6 ms·

I always used skins in Winamp/XMMS, but I'm immediately filled with nostalgia upon seeing the default skin. I wonder if people who came to use computers in the

I always used skins in Winamp/XMMS, but I'm immediately filled with nostalgia upon seeing the default skin. I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications. All of the walled gardens have intertwined design with functionality to the point where skinning doesn't really exist in the same way. I haven't used Windows 10, but I wonder if it's possible to replace the Windows shell like I used to in college.

mi100hael 9y ago
Honestly, skinning is probably easier today than it ever has been. With custom client-side stylesheets, there's no reason someone couldn't roll out custom skins for sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- _sdegutis 9y ago
  I bet there's branding and usability reasons for Facebook to avoid allowing you to skin/theme it to the extent Winamp was skinnable. Not sure I know what those are, but I just really doubt they'll ever add that feature.
  - pionar 9y ago
    Probably more like value reasons. What's the point? Would that drive more users to Facebook? Or current users to spend more time there?
  - jsgo 9y ago
    While it worked great for Winamp and a few other apps, the process was a negative for others: MySpace being a big example. People modifying their pages to look like Angelfire/Geocities sites from back in the day killed any interest I had in them.
    - greymeister 9y ago
      Tumblr took the other path in allowing you to customize your own user experience, it certainly comes with a trade-off.
    - greiskul 9y ago
      One big difference is that in MySpace a user could modify how other users viewed their page. With skins a user can modify how they view other users page, but would not modify those other users experience.
    - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
      What's the issue with people making their own space look like Geocities if it's what makes them happy and is how they want to express themselves. Would also like to point out that customisation on MySpace is probably responsible for a whole generation of not only developers but non-tech focused people learning how to code. Met a lot of artists and designers who now work on the internet who MySpace was the starting point.
      - jsgo 9y ago
        I have no issue with someone doing it, but it doesn't mean I as a user am going to want to continue visiting it. As bland as Facebook is in look (and it could probably do with a less cluttered redesign), it is at least not a jarring experience so I can live with it. And for a site like MySpace to work, it needs traffic. Not sure on the generation of web developers MySpace created. Pretty sure every single page that looked like this was plastered with logos for theme building sites/companies littered with various neon-on-black comic sans designs as far as the eye can see.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    Facebook is optimized to get you addicted to your feed. Muted blue colors everywhere with contrasting bright "berry red" rewarding notifications. Images that are always more contrasted than the layout, etc. Anecdotal: I use a custom Facebook skin that makes the whole UI red and add a background image. Since I've started using it, I spend less time on the website. It feels, in a way, more tiring to use the custom theme.
    - ryanianian 9y ago
      That's cool - can you share it?
      - Raphmedia 9y ago
        It is a mix of UserStyles that I blended together. I won't share it but you can replicate it using: https://userstyles.org/styles/115084/red-facebook-gta-5-lifeinvader-style https://userstyles.org/styles/115084/red-facebook-gta-5-life... as a basis and one of the current popular themes for the background https://userstyles.org/styles/147009/facebook-2k17-modern-design-no-ads-modern-chat https://userstyles.org/styles/147009/facebook-2k17-modern-de... https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=facebook https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=facebook
