microUgly.com

My DA Favourites
Little World by celsojunior
1 Nov, 2005

XML Windows Shell

This morning I recieved an e-mail about my EyeDrop Litestep theme. I always recieved a lot of praise on the two LiteStep themes I created. I'm guessing it's probably been 12 months since I used Litestep myself. I think the novelty wore off and I started to appreciate the simplicity of the Explorer shell. Any-hoo, I thought maybe it was time to try Litestep again and possibly update my themes. In 12 months there must have been some exciting developments — but I'm not sure there has been. Most of the modules in my Glaze theme have only incremented one or two minor versions. As it is, it's impossible to design a theme that works identically to the Explorer shell. So what can be done to improve Litestep?

I personally think Litestep needs a complete redesign using XML. Litestep should be the skinning engine. It's backwards to skin each module individually. The skeleton and visual appearance of a theme should be able to be created using a single XML file and related style information without using any modules. The modules would be used only to provide functionality — linked the elements of the theme defined in the XML file. This would result in themes that are totally portable and more easily configurable. You could drop in a new versions of modules without breaking the theme. And there would be no issues with trying to make the skins from different modules interact correctly. Web developers understand the importance of seperating presentation, content, and functionality and the same principals apply shells like Litestep aswell.

Excitingly, this is exactly how Sparkle in Windows Vista works. I watched the video linked from this blog (917MB) and I was in awe of what I saw. Being able to define an application interface in XAML will be truely revolutionary. And I can't help but to hope that the XAML files for most application (especially the Explorer shell) will remain editable allowing users infinitely flexability over how they want to interact with their software.

Filed In:

Comments

No comments have been posted.

Add comment:


Submit Comment Preview Comment

Rules: Paragraphs and linebreaks are automatically created (two or more linebreaks create a paragraph). Linebreaks between code tags remain linebreaks. Block tags cannot be enclosed by inline tags. Red attributes are required and green is optional.

Use "&lt;" and "&gt;" for "<" and ">". Enclosing PHP code in <code> tags will highlight the code (i.e. <code>&lt;?php echo 'hello world'; ?&gt;</code>).

List of valid tags: