This new version includes the capability to export your designs as working Windows applications using the recently released Autorun Maestro!

For a full list of the Version 7 changes to StyleSkin you can check out the news items below. This upgrade also include a number of minor changes and any minor bug-fixes that have been noted in Version 7.0. For more information on Autorun Maestro you can check the Autorun Maestro website here.

StyleSkin Version 6.0 has now been released! With this release we have concentrated not only on refining and expanding StyleSkin's output, but integrating even easier editing. With more polished button styles, excellent line smoothing, and a new recessed area you can now easily and quickly produce professional graphics to rival any you've seen!

Upgraded Button Styles!

All StyleSkin's button styles have been upgraded and finely tuned to give a cleaner, more polished appearance. For those new to StyleSkin, the software offers you a range of button styles, which you can configure to be any color or shade you like, as well as change a number of settings for each button style to get the look you want. You can quickly get the look you're after, or enjoy experimenting for hours playing with new looks, it's up to you!

The most noticeable changes have been to the Resin button style:

NEW Resin Button Style Illuminated from upper left (315º)

NEW Resin Button Style Illuminated from above (0º)

The Resin button style has also been upgraded to allow a negative lower shine! You can now adjust the lower shine band from dark through to light. This allows for a completely new look:

NEW Resin Button Style
Negative Lower Shine

The Gel button style has also been upgraded! Additional shine and refraction shaping gives more realism in the overall appearance:

NEW Gel Button Style

New Font Possibilities!

The font system has been entirely rewritten! This allows for complete flexibility in placing text on your skin, with true transparency, clarity and brightness. This new font engine also means the software no longer needs to modify screen font smoothing settings while it is running. You can even place text across elements in a skin:

NEW Font Capabilities

New Recessed Area!

A new Recessed area has been added! The new area allows you to create natural indentations in your skin of any shape and size:

NEW Recessed Area

New Line Smoothing!

All new line smoothing! The new line smoothing gives your design a professional finish, by replacing all the curves (in circles, ovals and rounded rectangles) with fully rendered lines:

NEW Line Smoothing

Even Easier Editing of Your Designs!

This new version also allows for greater flexibility in editing templates. You can now select multiple shapes and edit them as a group, including copying and pasting, layering, change their fill, border, font, style, alignment, etc! You can also now select shapes by pressing the Page Down or Page Up keys, allowing you to easily select layered shapes, even when they are not visible.

StyleSkin Version 5.0 is now available! This new version introduces an incredible array of new features and enhancements. Just some of these include:

All New Button Styles!

Three all new button styles now complement the previous three styles, doubling the buttons styles available! We have also upgraded the Gel button style and fully replaced the old Dome button with a new, completely configurable Dome button! The button styles now available are:

NEW Resin Button Style	NEW Gradient Button Style
NEW Concave Button Style	NEW Dome Button Style
UPGRADED Gel Button Style	Skin Button Style

Each button is fully configurable, allowing you to change the appearance in a multitude of ways. Each has a unique collection of settings and colors that allow you to get just the button you're after. Even the illumination angle will have a significant affect on the appearance! You can see here the Resin Button style illuminated from two different angles:

Illuminated from upper left (315º)

Illuminated from above (0º)

All the buttons and the StyleSkin title graphic on StyleSkin's pages are the Resin Button style.

New Browsers!

All new Browsers! Fully redesigned Template, Effects and Texture Browsers now allow more control over the size of the preview, folder to browse, as well as enhanced management controls. This means you can now easily visually browse through your templates and effect files, regardless of where you save them!

The preview creation process has also been upgraded and streamlined to make previews faster and easier to create, whether the user chooses to do that manually or let StyleSkin update automatically. All browsers are now displayed in a separate window, and are no longer bound to the workspace of StyleSkin, allowing more freedom in navigation and size.

More colors!

Not only have button colors been upgraded and consolidated, there are now more colors! This includes a separate color for flat (recessed) areas on your skin, allowing you to easily create two-tone skins.

There are also six more custom color slots, so you have ample room to store color options with your effects! 

Create Applications out of your designs!

This new version also offers the capability to automatically export your design as a fully functional Windows application capable of launching applications, opening documents, sending emails, go to an internet sites, open folders in Windows Explorer, plus a whole lot more!

This feature utilizes the latest release of Autorun Maestro, which is available separately. For more information on Autorun Maestro please visit the link below:

Autorun Maestro 4.0 à

Plus a WHOLE lot more!

A whole lot more has been added to StyleSkin to make it a valuable tool for beginners and veterans alike! These include such things as mouse-wheel support, performance and display tweaks, upgraded Help system, improved most recently used file lists, better tool palette management options, dynamic control labelling, etc etc. This all means that StyleSkin is easier to use than ever, while offering even more!

StyleSkin Version 4 is now available! This new version introduces an incredible array of new features and enhancements. Just some of these include:

Choose your Illumination Angle!