- dictum 9y ago
  Unfortunately, even proficient developers are having trouble due to some misguided technical choices those websites are making: https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593 https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593
  - JosephRedfern 9y ago
    If those websites don't wish to support skinning, I don't see how the technical choices are misguided.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      True, but that still doesn't contradict the point made above regarding how the skinning community is a dying breed. Edit: I now realize that, taken out of context, my comment sounds pretty twisted.
    - smadge 9y ago
      Originally stylesheets were meant to be recommendations. It was envisioned that user agents, users, and web pages would have their own, separate stylesheets, and the user agent would negotiate between the different stylesheets to determine the final style. I would argue that Twitter is going against the original spirit and best practices of the web with their technical decision to use css-in-js.
      - dictum 9y ago
        Exactly. The Web is a medium with built-in customizability. This "our product is perfect and must be used as is" attitude reminds me of a relatively recent example that seems to be dying down: mobile websites that used the `maximum-scale=1 ` value in `<meta name="viewport"`. This disabled zooming in mobile devices. This was an accessibility issue that affected people who otherwise don't encounter other accessibility issues. If it were simply a matter of providing the smallest payload to clients, these sites could provide some sort of external manifest/source map mapping human-readable class names to hashes.
      - 9y ago
- laumars 9y ago
  Just because the client-side application's source code is readable in a text editor it doesn't mean it's easier to skin than a binary blob who's theming support is documented. Not to mention how your method could break tomorrow without warning because Facebook (or whatever you're skinning) push out an update that's incompatible with the theme you've hacked on to it.
- megaman22 9y ago
  I've tried to run custom stylesheets for some of these sites, to make them more usable and cut the cruft, but the interface elements are such a moving target, and with what appears to be randomized or obfuscated class names and ids, that it's a real PITA to keep working
- imtringued 9y ago
  Websites can change and break your client-side stylesheets.
msie 9y ago
It looks harder to completely replace the Windows shell than before. I've looked long and hard for a replacement that looks like Windows 95 (menus and windows controls especially) but no luck. There is WindowShades but it doesn't completely replace everything.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Doesn't ClassicShell still work in Win10?
  - msie 9y ago
    Please don't get my hopes up!
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Yes. It's almost required, since it replaces the incredibly brain-dead start menu search with something that works in a way that makes some kind of sense. I don't know how the default Windows 10 search is so broken.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Don't worry, KDE for Windows is still a thing - although the "whole shell" replacement currently isn't working with KDE Plasma 5, but only KDE 4
- inferiorhuman 9y ago
  XP always had the option to turn off themes which resulted in a w2k-ish (and by extension w95) look. Is this no longer an option?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Since Windows 7.
    - inferiorhuman 9y ago
      Ugh
craftyguy 9y ago
> I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn
- app4soft 9y ago
  > https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn/new https://reddit.com/r/unixporn/new
chme 9y ago
> I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications. What you had to make skins yourself??? You didn't just get them via micro-transactions and loot-boxes??? /s

