The Rant: Skinning on Windows XP, the truth vs. marketing

I'm in a ranting mood today. So here on my blog, I'm going to talk about the whole msstyles, uxtheme, thing on Windows XP.

Windows XP allows you to change the look and feel of its GUI between "Blue", "Silver", and "Green". It does this by applying what is called a visual style. It comes in a format called .msstyles. But only Microsoft can make MS digitally signed msstyles and Microsoft's engine, by default, only accepts MS digitally signed msstyles.

Naturally, people want more than just those 3. To do you essentially have two choices.

1) You can make your own format and apply them (which is what WindowBlinds does)

or

2) You can try to crack the security out so that you can use unsigned msstyles.

The WindowBlinds Route

The first path is to go and download WindowBlinds. It's a free download and for $20 you can register it and get all kinds of extra goodies. It extends the Windows XP engine to do a lot more stuff and gets around the digitally signed limitation by having its own format called .UIS. You can download that at http://www.windowblinds.net

The UXTheme Patch Route

The alternative method is to find a way to make UXTheme not require Microsoft digitally signed msstyles. There are two current ways to do this: 1) You can actually patch uxtheme.dll to accept unsigned msstyles. This is free and you can find places on the net to do this.  Or 2) You can do it in memory but that requires having either a driver or some other stay resident program doing it.

The WindowBlinds route has the advantage that it is a superset of msstyles and therefore any msstyle can be converted to WindowBlinds with SkinStudio.

Truth in Advertising

So here's where the rant comes in. Because Microsoft wanted msstyles to remain private, they haven't exactly publicized it. This has allowed unscrupulous companies to come in and start taking credit for the engine and the format (msstyles).  Microsoft did the work. But others are trying to make a business selling Microsoft's work. But along comes some companies who decide that they can just write a few lines of code (sometimes literally) that zap out Microsoft's digitally signing protection. And then turn around and imply that they and not Microsoft's skin engine are doing the work and then selling that work.

I have some problems with this:

a) Trying to charge people money to crack your uxtheme for you. I'm not even sure it's legal for companies to do that.

Trying to imply that their programs actually provide some value-add.

c) Trying to blow off the tech support problems of patching.

There's one program in particular that has done so well spreading misinformation that .msstyles are actually called themes. Unbelievable. Imagine if .MP3s had been called "Winamp songs". Ridiculous right? But that's what this company has effectively promoted.

And worse, whether you're using a commercial program or a patch to do this, you have to do it EVERY time a new Windows XP service pack comes out. And Longhorn? Forget it. And if you don't update? You may boot your machine to an error message that would require reinstalling.

"Oh bull, Drag, all you have to do is save a restore point before you install it, then boot up into the recovery mode and restore it, no sweat." is the typical response. Yea, bull is right. You think even a tenth of the people who blindly install these things realize what they're getting themselves into? What's worse, some of these people are actually PAYING to do this.

To the techie who tries to say that everyone will know how to recover from their patched uxtheme.dll when the next XP service pack comes along I point this out: There are are actually people out there who have paid money to register programs that do nothing more than what is available for free already. So anyone foolish enough to pay money for that is certainly not likely to know how to recover when these things fail.

You can take an old version of WindowBlinds from 1999 and run it today on Windows XP. That's the advantage of value-add. You aren't at the mercy of the OS vendor as much. And in this case, an OS vendor that went through effort to not allow others to use unsigned msstyles. And with WindowBlinds, you get a lot more features now.

Patching UXTheme.dll - just be honest about it

That said, I have nothing against people patching uxtheme.dll to apply their own hacked msstyles (there's no such thing as a pure .msstyles file -- they are actually a .DLL renamed with graphics resources inside which means, amongst other things, it's a dead end -- come Longhorn, .msstyles go bye bye).

I just wish its proponents (as well as companies that make a profit off of cracking Microsoft's digital signing security) would be up front about what they do instead of passing what they're doing A) as "their" work and Stop making it out like patching out system DLL security is somehow a "native" way of getting more visual styles. To me native doesn't include the words "patching" and "system files" in the same sentence.