You can now illuminate your skin from any angle! Light a skin from below for a special effect, or directly from above, or from any other angle! Easy control allows you to simply drag the light source to where you want it:

Gel Buttons!

Highly attractive gel buttons can now be created! A great deal of control over the appearance of the button allows you to change every aspect of it! The buttons on this site are just one example of the new gel buttons! And Gel buttons can be illuminated from any angle:

Upgraded Text Rendering!

Now StyleSkin fully renders text! No more flat colors, you can now choose to have the texture show through the text, or increase the opacity to realistically blend the text with the background! You have full control over the clarity, opacity and brightness of the text!

Graphical Template Browser!

Conveniently browse your templates visually using the graphical template browser! The template browser shows thumbnails of all your templates, both native and bitmap based, in the StyleSkin templates directory!

New Interface!

Fully upgraded interface now sports the new Windows XP look, while retaining full functionality with other versions of the Windows operating system.

Upgraded Shine Function!

You can now add colored light reflections to your skin from any angle!

Upgraded Autorun Maestro Menu Export

Using the just released version of Autorun Maestro, you can instantly turn your skin into a fully functional menu application that can start programs, open documents, send email, open Internet sites, open folders in Windows Explorer and much more!

Select Multiple Objects in Templates!

Now you can select multiple shapes in native templates and move them as a whole, as well as copy, cut and paste them! 

Plus a WHOLE lot more!

Along with the existing full feature set StyleSkin has had new functions, features, upgrades and more in every part of the application! 

StyleSkin 3.0 Now Out! With new advanced optimizations, there's no more waiting for a skin to render. Most skins render almost instantly, even large ones! We have really concentrated on speeding up StyleSkin during this upgrade, and the results speak for themselves. With an impressive set of new features and improvements, StyleSkin is now easier and faster than ever before! New features include:

* Actual measured speed increase on a form with varied controls is 1494%.

We have decided to discontinue the Visual Basic Form Skinning Wizard Beta for the time being. While many found the software enjoyable and profitable, the design and principle of automatically recoding software source files is very complex. The sheer volume of methods people use when designing software meant the software was limited in what it could achieve. We did not feel we could release the software as something more than a beta when we were well aware that there were scenarios where the software had limited application. Thank you those who contributed feedback on the application. We hope everyone enjoyed the free beta and saw the possibilities that exist for StyleSkin and skinned applications in general.

StyleSkin 2.0 has now been released and can be downloaded in the Download Section! This new version sees the introduction of a number of new features, including:

The Beta for the StyleSkin Visual Basic form skinning wizard (StyleSkin Skin Wizard) has been upgraded! This tool allows developers who program in Microsoft Visual Basic to convert their existing forms over to accommodate a skin, and also create a template to create a skin for the form in StyleSkin. This allows developers to utilise StyleSkin in developing their software, as well as providing graphical interfaces for that software. In this release a number of issues have been resolved, particularly some bugs associated with skinning forms with metrics set to anything other than Twips. It is still important to note that the StyleSkin Skin Wizard is a separate program to StyleSkin, and is still in Beta form. It is currently offered for free to those who have registered StyleSkin.

Due to the recent release of the new version of StyleSkin and its Autorun Maestro export features, and the continuing popularity of the two with registering users, we have now released a discount package for the duo! You can now purchase registration to both Autorun Maestro (personal or business) as well as StyleSkin for a discounted rate of a 20% off the combined cost! See our registration form for details now!

You can check out Autorun Maestro, which can turn your skins into menu programs (that can open documents, go to web sites, pass messages to the user, open directories in explorer, start programs etc) over at Autorun Maestro's homepage, click here.

All new version now released! StyleSkin 1.2 has now been released and includes a host of new features. Some of the new features include:

With the new Export to Autorun Maestro function you can instantly turn your skin into a program! Autorun Maestro creates graphical menus where you can have any number of buttons, which can perform many different tasks. Autorun Maestro has a suite of sophisticated features, and now you can easily utilise those features. You can read more about Autorun Maestro here.

Now renders most skins significantly faster. StyleSkin has had a major upgrade to its rendering engine, and now renders many times faster on most native templates. StyleSkin now concentrates on rendering only the edges of your skin, and this means that all the areas "in between" are rendered very quickly with no reduction in quality, while the real grunt work is saved for the edges where the effects of rendering can be seen. The actual speed increases you will experience of course depends on the size and complexity of the particular skin.

Many other enhancements have gone into StyleSkin, to make working in the program easier, more enjoyable and more intuitive than ever!

We have just uploaded a new build of StyleSkin with a few minor updates and bug fixes. Most notably this new build is packaged with a new version of the set-up software. Previously we had reports of people experiencing a continual reboot cycle where the set-up program would ask the user to reboot to update system components, but if then rerun would give the exact same message. This prevented the installation of the software, and was an issue in Microsoft's deployment software. They have now released a fix for this issue, and we have repackaged the software to take advantage of this fix. If you were experiencing any problems installing the software before, please download this latest package.

