hmmm your right, sorry I dont know then I dont use the winamp taskbar controls.


Chris

I find it bizarre to think changing a tiny flag to a tiny apple will miraculously improve the entire feel of the OS, especially if one thinks the OS is restrictive and dull. It's just a few pixels, after all. If changing one tiny little icon to the logo of another OS can make Windows change from crappy to divine, then I think the problem is entirely in the eye of the beholder. -_-

I don't understand the fixation with adding an apple to a theme that has nothing to do with Macs in the first place! Watercolour came from the Whistler builds and it has nothing to do with Macs.

Besides, it's up to Binary whether he wants to add it or not... and it seems his opinion is pretty much against that.

well i know he'll say know i agree, some peopel are just too damn lazy to open up reshacker and edit the bitmap lol just do that yall instead of getting others to do it for u read the start of one of the watercolor threads where binary told u how to fix it thats how it should be instead of the creator going right and left fixing things others want

IMHO macs are ugly, and especially alot of mac icons.
It has nothing to do with style.

Binary, could you make the ShellStyle.DLL white, where it says 'These Files Are Hidden' etc ...., cuz the backround is a blue which does not match the Watercolor blue ....

Thanx m8 ....

Radish.

I'll be making new shellstyles very soon. But right now I'm trying to solve the resize bug, which I must say isnt comming along very well. I just cant figure it out It seems my style is the only one with the problem, and some others that used my theme as a base. But I have even dumped the graphics into the luna theme, applied, and it's still there! It's really annoying me. So either it's something with the graphics, which I cant figure out, or It's cursed

Anyways that my top priority, and the 24 bit depth checkbox bug.

Once those two things are solved, I believe it will be hopefully totally bug free.
Then I'll work on the shellstyles

Hope you get on top of these probs m8, and make it a even better VS ....

Radish.

What are some good looking wallpapers to go w/ WaterColor?

Sweet another new update Kewl

i cant look through the whole thread, can some1 gimme d/l link for the watercolour theme

There's a link in the very first post

first post on the first page...

I never looked at this thread and ive seen watercolor screenshots before, but i was always like i dont know. Now im using it since yesterday and DAMN THIS THEME IS FREAKING NICE. It has an classic feeling, i think im using this for a while.

Does anyone have or know where I can find a Watercolor Ergonomic Winamp skin? ....

Thanx ....

Radish.

www.winamp.com .... ?

Tried that m8, no luck ....

Radish.

Ok guys, i've compiled some links from this whole thread:

Watercolor 4.3:
http://www.alexkelm.com/~binary/Watercolor43.exe

Blue Winamp skin:
XPAmp11

Ergonomic Winamp Skin:
http://members.rogers.com/binarymix/ergo.wsz

*My* Ergonomic Trillian Skin:
http://webpages.charter.net/billo3121/temp...onomic_v1.2.zip

Ergonomic WMP Skin (does it even need it? ):
http://members.cox.net/timan/Watercolor/Wa...r-Ergonomic.wmz

Quicknotes skin:
http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.ph...97&goto=newpost

Good idea about the links m8 , and thanx alot for the Ergonomic Winamp skin ....

Radish.

Yeah great idea

I really should start a watercolor portal or something now that Watercolor seems to have gained alot of popularity recently.

Maybe we can start the WWW

Wonderful Watercolor Webring

or maybe

Wicked Watercolor Webring

ok now I'm just being dilussional

Updates will come hopefully within the next week, which will include, but not limited to:

- Last remaining Bug fixes

- More optimizations

I just realized the other night that watercolor is more then 1 MB less then luna, and still has four substyles compared to Luna's three. It's also quite a bit faster under a strained or slowend system

Chris

Oh speaking of speed...

I downloaded the most recent build of skinbench, and tested watercolor against a few WB skins.
And although watercolor is visually faster then the skins I tried for WB (yes I know there are some faster ones but I wanted to test this out) Watercolor failed miserably. I wonder why this is.

hmmmm

Chris

:gasp:

Anymore info on the Shellstyles m8? ....

Radish.

Has anybody done any performance testing comparing the effects of stretching or tileing to see which is fastest and if using larger or smaller images gives better performance.

Generally Id suspect tileing and large images to produces the best performance, ive certainly come across many cases in the past where tileing or stretching a small image is significantly slower than performing the same on a larger image, of course it depends how microsoft implemented it all.

It might be easy to make images very small in pixel size especially with flat styled themes but is it better to keep these images a little larger?
I may look into testing this if noone has before.

Frogboy (stardock) has stated before that tiling is better then stretching in WB skins, so I assume its the same for msstyles. I am making all my window elements tiled so I can test this for myself. taskbar and menu bitmaps wont matter because they are pretty much stationary.

Chris

Binary,

Were does a person get Skinbench? Is that a Stardock app?


