BootSkins don't tend to get a lot of attention around these parts, left behind in favor of the more glamorous WindowBlinds skins, or Icon Packs.  But there are some really great BootSkins out there you may want to try if you're bored with the regular Windows XP boot screen.

Dragon by Stardock Design is one of the coolest and most popular WindowBlinds skins recently released.  Its use of WB6 animation on the start menu, and an incredibly clean yet detailed look has earned it a top spot on many user's favorites lists.  With its popularity, it's no surprise that matching skins would pop up quickly.  Here are a few skins posted (with the permission of Stardock Design) to go along with Dragon. ...

With IconDeveloper 2.0 released yesterday, and a new version of IconPackager on the horizon, I bet we're in store for a lot of great, new IconPacks.  In the meantime though, there are two killer new sets from Master Skinners Z71 and JJ Ying; Cabin Fever & Arzo Icons, both entries in the 3rd WC Community Contest . XP & Vista-Ready XP-Only Outstanding work as always from two of the best skinners in the community!

This week, a less controversial poll.  This one comes from Snidely Whiplash on IRC: Do you primarily use a Desktop PC or a Laptop? This question was inspired by the Show Your Computer Setup thread and the surprising number of laptops shown off. Results will be posted on Tuesday (office is closed Monday).

Last week, as a follow-up to the poll regarding a cell phone theme gallery, I asked what everyone's feelings were on adding new galleries in general versus focusing in more on the galleries we already have.  The results of the poll were pretty clear and help explain the results of the cell phone theme poll. The results were 2:1 for focusing on our existing galleries before adding anything new. One thing I'd like to know is if you folks have ideas on how we could be focusing more on w...

Monday is here, but it's St. Patrick's Day!  It's also a short week for us here at the office with a 4-day weekend for Easter.  Yes, I do think this is possibly the best week of the year... So lets get this short week started.  Here, as always, are my picks for the best work uploaded to WC over the weekend.  A single green skin in the mix, but oddly not a single Easter one yet. ...

Every month I ask the WinCustomize moderators to go through the skins submitted over the the previous 30 days and pick out their favorites and provide a little bit of explanation on why they like it.  Here are the Moderator Picks from all skins submitted in the month of February...       Artifice by mkorashy "An excellent skin, clean, clear and very usable.  What's so remarkable about this skin though, is it's mkor...

I have to say, 2008 has been a great year so far for skins.  Dreams have been steadily improving, and Island Dog's weekly roundup has highlighted some of the best work I've seen in ages.  This week is absolutely no exception either! This week we have Unity by Tiggz, one of the best icon packages I've seen on the site in ages, two outstanding wallpapers, two top-notch WindowBlinds skins and more.  Any kind of drought we were going through for good skins in months past seems to h...

Since we've been around for seven years, we've seen a lot of people come and go from the userlists.  As I've said, in that time we've seen several million folks stop by long enough to create an account with us.  In those years, the composition of the community has changed greatly.  A lot of the prominent faces around today weren't here back in 2001, and a lot of the folks from 2001 have since moved on to other things. So while everyone knows the general story and history of Wi...

With WinCustomize turning 7 today , I thought it would be interesting to browse through the gallery archives to see what sort of skins people were uploading back in March of 2001, with the launch of the brand new site.  When WC launched, there were only a small handful of galleries: WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX Objects, ObjectBar, PocketBlinds, LiteStep, WinStep, Wallpapers, Windows Media Player, Winamp, WebBlinds, ICQ Plus v3.  A dozen galleries to our current 50.  A...

According to what I've been able to dig out of the Internet Wayback Machine, today is WinCustomize's 7th birthday! Originally launched on March 13th, 2001 in the aftermath of the dot-com bust that took out many popular skinning sites, specifically the original Skinz.org, WinCustomize is now the largest site on the Internet dedicated to GUI Customization with over 1 million pageviews per day, serving visitors from all over the globe.  Today, our combined galleries hold over 75,000 us...

When new submissions slow down in a gallery, it's always fun to see what was uploaded in years past, or what is the most popular content of all time.  Today I was skimming through the IconPackager gallery and decided to check out which packs have the most downloads of all time.  I assumed that it would all be stuff from 2001, 2002, 2003 since they'd have been on the site the longest, but they jumped around in terms of date. Here are the top five downloaded IconPacks of all time on W...

As DeskScapes 2.0 draws nearer (it's been available as a beta to Object Desktop subscribers for a little while now), I thought this would be a good time to highlight some of the great Dreams the community has been creating and uploading lately.

It's almost that time again, time for a refresh and a new snapshot of Object Desktop for 2008.  This year, in addition to the regular refresh to the suite of customization tools, we're splitting it up into two separate groups: Object Desktop and Object Desktop Ultimate. The Guided Tour explains exactly what that split means, and talks about new tools such as Impulse, an updated DesktopX, the new MyColors and more. It's a great read and should give you a good idea of what to expect ...

Tutorial articles showing you how to use an application through screenshots and blurbs of text can be very helpful in learning your way around a tool, but often even with screens and text, it can be confusing on how exactly to access a given feature or option. To that end, Island Dog has been working on a series of Screencasts, narrated video walkthroughs of several skinning/customization applications, focusing on specific features within the applications His Screencasts so far: Win...