Sometimes we spot an artist here on WinCustomize that shows a ridiculous amount of promise.  There are a lot of digital artists that post work here every single day, but now and then one comes up that does such terrific work that you just sit back and go "Wow!"  And it's even more satisfying when you can see how the artist has grown in talent over their time on the site. Today, I was browsing through the newest skins list and hit upon just such an artist; Libardo (lgp85) .  Wh...

It seems that often skinners put out dark, glassy, techy skins.  The number of Aero clones we saw when the Vista interface was first revealed is just one example.  But now and then we see some very light, airy and bright skins uploaded to the site that provide a nice contrast to or normally dark PC screens.  Here are a few of the more recent light-colored skins uploaded to the site you may want to check out... ...

One of the great features of SkinStudio 5 was the ability to directly import XP .msstyle themes and convert them into WindowBlinds skins, giving you access to the many .msstyle themes out there, but allowing you to retain the ease and power of using WindowBlinds.  Unfortunately, that feature isn't present in SkinStudio 6.  But never fear, there is actually a free, stand-alone tool to do just that! Get the XP .msstyle importer free!

Last night the Boston Celtics cruised to their 17th NBA Championship, their first in 22 years.  As Beantown celebrates, you can jump in on the fun and show off your Celtics pride with the MyColors Boston Celtics Theme by Stardock Design! Deck your desktop out in Celtics green and the look of the basketball court.  The MyColors Boston Celtics Theme comes with a skin for either Windows XP or Vista, wallpapers, terrific icons, as well as weather and media player gadgets.  L...

Today's the day Impulse launches to the public with much fanfare and celebration.  In anticipation of the release, Brad Wardell walked through what will be available in Impulse on release, and a few sneak peeks at what will be added in the comming weeks and months. It's required reading before you get the final version later today.  It will answer a lot of questions and hopefully clear up a lot of confusion of what Impulse is, what it isn't, and what it can and can not do.  ...

Today's the day Impulse launches to the public with much fanfare and celebration.  In anticipation of the release, Brad Wardell walked through what will be available in Impulse on release, and a few sneak peeks at what will be added in the comming weeks and months. It's required reading before you get the final version later today.  It will answer a lot of questions and hopefully clear up a lot of confusion of what Impulse is, what it isn't, and what it can and can not do.  ...

Why are things so quiet today?  Well, we're getting all of our ducks in a row in preparation for the big Impulse launch later today.  So for the time being, amuse yourselves.  Read a magazine.  Maybe take the dog for a walk.  Run any errands you have to do today, because once we flip the switch, it's going to be hopping around here for the rest of the day!

Yesterday the news broke that Firefox 3 final would be released to the public on Tuesday, June 17th

With every new major version of Firefox, changes are made to how the browser renders pages, in an effort to get closer and closer to published standards.  Unfortunately, since the major web browsers all render pages slightly differently, custom stylesheets have to be built for each specific browser we support.  Since Firefox 3 will render pages differently than Firefox 2 did, this means we will need to update our stylesheets so Firefox 3 works properly with our web sites.

At the moment, we do not officially support Firefox 3 on WinCustomize, JoeUser, ImpulseDriven.net or any of our forums.  We will be adding support for the new browser version as quickly as we can, but we do not anticipate that we will be ready by the browser launch on Tuesday the 17th (we're kind of busy with something else right now).  If you use Firefox 3 with our sites in the meantime, you will still be able to use the sites well enough, there will just be formatting glitches where elements may not display properly on the page.  We know about these, we are working on them.

As we know about these issues, please do not post threads to the forums complaining that the site is broken with Firefox 3.  This post is everyone's official notice that we're aware of the problems and will be working to fix them.  Any posts complaining of issues will be moved to the Site Issues forum and locked.  Please do not clutter the forums with such posts.

Currently, we do not have a definite ETA on when Firefox 3 will be fully supported on our sites. In the meantime, please continue to use IE6, IE7 or Firefox 2 to browse our sites.

Yesterday the news broke that Firefox 3 final would be released to the public on Tuesday, June 17th With every new major version of Firefox, changes are made to how the browser renders pages, in an effort to get closer and closer to published standards.  Unfortunately, since the major web browsers all render pages slightly differently, custom stylesheets have to be built for each specific browser we support.  Since Firefox 3 will render pages differently than Firefox 2 did, this me...

Happy Friday the 13th folks.  Hopefully your Friday is free of bad lick, ill omens, or serial killers in hockey masks!  But if it is, we do have something to take your mind off of all of that (well not the killer part, it's hard to forget about that part).  As he does every Friday, Island Dog rounds up some of the best skins submitted over the course of the week.  This week it's a selection of cursors, dreams, icons, wallpapers and WindowBlinds. Check out his article for ...

This morning, as I updated myself on the happenings of my friends via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, one of my friends posed an interesting question…

“My worry about this brave new world of social networking is that it may alienate us from “real life” friends, especially ones not on the grid.  So, great, I feel so connected to people I’ve never met, but what about family and friends I’ve known for years?  Do they get short shrift?”

I actually think the real danger here is something related, but much more basic; the strong sense of familiarity and safety we develop with people we, in fact, do not actually know.  It’s just so easy to share our lives with the world with a few clicks of the mouse and taps at the keyboard.  We post our innermost thoughts once and let everyone read them.  We follow the lives of our friends and acquaintances, and even complete strangers with ease.

Keeping up with his regular stream of screencasts, Island Dog yesterday put together a great video demo for WindowBlinds 6, showing users how to do everything from apply a theme, to recoloring, adjusting transparencies and blur effects, adding explorer backgrounds, using the wallpaper manager and even importing .msstyles into WindowBlinds directly. It's a great video to link to friends and family who are interested in getting into desktop customization.

Since 2005, skinning community site Customize.org has hosted the Desktopography project, an annual exhibition of stunning wallpaper art that is simply some of the best wall work I've ever seen.  Participation is by invite-only, but because of this the results are always top-notch.  The idea is that our moods can be heavily influenced by what we see every day, and for many of us we spend our days staring at a computer screen.  While it's hard to get a good nature look to your Windo...

The fine folks over at the gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun are giving away five copies of Sins of a Solar Empire, the surprise strategy game hit of 2008.  The best part is that entering could not be easier!  Here's what you have to do: Here’s the question: What is the best line of dialogue ever to beuttered in a science fiction capacity? This means it must be a linefrom a science fiction movie, TV-show, or videogame. Since I'm willing to venture a guess that a lot of you are...

We're quickly coming up on the full launch of Impulse, our next generation digital distribution, software management and community tool.  Impulse, as pretty much everyone should know by now, is the successor to Stardock Central, and will eventually replace the aging download tool entirely (though not immediately, it's going to be a phased retirement).  Since early this year we've had first a private group of testers hammering on Impulse, and then the larger community in an open beta t...