mi100hael 9y ago

Honestly, skinning is probably easier today than it ever has been. With custom client-side stylesheets, there's no reason someone couldn't roll out custom skins for sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

_sdegutis 9y ago
I bet there's branding and usability reasons for Facebook to avoid allowing you to skin/theme it to the extent Winamp was skinnable. Not sure I know what those are, but I just really doubt they'll ever add that feature.
- pionar 9y ago
  Probably more like value reasons. What's the point? Would that drive more users to Facebook? Or current users to spend more time there?
- jsgo 9y ago
  While it worked great for Winamp and a few other apps, the process was a negative for others: MySpace being a big example. People modifying their pages to look like Angelfire/Geocities sites from back in the day killed any interest I had in them.
  - greymeister 9y ago
    Tumblr took the other path in allowing you to customize your own user experience, it certainly comes with a trade-off.
  - greiskul 9y ago
    One big difference is that in MySpace a user could modify how other users viewed their page. With skins a user can modify how they view other users page, but would not modify those other users experience.
  - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    What's the issue with people making their own space look like Geocities if it's what makes them happy and is how they want to express themselves. Would also like to point out that customisation on MySpace is probably responsible for a whole generation of not only developers but non-tech focused people learning how to code. Met a lot of artists and designers who now work on the internet who MySpace was the starting point.
    - jsgo 9y ago
      I have no issue with someone doing it, but it doesn't mean I as a user am going to want to continue visiting it. As bland as Facebook is in look (and it could probably do with a less cluttered redesign), it is at least not a jarring experience so I can live with it. And for a site like MySpace to work, it needs traffic. Not sure on the generation of web developers MySpace created. Pretty sure every single page that looked like this was plastered with logos for theme building sites/companies littered with various neon-on-black comic sans designs as far as the eye can see.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Facebook is optimized to get you addicted to your feed. Muted blue colors everywhere with contrasting bright "berry red" rewarding notifications. Images that are always more contrasted than the layout, etc. Anecdotal: I use a custom Facebook skin that makes the whole UI red and add a background image. Since I've started using it, I spend less time on the website. It feels, in a way, more tiring to use the custom theme.
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    That's cool - can you share it?
    - Raphmedia 9y ago
      It is a mix of UserStyles that I blended together. I won't share it but you can replicate it using: https://userstyles.org/styles/115084/red-facebook-gta-5-lifeinvader-style https://userstyles.org/styles/115084/red-facebook-gta-5-life... as a basis and one of the current popular themes for the background https://userstyles.org/styles/147009/facebook-2k17-modern-design-no-ads-modern-chat https://userstyles.org/styles/147009/facebook-2k17-modern-de... https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=facebook https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=facebook
dictum 9y ago
Unfortunately, even proficient developers are having trouble due to some misguided technical choices those websites are making: https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593 https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/900005504931438593
- JosephRedfern 9y ago
  If those websites don't wish to support skinning, I don't see how the technical choices are misguided.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    True, but that still doesn't contradict the point made above regarding how the skinning community is a dying breed. Edit: I now realize that, taken out of context, my comment sounds pretty twisted.
  - smadge 9y ago
    Originally stylesheets were meant to be recommendations. It was envisioned that user agents, users, and web pages would have their own, separate stylesheets, and the user agent would negotiate between the different stylesheets to determine the final style. I would argue that Twitter is going against the original spirit and best practices of the web with their technical decision to use css-in-js.
    - dictum 9y ago
      Exactly. The Web is a medium with built-in customizability. This "our product is perfect and must be used as is" attitude reminds me of a relatively recent example that seems to be dying down: mobile websites that used the `maximum-scale=1 ` value in `<meta name="viewport"`. This disabled zooming in mobile devices. This was an accessibility issue that affected people who otherwise don't encounter other accessibility issues. If it were simply a matter of providing the smallest payload to clients, these sites could provide some sort of external manifest/source map mapping human-readable class names to hashes.
    - 9y ago
laumars 9y ago
Just because the client-side application's source code is readable in a text editor it doesn't mean it's easier to skin than a binary blob who's theming support is documented. Not to mention how your method could break tomorrow without warning because Facebook (or whatever you're skinning) push out an update that's incompatible with the theme you've hacked on to it.
megaman22 9y ago
I've tried to run custom stylesheets for some of these sites, to make them more usable and cut the cruft, but the interface elements are such a moving target, and with what appears to be randomized or obfuscated class names and ids, that it's a real PITA to keep working
imtringued 9y ago
Websites can change and break your client-side stylesheets.

msie 9y ago

It looks harder to completely replace the Windows shell than before. I've looked long and hard for a replacement that looks like Windows 95 (menus and windows controls especially) but no luck. There is WindowShades but it doesn't completely replace everything.

CamperBob2 9y ago
Doesn't ClassicShell still work in Win10?
- msie 9y ago
  Please don't get my hopes up!
- megaman22 9y ago
  Yes. It's almost required, since it replaces the incredibly brain-dead start menu search with something that works in a way that makes some kind of sense. I don't know how the default Windows 10 search is so broken.
kuschku 9y ago
Don't worry, KDE for Windows is still a thing - although the "whole shell" replacement currently isn't working with KDE Plasma 5, but only KDE 4
inferiorhuman 9y ago
XP always had the option to turn off themes which resulted in a w2k-ish (and by extension w95) look. Is this no longer an option?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Since Windows 7.
  - inferiorhuman 9y ago
    Ugh

craftyguy 9y ago

> I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn

app4soft 9y ago
> https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn https://reddit.com/r/unixporn/new https://reddit.com/r/unixporn/new

chme 9y ago

> I wonder if people who came to use computers in the last decade will experience the sort of enjoyment I got out of customizing the look and feel of applications. What you had to make skins yourself??? You didn't just get them via micro-transactions and loot-boxes??? /s