of the Singularity theme, which sprawled over several corners of the screen but could instantly be whisked away or Z-Order flipped to the desktop to permit full access to actual productivity programs.

Other projects quickly followed as I became overly infatuated with LiteStep. Prion, NonDisjunction, PhenotypeII and Recombinant all followed suit, aiming to use the ConfigurableHotspots concept for user interaction.

The nagging.
There are probably hundreds of people who have sent in requests to update my LiteStep themes since the arrival and predominance of OTS2. In addition, there have probably been about 30 individuals who have attempted, with permission or without, to post updates of my themes. I appreciate the fact that people enjoy the themes, but I'm always a little leary of permitting others to do work that I myself should be doing, especially when it involved my own creative endeavors.

OTS2 turned out to be a mixed bag for me. It simplified the end-user experience, but I fear did so at the themer's expense. It's an excellent set of standards, but for me it was difficult to grasp, especially after taking the time to get familiar with OTS1. This hampered progress principally by eroding my will to continue with LiteStep.

Around this time, the gracious AstonShell community came knocking, asking for some themes in return for free keys to their software. AstonShell was one of the first skinnables I had a desire to design for, nearly a year before even attempting to skin LiteStep. My skills, however, were tremendously lacking at the time. I actually submitted an AltDesk and AstonShell theme as the first skins I ever made for anything (all rejected). When the time came a year and a half later to get free keys and skin for them, I jumped on it.

Still the emails from LiteStep users kept coming. Putting up my own site simply intensified this. But here's where the true nagging started... My conscience... well, it kept telling me how much I enjoyed the absolute free-form skinning freedom found in LiteStep. My old themes were getting older by the minute, more outdated, less desirable, and yet still there were people requesting them.

So, under some gentle prodding by some people recently, I've decided to remake these old themes and document the process.

The first theme to be recreated will be Singularity, the theme I receive the most requests for. For the sake of brevity (long since expended), I've been working on it for about two weeks so far, so I'll do individual write-ups on the design concepts, the module-selection process and creation of the graphics.