| Date: | October 10, 2005 / year-entry #298 |
| Tags: | other |
| Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20051010-09/?p=33833 |
| Comments: | 9 |
| Summary: | My colleague Kam VedBrat (from who I shamelessly stole the pictures of thse high-DPI displays in my PDC talk) discusses the difficult balancing act between customization and supportability. (Part II.) Note that decisions on this subject also also impact compatibility: Windows Vista greatly expands the palette of objects covered by the visual style. Any visual styles... |
My colleague Kam VedBrat (from who I shamelessly stole the pictures of thse high-DPI displays in my PDC talk) discusses the difficult balancing act between customization and supportability. (Part II.) Note that decisions on this subject also also impact compatibility: Windows Vista greatly expands the palette of objects covered by the visual style. Any visual styles designed for Windows XP need to be revised in order to cover those new Windows Vista elements. Whose reponsibility would it be to revise them? |
Comments (9)
Comments are closed. |
Are you implying that it should not be Microsoft who revises the icons and graphics in Windows Vista to eliminate remnants of XP and Windows 95? Maybe you are because there are still tons of old icons dating back to Windows 95 in Vista…
I think that Raymond is talking about customized Windows XP styles.
It would be the responsibility of whomever made the theme in question. It is not Microsoft’s job to fix themes that they themselves did not develop and/or sell.
It’s my understanding that there are only a handful of signed Visual Styles for WinXP. It’s not like it’s going to be a huge job.
Unless, of course, you count the million or so people who use WindowBlinds themes or a hacked uxtheme.dll to accomplish something that XP should’ve done in the first place.
Carlos, I’m willing to be Vista will have all new icons when it ships. It’s not like Microsoft has a huge army of graphic artists, it takes time to crank out hundreds of 256×256 icons. And if they decide to change the visual look again, all those expensive icons will be out of place.
Microsoft realized the huge potential of Windows customization back in 2000 or so. I know this because at the time (when XP was still in development) I would get a bunch of referrals from Microsoft every week at Winstep.net, checking out what I was doing.
The single major reason Microsoft did not open the Visual Styles format in XP (which would have caused major grief to Stardock and their, at the time, major cash cow Windowblinds) was because a badly made theme could crash the OS. And, if this happened, the user would of course blame XP and not the theme (as I’m sure Raymond will agree).
Wonder what will happen now, Microsoft had the time to make a more robust Visual Styles engine for Windows Vista and the market is now ready for commercial themes, as long as they are professionaly made (most of the free stuff is not worth a second look). This is well demonstrated by the existence of companies such as Pixtudio and YellowIcon, something which would have been almost unthinkable when we (Stardock, Winstep, etc…) pionered Windows customization software back in 1998.
Vector icons in the future?
Or at least edge-preserving scales. I know that it’s not an easy problem, but one can create a high-resolution best-guess of a low-resolution icon.
Anyway, if I had to throw my vote in on this topic, I’d say that Microsoft has a responsibility to make it *work*, but no responsibility to make it look good.
And then what happens when Vista+1 comes out with new themable elements? Do people who were using a Stardock-authored visual theme get an "error: this theme was designed for an older version of Windows"? Or shold the theme engine recognize the "theme designed for an older version of Windows" case and magically "fill in the gaps" somehow?
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 11:47 AM by oldnewthing
> And then what happens when Vista+1 comes out
> with new themable elements?
Start out with the default Vista+1 theme?
Isn’t that what Windows XP did? It doesn’t default to looking like Windows 2000, I set options to do it (fortunately it only needs around 5 settings).
You can’t ‘fill in the gaps’ with UI elements (bitmaps) that aren’t there. So I agree with Norman, it should start with the default Vista+1 theme, but it should also be able to work with older themes – you just wouldn’t get the new Vista+1 features. Simple.
The User would get a warning ‘This theme was designed for an older version of Windows and some interface elements migh be missing’ when applying older themes. Also, from what I know about the skinning community, you would soon get an updated version of popular older themes.