I know I posted these links in a reply to another thread.. but figured not as many people would read that thread as would be interested in this.
Was reminicing about how I was ran the first wblinds skin site. So if any of you nëwbies out there, or old school people who want a refresh of memory. Check out the following sites
Original WindowBlinds Homepage
First Wblinds Skins Collection
Edit: oh my god, the word n-e-w-b-i-e-s is changed to ****. That's so ridiculous it's funny.
I still remember trying it out back then. It was pretty cool for then. I was first getting into desktop customisation and was using litestep (B23). I remember that skins page too. I didn't make any skins back then though I just edited up ones I downloaded for personal use.
Ya, LS was cool as sh¡t before it went OSS. I think the first one or two OSS releases were ok, but then it got main stream and went straight down hill.
I was able to do some cool things with B24, but I got tired of the staticness of the skins of each item. Like.. for what I was trying to do they where nice, but mostly screenshot nice.
Oh yeah, I was looking then for something to complete my look so I tried this, efx, and windowfx (windowfx was a skinner back then). OMG efx was buggy as hell (if you think WB is buggy today which it really isn't, then you haven't seen EFX in '98). When you move the window the frame would move and the window would seperate from the frame. WB was ok but it really wasn't useable for daily use yet. Well, especially because there wasn't very many skinners. And I had no idea how to make a skin back then. Especially since it seemed to rely on dll plugins.
I was happy though because I got sick of the 95 look, which I'm never going back to, ever.
BTW, in case anyone gets any ideas I'm just sharing my experiences. I don't want to go into this versus that.
efx was ok. it only did the titlebar's though. And it was free. Once Neil sold his soul to stardock efx started lacking in feature comparison. Then skins.org kind of disappeared, and the whole crew just stopped developing stuff. eFX was the free alternative to Wblinds, wish it would have stuck around.
Yeah I know, later there was also chroma that actually had toolbar skinning for explorer way before WB did but it never took off, hmmmmmmmmm........ I wonder whatever happened with it.
Ah yes, skinz.org. The tan site. Ahhhhh... those where the days, 
oh man that reminds me.. what ever happened to WB.. in my opinion, some of the old skins were WAY better.. back when they were animated.. why aren't there anymore like that? *remembers an old Matrix one that had scrolling matrix code in the bars.. and an aquarium one* i would think w/ the power etc now, that skins like that would be even easier and better looking.
Because people care more about speed than features like that.
BTW, I checked out chroma out of curiousity and look at this:
DAMN!! I didn't think that was possible.
Chroma is slow though and hwen you move around it looks and feels chunky as it hasn't been updated since 2000. But wow.... those scrollbars, I'm psyched knowing that it is possible.
One more: 
um, care more about speed? LOL i was running it on a 166mhz 16ram laptop w/ 4mb video memory, and the windows were drawing w/o any noticible slow down of the computer.. so i think our newer couple ghz computers and 128-256mb ram 3d accelerators can handle it w/ no problem what so ever lolol 
Yet people still complain about speed whether it's true or not. I'm not talking about myself. Just look at any WB vs. Visual Styles thread to see what I mean. I find it strange that people who have faster computers than me complain that WB somehow slows their computer down when it doesn't do that to mine but oh well....
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