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Description
First, I take no credit for this work. I only made enhancements. I just learned Photoshop yesterday and this is also my first time skinning. All credit goes to Flahorn. The style remains his copyrighted work! And no, this is not just anonther Vista skin. I'm trying to address the shortcomings of Vista skins in general.

I was tired of asking for enhancements and decided to be proactive. I started with Jadeaero, which I think is the cleanest looking Vista (aero) theme.

Differences:

WinFlag start button - black button stuck out too much, no orb!
More opaque active window borders - active window needs to standout. could be more opaue but works well with minimalistic wallpapers
Transparent start panel - black too bold and too plastic
Tranparent maximixed windows caption - black too bold and too plastic

Don't get me wrong. I love black. My favorite skins are "aerial" and "Royal Vista" but folks if you're going to do styles consistency and functionality are paramount. Anyways, I think the end result of my adjustments improve upon Flahorn's excellent work . The frosted borders are cleaner than those containing a more aurora effect.

Most of my modifications were simple adjustments of saturation and/or brightness in the alpha channel. With that said, there is lots of room for improvement to Flahorn's skin. Too many to list. Rather than modifying Flahorn's work, I'll start afresh now that I undestand how skins and channels work. My work will be OPEN SOURCE complete with PSD files. My goal is to make a usable, clean Vista inspired theme for XP.

WDVSE (worst damn vista skin ever) is coming .... [link]

[8/7/2006] Finally received permission from Flahorn. Here's the response. "Hi, I give permission to you". Peace out.

Description
First, I take no credit for this work. I only made enhancements. I just learned Photoshop yesterday and this is also my first time skinning. All credit goes to Flahorn. The style remains his copyrighted work! And no, this is not just anonther Vista skin. I'm trying to address the shortcomings of Vista skins in general.

I was tired of asking for enhancements and decided to be proactive. I started with Jadeaero, which I think is the cleanest looking Vista (aero) theme.

Differences:

WinFlag start button - black button stuck out too much, no orb!
More opaque active window borders - active window needs to standout. could be more opaue but works well with minimalistic wallpapers
Transparent start panel - black too bold and too plastic
Tranparent maximixed windows caption - black too bold and too plastic

Don't get me wrong. I love black. My favorite skins are "aerial" and "Royal Vista" but folks if you're going to do styles consistency and functionality are paramount. Anyways, I think the end result of my adjustments improve upon Flahorn's excellent work . The frosted borders are cleaner than those containing a more aurora effect.

Most of my modifications were simple adjustments of saturation and/or brightness in the alpha channel. With that said, there is lots of room for improvement to Flahorn's skin. Too many to list. Rather than modifying Flahorn's work, I'll start afresh now that I undestand how skins and channels work. My work will be OPEN SOURCE complete with PSD files. My goal is to make a usable, clean Vista inspired theme for XP.

WDVSE (worst damn vista skin ever) is coming .... [link]

[8/7/2006] Finally received permission from Flahorn. Here's the response. "Hi, I give permission to you". Peace out.