"Native"

There is one set of advocates who say "Well, I want to use this stuff because it's native". How can anyone honestly argue that anything that requires PATCHING system DLLs is "native". Call me crazy but the words system PATCH and native don't exactly go hand in hand.

And patching uxtheme certainly doesn't add features. It just means you can, basically, replace the bitmaps of the Windows XP blue, silver, green, msstyle. This is probably why when Microsoft wants to add more visual styles for a promotion like with the Xbox or Age of Mythology it's WindowBlinds they use as well as what they recommend to OEMs.

WindowBlinds doesn't hack the system. What really galls me is the idea that someone would charge the unwary for the patch. It would be like charging money for a program that changes wallpaper because users didn't know where the wallpaper changing dialog was. I probably wouldn't have such a hard time with the charging of such patching if there was some value-add.

So what do I use?

So that's my two cents on that subject. Incidentally, *I* do have my uxtheme patched because I use both WindowBlinds visual styles and msstyles. I certainly didn't pay to do it, I did it myself with a hex editor. But I've been digging into OS internals for over a decade and I don't freak out if my system doesn't boot up. I know how to get back to a command line and mess around with system restore if need be. But that's the thing, I know what I'm getting myself into. I suspect most normal people with lives who are interested in customizing their PCs just want to download a program that will work well. Not one that may or may not work on the next service pack.

For a regular user, I would suggest they just get WindowBlinds and use it. Most of the good msstyles are already available in WindowBlinds versions and at least you know WindowBlinds is likely to keep working in the future.

A final point about the trolls

The only other sore point about msstyles is their relentless advocates. People who would, if they could, wreck skinning for the long term because they hate the idea of someone making money on customizing. What they don't realize is that their spamming against Stardock for making WindowBlinds is actually counter productive to their cause. No one can deny that at least WindowBlinds does something. But the leading site to get msstyles points people to the non-free way of patching uxtheme. So the net result is that the anti-commercial software people, when they bash WindowBlinds simply because there is a non-free version of it, are actually sending customers to buy a program that doesn't do any real value-add.

Hey, if you want to use msstyles, go for it. It's your PC. But don't go on some web forum and tell people it's somehow better than WindowBlinds because, sorry, that's ridiculous. Besides being relatively primitive in features, msstyles are slower, are larger to download, don't fully skin existing programs, and have only a fraction of the # of visual styles that are available for WindowBlinds. Oh and did I mention they only work on Windows XP and won't work on the next version of Windows barring some miracle?

The last sanctuary of the troll

These days even the trolls no longer try to argue that WindowBlinds is slower or uses more RAM because it's pretty obvious that WindowBlinds is faster these days. Intead the more vocal msstyles zealots will try to say "Well, all the WindowBlinds skins are bloated and ugly.." which means, of course, that they didn't really bother to look.

If you scan the net for msstyles, you'll find that they are typically just like Windows XP except now a different hue. Maybe they're purplish. Of course, you can do this with WindowBlinds without having to find a new visual style since WindowBlinds can change the color of a skin on the fly. That doesn't mean there aren't great msstyles floating around on the net -- there are (of course, SkinStudio can convert them to WindowBlinds since WindowBlinds is a superset of features but I digress).

But the thing is, WindowBlinds has been around for 5 or so years now, its community has moved way beyond the initial hacker demographic that the msstyles user base is at (and likely to stay at since, like I said, it does require you to crack system DLLs to use which ain't for the average user). So the styles and tastes are all over the place now. But yea, it too for the first couple of years mainly fixated on those minimalist "Look, it's like KDE!" skins.

The Bottom line

Anything that lets people able to customize their computers to match their own style is good in my opinion. But I think it's pretty crummy when companies try to profit off neophytes by selling software that is nothing more than a uxtheme.dll patcher while trying to make it look like it has all kinds of features. If you want to patch your uxtheme.dll by all means, do so as long as you know what you're getting into.

I'm a biased source but I recommend going to WinCustomize and seeing all the cool stuff available there to change your system. And it's not overtly commercial with pop-up ads all over the place or nags. It's just a community full of people who like to change the way Windows looks and feels and functions.

Most of all -- HAVE FUN!