Thanks!

http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/...nbench-0.65.zip

you can find other links with your friend, google.

Thank you very much!

yeah google is good

I dont trust skinbenches benchmarks. I cant see watercolor being sometimes 3x 'slower' then a WB skin (which I picked out because I felt it was way slower then watercolor). It might be accurate testing WB skin against WB skin, or msstyle against msstyle, but I dont think WB v.s. msstyle is playing fair

Chris

wc seems hella fast tho. maybe its only meant for wb skins and gave you a wrong benchmark?

Binary, you are the best. I have been using Watercolor for longer than i can remember. I loved it when it was the official theme for whistler, and then the luna garbage came. As soon as this happened, I searched for a way to port xp back to the whistler feel. I installed your theme and havn't removed it since.

msstyle works better for me. [wb sucks]

No more updates will be available at Neowin.

Oh and I'd like a mod to remove the links from the first page, since i cant seem to edit the post.

My compliments for this style! Are you really gonna quite it? If so i would like to thank you for your work!

No no.

I'm not going to stop work on watercolor. I just dont think Neowin is a place to get comments on it anymore. I'm sick and tired of people here bashing authors work's, not just mine, but almost every theme thread now has some asshole spouting their mouth off, and discouraging the author in some way. Untill this place gets cleaned up, I wont be releasing any updates here. I hope other authors follow suit. It's really getting disgusting, the way authors are treated here.

Chris

well said, why not just get ur own site? hell even get some sort of comment system that way u have total control over bad comments

you are reading his mind.

I was hoping it would never have to come to having my own site to 'control' my theme. I always wanted to just keep it small, and in the community, which worked until people saw the need to: start demanding updates, putting authors down, making fun of their themes and even making crude remarks in some cases (yes I know I say crude things to people occasionally, I'm not perfect, but I dont put down others hard work). This isnt just about my theme (I really dont care about it anymore), I have enough respect for the authors here to take a stand, and show what can happen if people keep doing this, if anything this is a simple life lesson.

Chris

Yeah, that is true dude. I don't post much here anyway, I'm more of a lurker. But, I do remember before this theme was released, when you were showing preview pics of it, but kept on delaying the release date - everyone thought it was vaporware... if i'm not mistaken

well you pretty much have the most respect to neowin's users that were regged quite more than a few months, your the only author that has kept 1 single theme alive the longest, your theme is the only theme that is pretty much bug free, you make changes that are at most request on feedback,. just wish neowin could go back to at least a year ago, poop that ruled the customizing community was small but hell if it didnt rule.

yeah, i remember the old days. no noobs bashing author's work like they are now.

well that was understandable, Skinning XP with 3rd party skins was brand new, and 99% of people here didnt even know about it at that time. I am pretty sure watercolor was the second fully finished theme to be 'released' next to toothpaste, well, and luna of course, but that wasnt 3rd party. And thats only because TGTSoft let me beta test all of their software, or I wouldnt have ever got into skinning most likely.

Chris

Ok thats good news. But yeah its very lame people are bashing you and other authors. Why do people always have to spoil it for a whole community.

Binary,

It is quite obvious that there is at least one user that loves watercolor and is using it unmodded and not complaining. Is it worth stopping communicating with this one user? Conversely you could say there are loads of people who slam the theme, lets take a show of hands.... who doesn't have watercolor on their system..... I think prettymuch everyone has..... and there's a reason for that......

I understand your gripes with NeoWin.... but let me tell you this... I post for the one who send me an e-mail about my great new VS... not the one that says my design is all wrong.... I have had the xsame issues since I joined.

There will always be those that say "I can do it better".... for some reason.... they never come up with the goods...... You, I and everyone else (including the lamers) know that watercolor will not be finished until you finish it..... even if they won't admit it...... but I will........

don't turn your back on the community.... please......

Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

you'll see it around.

/me just waits for a new version...

hopefully there will some type of info of where we can get it...

Ok.

Here's the deal. I will continue to update this thread with new build info.

This is only because this thread has yet to turn into one flame war after another.

If it becomes one, I hope it will be cleaned up, but if it isnt then I will completely stop the updates.

Watercolor Plus is still being worked on, just not updated here, because it's obvious some cant be patient enough to work on a group project together.

Anyways if you were one of the top contributors to the watercolor plus thread (the negative contributors need not apply) then contact me (I'm sure most of you know my email), and we can try working on it together as a team.

I realize it isnt fair to punish a whole community because of a few people being jerks. I just felt I needed a time out more then anyone else

Sorry if I worried anyone.


Chris

I dont mind, maybe you could post updates at the designtechnica forums? its an artisticly inclined forum .

so, anyone know where to get it now ?

Binary: I have Ergonomic and Blue done for thin taskbars if you don't have any done, I can package em up and send em your way so you can work of them. Lots of bitmaps had to be f0x0r5ed with before I could get the right look.

Here it is so far: