Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2009!

SkinCrafter 3.2.0 released

Hi everybody,

We are thrilled to announce the availability of SkinCrafter 3.2.0 version. The new version was released with a number of bug fixes and we recommend everyone to try it. There was a huge amount of work to do, but the end result has been really worth it.

All features might be found in the forum announcement section.

You are welcome to download demo install packages from the following location:
http://skincrafter.com/downloads/sc_demo.zip



Any comments are welcome!

Skincrafter 3.0 is released.

What are the outstanding features we have implemented in it?

That's true RTL support, you may see it in our demo - SkinCrafter Browser.
Choose "Change Layout" in menu and all the controls and forms will switch the layout at runtime, and SkinCrafter will handle this nicely changing all aspects of skinning, all texts, graphics will be reflected accurately.

Install our demo and try it yourself.

Another significant feature is Hue/Saturation/Lightness/Opacity (HSLO) manipulation implemented in SkinCrafter engine. A number of interface methods were added to allow our users to change HSLO values of a whole theme or of a particular controls list.

Check "Color Adjustment" button at the bottom of SkinCrafter Browser preview dialog and see it functioning straightaway.

Finally, we have added a preview area for .Net Strip controls in SkinBuilder, now you will be able to get a better presentation of how the skin will be applied to your dotnet strip components.
That provided a more comfortable way for designers to create the skins for these controls. And as a result, more skins will be updated soon in our skin gallery.

Until SkinCrafter 3.0, our designers and customers faced the problem of implementing a non-standard sizes of scroll bars inside the scrollable controls. And really developers cannot change the size of those and all the designs were forced to support standard 16px scrollbars.

However, SkinCrafter 3.0 offers a solution, we have added "Internal Scrollbars" into the list of supported controls in SkinBuilder, separating them from stand-alone’s. And now it's possible to set any value for width of vertical scrolls and height of horizontal scrolls. We believe that it would be quite useful feature for our users. Giving them more control over the UI of their applications.

Soon, we will release updated versions of SkinCrafter Installer and NSIS plugin.

SkinCrafter Licensing Tips and FAQ.

We have a number of questions about SkinCrafter licensing.
So let me clarify and state everything about pricing.

First of all you may find a price table at http://skincrafter.com/order.html
You will see all licensing options and prices there.

SkinCrafter Corporate Source Code License is not listed as it is not freely sold. We require an established communication with corporations who purchase the source codes from us.

Here are some frequently asked questions:

Q. I have two computers and I will do the development on both of them but I will be the only developer. What license do I need?
A. Single Developer License is what you need, as SkinCrafter licensing is per-developer-based

Q. I have a project of mine nad from time to time I'm hiring one or two additional developers. What is my licensing case?
A. 4 Developer Team License is what you need. Note the price is just twice larger than a Single Developer License

Q. I have found a lot of nice skins in your Skins Gallery, how much do they cost? Do you sell them in a bundle?
A. No, no bundle sales are available. All skins might be used for free by all SkinCrafter licensed customers. Moreover, our customers can modify the skins and create their own basing on the existing skins. However if anyone needs the graphics of those skins or maybe a personal design development please feel free to contact our user interface design agency

Q. What's Maintenance? Why do I need it?
A. Maintenance ensures you in a priority of your questions answering and issues resolution over other customers.

Let me know if you think there are other questions to be answered here.

UserData - what is this feature about?

UserData has been added in SkinCrafter v2.0.
But it looks like it still remains to be an unknown feature.

Well, let's try to define why was this functional implemented and when it may come in hand.

What's the application skin?

It's the assembled graphics or images with an appropriate settings used for applications controls skinning. By changing the skin you will change the appearance of standard controls in the application.

The above is pretty clear and simple.

Here is the case, you do develop the music player with avi file played at the splash screen while launching the player.
If you would offer your customers several skins you probably would like to play different avi files at the splash, depending on the style and the color of the skin, right?
Well, that's what UserData was developed for. You may create UserData entry in each of your skins, and put different avi files in there.
Just extract the avi at runtime from currently selected skin and play it. Your splash-screen video will be skin-dependable.

Another example.

Among standard controls you may use some 3rd party components, like Infragistics, ComponentOne or etc..
SkinCrafter will not be able to skin them as they are completely owner drawn.
However, such cool components offer a wide range of customization options and you may just tune them with the overall skin theme via setting proper colors.
Well, again that's where you may use UserData. You may create an entry for each color setting, or integrate a xml or ini file with all color settings in the skin.

I hope this will shed some light on UserData feature.

Also, you may download our UserData demo:

In it we used ini file for controls sizes and positions in each skin. Animations and music files are skin dependable (they are different in each skin)
All this was put into UserData section and was used inside the code.

Right, it's not a feature for designers.. But we do sell the component for developers, so UserData should be a good weapon in your arsenal.

Let me hear any questions. I'd be glad to explain this more.

Skins And MS Visual Studio 2005 Redisribution

There is a known problem with redistribution of non-dotNet\VC++ applications developed in VS 2005.

It's not enough to supply the required dlls, as at some points your application will still fail to launch on a fresh installations of Windows OS.

The only workaround for this situation is to deploy "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package" with your installation.

SkinCrafter engine is written in VC++, and since version 3.0 SkinCrafter ActiveX will be built in VS 2005 too.

Therefore, it's highly recommended to bare in mind the fact of MS VC++ Redist Package dependency when upgrading and deploying your products.

One more note, there are two versions of VC++ Redistribution package available at Microsoft website:

1) Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package
2) Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package

We will use the latest SP1 version.

Standard and custom skins

What is the difference between sandard and custom skins?

Standard skin includes a full set of more then 20 standard controls supported by SkinCrafter engine:

• Window's frame, Title bar and Title bar buttons
• MDI windows
• Push button
• Radio button
• Check box
• Push-like checkboxes and radio button
• Scrollbars
• Menu bar
• Popup Menu
• Toolbar
• Tab conrol
• Progress bar
• Status bar
• Resize grip
• ListboxList control
• Tree control
• Dropdown/combo box
• Groupbox
• Header control
• DateTime
• PickerMonthCalendar
  

If these controls are filled with images and all your controls are skinned when this skin applied, then you are dealing with standard skin!

If you need a skin for your music player or cd burning utility, or web search anilizer or anything else, where the control buttons or other controls should have different appearence. Then you need a custom skin.

Custom skins do not depend on any templates, they usually are just drawn in graphics editor and should be cut into the skin, transforming the particular parts of drawn UI into the controls. This is what is refered when talking about custom skins.

Examles:

Standard skin:

[Skinastic]

Custom skin:

[VT Phone]

Standard skin:

[LedWidget]

Custom skin:

[Playton]