After three years away, long-time skinner APB has returned to WinCustomize with a brand new WindowBlinds skin! Canvas is a very clean, simple WindowBlinds skin built with SkinStudio6 and fully optimized for Windows Vista and WB6 users.  If you're looking for a great skin, with soft colors, great highlighting and easy to read buttons, you definitely want to take this skin for a spin. Hopefully this marks APB's triumphant return to WinCustomize!

In case you didn't already figure it out, the news stories today were jokes, all meant in good fun.  And on the off-chance there's any confusion left... We're still WINcustomize.   No Mac or Linux stuff here, no plans for it.  Put down the torches and pitchforks folks No Apple Dashboard Widgets There is no plan to add Dashboard widget exporting to DX.  The story and screenshots were 100% fabrication (though Island Dog did make a Dashboard widget version...

2008 April Fools Joke  This morning we announced that WinCustomize was expanding to cover the Mac and Linux customization scene .  As a follow-up, today we're incredibly happy to also announce the first of our products to support the new cross-platform effort... One of the great new features of DesktopX is the ability to export your widgets/gadgets to run on the Windows Vista Sidebar.  While 3.5 is still receiving its finishing touches we've already begun the plannin...

2008 April Fools Joke  For seven years, WinCustomize has been the home for Windows GUI Customization.  Users from around the globe come here every day to download skins, icons, wallpapers and more to change the way the Windows Operating System look, feels and behaves.  While Windows remains the dominant operating system in the world, we've been watching the steady growth of both Apple's OS X and Linux as alternative OS choices. As both have matured and grown in popu...

If you're here, chances are it's because you're looking for some great new skin, icon set, gadget, wallpaper or app skin for your PC.  Every day, tens of thousands of people come here and download gigabytes of data in search of their latest skinning fix. My question for you this week is, what specific element do you change the most frequently?  Is it your OS Skin?  Wallpaper?  Icons?  Or some application-specific skin like for ObjectDock or RightClick? Result...

Last week, I asked if you used a standard size screen resolution (4:3, 5:4) or a widescreen one (16:9, 16:10) on your main PC.  The results are surprising to say the least.  While my Google Analytics give me accurate numbers on what our overall userbase runs, these polls are great for learning what our core group of users have. According to the poll, fully 3/4ths of you (74%) run a widescreen resolution.  This is in contrast to the analytics data which shows that 30% of our to...

Ahh, that was a nice, restful weekend.  Now though, it's back to work for another few days until our next break from the office.  And as per usual, I'm here with my picks for the best work uploaded to WinCustomize over the weekend past.

Ok, we're late to the party, and just yesterday I myself was asking what the heck the point was of Twitter , but this morning, WinCustomize joined the Twitter craze that's sweeping the web. A sort of hybrid between blogging and Instant Messaging, Twitter focuses on brief and to-the-point messages that are broadcast to anyone who wants to read them.  Forming a social network of followers and followees, you can find yourself engaged in conversation with people you otherwise would never...

Continuing with our Friday tradition, Island "I Spam The Web" Dog is back with his pick of great skins from the last week.  This week is a great mix of skins ranging from a new WindowBlinds skin, to some great docks, wallpapers, cursors, a bootskin and a new gadget pack from Vad_M.  Oh, and a great IconPack from the 2006 GUI Champs. It was a great week, and this roundup really shows off the killer work that you've all been working on.

This past weekend, PCWorld.com published a list of 101 Fantastic Freebies you can find online.  The article covers everything from Productivity tools to music, videos and photo services.  The freebies list includes both software and online services. In the Desktop Customization category though, we snagged two of the nine spots with WindowBlinds and WinCustomize.  Also mentioned is WinMatrix, one of our favorite sites in the wider customization community. Hit the link fo...

The WinCustomize gallery system is large and often complex with many different ways to access, sort and display skins.  At a glance you probably wouldn't even notice most of the options you have at your disposal, making it hard sometimes to find what you're looking for. While WinCustomize v6 will improve navigation & UI presentation, for the time being we're stuck with what we have.  To help folks out, Island Dog has written up a detailed guide on how to use all the Gallery bells a...

Clean, usable WindowBlinds skins seem to be few and far between these days, with a current focus on style and flash over simplicity and speed.  Now, these flashy WindowBlinds skins are still great, don't get me wrong, but sometimes you just want a simple skin that doesn't distract you from your work. Redo by Z71 is just such a skin.  Using a dark charcoal gray for the majority of the skin's borders and backgrounds and soft blues for contrasting elements such as buttons, active wi...

Impulse, the successor to Stardock Central, is nearing completion and we've been incredibly eager to get your impressions on our new storefront and digital distribution tool.  Impulse takes the lessons learned over years of developing and using Stardock Central and improves upon the tool in virtually every aspect. As you can see by the screenshot, and other previews we've given, Impulse is much more user-friendly and attractive than the current version of SDC. Now though, you do...

In the last few years, it seems like good IconPackages are becoming harder to come by.  Maybe its the increased difficulty of Vista with its larger icons and LiveFolders, it's hard to say for sure.  But there's no question that IconPackage creation is slowing down.  It wasn't that long ago though that we saw probably the single greatest surge of fantastic IconPacks ever on the site; the 2006 GUI Championships The 2006 GUIC saw 53 IconPackages submitted, almost every single one...

Lets look at your PC capabilities a bit more closely.  Last week I asked about whether you used a desktop or a laptop as your main machine.  Desktops won out easily.  This week lets talk screen resolutions.  For authors of wallpapers, DX themes, skins, icons and almost every other category in skinning, screen resolutions can be a massive pain in the rear.  What looks fantastic at 1600x1200 might look like garbage or simply be unusable at 1024x768.  At the same time...