The major competition of visual skins for Windows, the GUI Olympics, has ended. The site has now an all-around article showing the best themes from the competition. “The Last Order” icons look sweet.
Overall Best Skins/Icons Result Summary
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I hope I don’t get a RTFA, but is it possible to install these icons on Windows and replace the whole bunch, as we do on KDE?
There’s a lotta programs to do this in Windows.
Desktop Architect, Icon Packager, and ActiveIcons are a few that leap to mind.
A google for “Windows Icon Manager” will probably start you on your way to enlightenment.
Cute icons, but not very intuitive.
I agree, especially when some icons are reused (My Music, Shared Music, My Pictures, Shared Pictures…) and others don’t give any real visual cue as to what it’s for (Control Panel, Administrative tools, open and closed folder, Hard driver, removable driver, ram driver…). Also, some have text on the icon to tell people what it is for.
Other than that, some nice icons.
If you want to install non microsoft approved themes then you’ll need to patch the uxtheme.dll, you can use uxthemepatcher for example: http://www.dev3l0per.devisland.net/sites/en/download.html
You can then get some themes at http://www.themexp.org (warning: don’t use IE on this site)
Here’s a good one: http://www.themexp.org/preview.php?mid=53&type=vs&view=&page=&cat=&… and it self installs too
As for the gui olympics i liked the vector-cell theme and the Dementæcon icon set.
Is it just me, or did the majority of those themes look like Gnome 1.x themes c. 2001?
they all look ugly, amateurish, and totally ignore HIG or any logical agreements. just the usual techno-geeko overdone ridiculous SuperBionic blah stuff. bad metaphores for the icons, some of the skins are totally unreadable, they just hinder my work.
The skins are overworked. These things should be made with functionality in mind. Instead they produce a lot of visual clutter.
As for the icons, I like the overall look of “The Last Order”. However, as it is right now, this icon package is unintuitive. The metaphors aren’t good, and there is heavy reuse of some elements, which makes it hard to distinguish some icons from each other. It is a good base to build on though. The overall look is nice.
I have to agree, these skins are *really* terrible. The only skins on XP that I like so far are Watercolor (from the windows xp beta) and this one which I just found recently:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/2744105/
Some of the icon themes are ok, but nothing that really blow my mind. I currently use this icon theme:
http://interfacelift.com/icons-win/details.php?id=994
I guess I had too high hopes for these GUI olympics.
“Some of the icon themes are ok, but nothing that really blow my mind. I currently use this icon theme:
http://interfacelift.com/icons-win/details.php?id=994“
I almost jumped out of my skin when I clicked on that link. I would have SWORN someone had ripped off Everlado’
s outline theme. Then I finally realized they WERE Everaldo’s icons.
I wonder if the winner will get to develop the final Longhorn skin?
I use the default Windows XP “theme”, with a custom HTML desktop background page (it displays a random image from my wallpaper collection courtesy of some JavaScript programming).
I don’t actually spend any time looking at my window decorations, etc.
I do install Noia (http://www.deviantart.com/view/4266778/) in Firefox and Thunderbird though. Which is odd, because I haven’t even downloaded a WinAmp skin in something like three years…
Note to developers: Making your app skinnable IS NO EXCUSE for not making a good UI in the first place. If you don’t do it right, no amount of eye candy will make your application good. PERIOD.
– chrish
really good skins.. yea , gui olympics , suitable name for such a huge and serious skinning contest.
They look shite
thanks for all the nice comments…
I coded one of the Winamp skins, D-Reliction, so I truly thank you all for all your nice comments about my skin.