The StyleSkin Form Skinning Wizard (beta) has been released! This new tool allows Visual Basic programmers to quickly and easily convert their programs into fully skinned interfaces! The software not only redesigns the VB form, but adds all necessary code (including a graphic TitleBar and drag code), and creates an advanced StyleSkin template ready to skin! If you program in VB, be sure to check out this addition. Registration to the Skin Wizard is included with StyleSkin!

We have just uploaded a new build of StyleSkin! There is only one change in this build, the skin rendering "depth" adjustment now has a maximum of 500 (previously 100). This greatly increases the appearance of very "shallow" skins, with thin contrasting 3D edges.

Our entire website has been redesigned! The new pages should not only be clearer to read, but faster to load and easier to navigate. The site has also been redesigned to be easier to maintain. Please change your bookmarks to reflect the new location of pages. We hope you like the new look!

Version 1.1 of StyleSkin is now available for download and purchase! This new version sees alot of changes in StyleSkin, with a wide range of new features. Additional features include:

New Accent Effects!
Surface Shine
Display Glow
Button Glow
Display Grain
Smooth (Normal)
Smooth (Plus Text)

Details on these new Effects can be found here.

Sizable Effects Browser!
You can now preview thumbnails of all your Effect Settings Files in a scrollable, sizeable, PRINTABLE Effects Browser! You can then just double-click the effects file you wish to use and it is instantly loaded up.

Sizable Texture Browser!
Forgotten what all those textures that come with StyleSkin look like? Well, now you can just click the Texture Browser button on the toolbar and you are presented with thumbnails of all the texture styles available.

New Textures!
New texture styles include:
Radial
Grill Spots
Fabric Weave

Now Can Save images in JPEG!
You can now save your skins as JPEG images! You can even export the button images in JPEG. This makes the images instantly suitable for use on the Internet. Compression is fully adjustable

Other New Features!
There are many other enhancements, improvements and bugfixes over the last version! Other new features include multiline shapes (text now wraps within shapes). Upgraded Native Template Editor for greatly increase speed and performance (especially noticeable on slower machines). Unregistered behaviour has changed as well, the software now renders completely unobstructed skins 25% of the time.

Release 2 of the StyleSkin 1.1 Beta is now available! The new version not only fixes up the couple of minor issue with the previous Beta release, it also adds a host of new features. The new version now has the capability to save (and export button images) in JPEG format, and adds a texture browser to compliment the previously released Effects Browser. Also added is another Accent effect, Corner Smooth. This effect smoothes the corners of buttons, displays etc. This gives the resulting skin a more realistic "photographic" look. Other improvements include multi-line shapes (text now wraps within shapes) and the Native Template Editor has been upgraded to improve performance on slower machines.

Various people have emailed us regarding this, so I'll repeat:

There will be no fee to upgrade to StyleSkin 1.1 for any registered users of StyleSkin.

The Beta for Version 1.1 of StyleSkin has been released for public testing! Version 1.1 will address a few minor bugs that came up in Version 1.0, as well as introduce a range of new features. These include a range of new rendering affects called "Accents". Included are Surface Shine, Display Glow, Button Glow and Display Grain. For a rundown on these new Accent Effects just click below!

The behaviour of the program in its unregistered state has also changed, it now allows completely unobscured and usable renders 25% of the time.

Also introduced is a scrollable, sizable effects browser! With thumbnails of all your effects files, this browser allows for easy and quick selection. Four new textures have also been added!

There will be no upgrade fee for registered user's of V1.0.

ZDNet has awarded StyleSkin its highest accolade, a 5 stars Gold Medal! We thank the good people at ZDNet, and we hope all our users enjoy the award winning software!

In other news, we have added a sample photo skin, which can be found in the Samples Section. Anyone interested in seeing StyleSkin's photo rendering capabilities is encouraged to check it out!

Also, a screenshot of StyleSkin has been added to the Features section.

After an intensive development process and much anticipation StyleSkin is now RELEASED! StyleSkin now offers not only revolutionary template driven rendering capability, but a native template editor, 24 different texture styles (each adjustable), specialised photo rendering capabilities (to turn you favorite image into a skin), as well as a full range of skinning features! All for only $29.95!!!!

Final Build now being tested! StyleSkin's final build is now undergoing testing prior to its release later this month (hopefully). We expect release to be within a week or two.

After a flood of applications, we have filled all beta tester places! With the unexpected response, we now expect this software to be out sooner than we had originally planned. For those interested in getting a hold of StyleSkin, current plans are for the final product to be ready within a matter of weeks!

Intended for advanced skin design, StyleSkin is a powerful program which renders interface skins from simple templates. It has a native template editor built in, with the option to import templates as images as well. With a myriad of applications, StyleSkin can compliment anyone's suite of graphic packages. You could be designing a program, or an interface to one, or a web site, or making a menu in our AUTOption Graphic, or promotional graphics... StyleSkin can produce jaw-dropping visuals! Please browse the other sections, available to the left. Please note that the graphics for the StyleSkin site were entirely designed in StyleSkin!