Every so often I get an e-mail or PM asking what the user levels on WinCustomize mean, and how people go about getting promoted.  So instead of continuing to write one-off responses, I've put up what I hope is a clear and definitive guide to the WC user levels, what they are, what benefits they hold and how the moderators go about selecting folks for promotion, and what we consider when making the final decision. I encourage everyone to take a quick look over the article, see where they...

Island Dog has put together another great screencast.  This time, it's an introduction to ObjectDock Plus.  The video walks you through the differences between ObjectDock and ObjectDock Plus.  Topics covered are dock customization,  tabbed docks, the weather docklet, adding shortcuts, icons, custom flyouts and even how to use ObjectDock as a complete task bar replacement. Check out the full screencast here .

Last week I posted a little preview of the upcoming changes to the WC Help page .  The idea was to make the page easier to navigate, easier to read, more inviting/friendly and give us the ability to expand on the help resources we could provide on the page.  The old help page was just a bunch of link lists that weren't very organized and hadn't been updated in years.  The format of the page and the content itself basically ensured that virtually no one would use it.  We als...

WinCustomize is home to skinners from around the globe, and as we've realized in recent years, a large part of our community comes from China.  As reports continue to come in about the damages caused by the earthquake in central China we wanted to take a moment today to reach out to all of our affected community members; forum goers and skinners alike. We'd like you to, when you can, drop us a note on this thread to let everyone know you're OK.  Also, if you've spoken to any other ...

Master Skinner and former site moderator gef is back with some brand new free DesktopX themes for your skinning enjoyment.  Classic is designed for 1680x1050 resolution only, while Evolve will work for either 1680x1050 or 1280x1024. Classic Evolve Oh, and he also tossed out a new RightClick theme... Give them a try and let gef know what you think!

Long-time skinner and recently returned to WinCustomize after a long hiatus, APB has put out a second fantastic WindowBlinds Skin: Sirach Using a definite DeviantArt color scheme/feel, Sirach is an XP-only WB skin (Vista version coming soon) that takes advantage of virtually everything WB6 has to offer on XP.  Varying transparencies, overlapping glass panels, slightly rounded buttons, and excellent highlighting make this a must-try skin for everyone still running WinXP. Give the ...

We've made it a full month now with the SkinCast!  For Episode 4, WinCustomize Administrator Jafo joins the fun to talk to us a bit about the history of skinning and WinCustomize.  Unfortunately, mymicrophone blew up about 2min before we started to record so this week is just Island Dog and Jafo. Next week, we're hoping to pull in RomanDA to talk about DesktopX and all various things gadget related. Remember, you can subscribe to us via iTunes and receive updates as soon as we p...

Ever thought about creating a custom font but weren't quite sure how to go about it?  Not quite sure how to put the font file together?  Well, the folks at FontShop have put together one of the coolest customization web apps I've seen; FontStructor .  Using an incredibly simple interface, you can draw your font out letter by letter, pixel by pixel.  It even has a large selection of customized shapes, or "bricks" as they call them in the application.  Think of FontStru...

I hope everyone had a great weekend and did something nice for their mom on Mother's Day.  Now that it's Monday once again, it's time to look through the gallery and pick out what I think is some of the best work submitted to the site over the weekend.  Here goes...  

With the launch this week of DeskScapes 2.0 , a lot of people who didn't previously have access to animated wallpapers (i.e. non Ultimate Vista users) might be wondering what the big deal is, and probably want to take the app for a spin themselves before deciding whether or not to spend the $20 on the stand-alone product (hey, it's bundled in with Object Desktop ). To help you out, Island Dog has put together a very detailed breakdown of the free preview version of DeskScapes 2.0, lettin...

For years now, the Help section at WinCustomize has been pretty lacking.  For the last two site revisions it's just been a bulleted list of links to product pages or long outdated tutorials and documentation.  With the number of new users seeking support and assistance growing at an increasing pace, the time has come for a complete redesign of the page. To that end, I've spend the last few days working on a new Help page that is hopefully a bit more "helpful" than what we current...

TGIF everyone!  Since the end of the week is upon us, it's time once again for Island Dog to round up some of the week's most notable skins. This week, there's a cursor theme, icon pack, logon, dock background, two wallpapers and a WindowBlinds skin!  Check them out, download a few and let the artists know how much you love their work!

We don't often talk about MyColors skins here, or the artists behind them.  We especially don't do a very good job showing off their work and recognizing the outstanding degree of artistry of the skins, icons, wallpapers etc.  This is a real shame considering they're all members of the community. So today, I'd like to show off some absolutely fantastic icons by none other than PixelPirate himself!  These go to five of our upcoming MyColors Inspired Themes.  I think they st...

Every month, I ask the moderators here at WinCustomize to pick out their favorite skins from the previous month.  Here are the picks for April 2008. Trader Harbour AlexMorgan "Clean.  Watch the little men walking on the right side of the house.  Great dream." - WOM Organic Xiandi "The cursor (and iconpack it's based on) have such wonderful aesthetics.  It captures exactly what I thought it should when I read the titl...

Stardock is excited to announce the release of WindowBlinds 6.1 today.  WindowBlinds is the easiest, and safest way to change the complete look and feel of both Windows Vista and XP by applying one of thousands of visual styles that are available. These visual styles can change just about every element of the Windows user interface from the Start menu, task bar, title bar, push buttons, scrollbars, and nearly everything else in Windows. The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to curr...