GUI Olympics: Week 2 results

Well done, Grayhase! Your skin is really flawless, by all means.

BTW, last night when I was looking at the preliminaries I really went through these skins closely and I was really impressed with them. Very good use of SmartButtons for instance in some fo them. I really like Lean Green in particular as a power user skin and OlympicOS also makes good use of SmartButtons.

Just wondering - how did two UIS2 skins get into the medals for Fastest skin? Haven't we been told that UIS1 is far ahead of UIS2 on performance levels? I'm sure there were more than 5 skins using UIS1, if only as subskins. For example, I'm kind of amazed that Lean(er) Green isn't in there at all - it doesn't even use stretching in *any* borders, and from what I can see it is slightly faster than Blackcomb.

Apparently this category was not at all about being the fastest skin. Beats me what is was about though. Only 2 out of the five are UIS1 skins? Leaner green was faster than all those skins. The only truly fast ones out of those 5 are Z and Blackcomb. This is very discouraging to people who truly tried to make skins for this category that were optimized for speed. Apparently the only good use for UIS1 is for arguments about msstyles vs. windowblinds.

I'm not a judge so I can't comment on the choices made. I can give you my personal opinion though on how I would have voted. Leaner Green did benchmark slightly faster than Z UIS1 did. Blackcomb did not benchmark the fastest and was slower than some UIS2 skins. The difference between those fastest skins and the slower skins in the contest is pretty significant. I did benchmark the top 30 or so skins and the scores ranged from a 15 or so down to an 8 or so on the slower ones of the top 30 fastest. The difference between a Leaner Green and say MetalX was less than half a point. At that point, I'd call them basically even and pick which ones used features well. I don't know how the judges actually made their determination. I don't necessarily agree with the ordering but none of the skins that won could be considered anything but amongst the fastest skins out there.

I consider MetalX and OlympicOS to be fast UIS2 skins, but certainly not amongst the fastest skins. The contest also *specifically* said "fastest skin". Half a point is most certainly significant - 0.1 would be. In the real olympics, the difference between first place and *last* place is often less than 5%. Would you be prepared to share this benchmarking tool with the rest of us, since it seems to be such a good measure of performance? In fact, if this was the program that was used by judges to benchmark the skins, why wasn't it available beforehand for testing?

treetog>> Well done to you too!

I do feel slightly bad for those people putting in the effort to make fast UIS1 skins. To be perfectly honest, I haven't even tried to make a UIS1 skin yet because I like being able to have everything in a skin exactly how I want it. As for my metalX skin being fast, I did spend a lot of time trying to make everything as clean as possible, and I only used stretching in one or two places. However, it was just as much a shock to me when Brad told me how fast my skin was last week. So I'm sorry if anyone feels they've been cheated by my skin getting silver. I don't really understand how the category was judged either, but I guess maybe it shows that there really isn't much of a contest where speed is concerned with WindowBlinds.

This was all bound to happen due to the dubious judging guidlines in place. As many pointed out before the judging ended, this is one event that there should have been very little confusion. The category was for "Fastest" skin, not coolest kinda fast skin, not fastest UIS1skin, "fastest". Brad even gave us tips to make skins faster and recommended a program to benchmark our skins. Obviously these tips were irrelevant, as is the program that brad recommended (no offense greenreaper), because Skinbench says that there are skins that are considerably faster than 2 of the medalists. Not slightly faster, much faster. I asked for more details regarding the internal benchmarking program, because i was amazed at vastly different results of what brad was testing versus what I and other skinners were testing. I didn't get any response when I asked about what criteria this program used, so was just left to wonder, now I'm not the only ione wondering apparently.

To be totally honest, I´m also surprize to see my Olympics OS being one of the fastest skins. I didn´t make it thinking about that (it even has some transparencies). I don´t care too much about fast skins since, thanks God, I have a fast machine. The only things I had in mind was the emprovements TheGrennReaper teached me some time ago, wich I try to use in all my skins. For the next contest, for sure I would try to change the judging method for this category...really, I don´t feel that confortable with this medal.

My criteria for judging "fastest" also included how fast the skin was to use. For instance, Alias lost some points with me because its buttons were rather small. That it made it more cumbersome in use.

No offense matteo but....."Fastest to use"?? Thats exactly what i meant by the judging criteria being "dubious". The thought of using the skin fast never entered my mind or i'd guess many other people's. all the talk was about benchmarking, stretching vs. tiling, textback, etc. I could see your point if you were judging on most usable skin, but not here. Thanks for your comment though matteo, it solves a bit of the mystery.

Damn pocket pc screen! sorry matteo....that was regarding nakor's post obviously.

congrats to everyone who received a medal in this round, and to all participants.

davad70>> Although I do agree with you that there was a lot of talk of benchmarking and such, there were also several points both in the lead up to and during the contest that it was stated that the judges would interpret the categories how they wanted. In particular, I remember a couple of posts from Frogboy saying that judges may choose to grade skins in this category based on how fast the skin was to use as well as benchmarked speed. I'm not saying I agree with this thinking exactly, but you have to admit that useability does play a part in 'skin speed'. Putting things in a frame of reference I'm at home with, when a client talks about how quick a website is to use that I put together, they're not always talking about network speeds. A client tends to see things on face value, and I think that's the way things may have gone here.

As was pointed out long ago, "Fastest skin" was left purposely vague. Some skins benchmark faster on different pieces of hardware. And the judges did NOT use the benchmark I used left me repeat - I AM NOT A JUDGE. However, like Kris points out,"fastest to use" is perfectly valid (IMO). The "fastest" skin in terms of raw benchmarking of drawing would boil down to one with no borders or title bar at all. I don't know what the judges used as their criteria. I think though at most we learned that we need to make sure different events are spelled out more specifically in the future.

In my judging for the fastest skin I used 3 different benchmarking programs and did a combined rating systems between the three. So needless to say I spent a great deal of time in judging this category. And I also took into consideration on how fast it is to use the skin like Nakor did. But it was interesting to see the speed differences between the 3 programs (SkinBench, XPBench and WBTimer). There was no 1 skin that was fastest between all 3 programs.

Ruined Inc>> I almost kept quiet about this, but I think it has to be said. If you hadn't already seen my metalX skin, would Gilla have included all those features? I've noticed quite a lot of skins being entered late into this contest which haven't even tried to disguise the fact that they used the layout of my skins for a template, with some even being the same down to pixel spacing. Maybe you didn't mean what you said quite the way it sounded, but it came across as a criticism of my skin being voted high.

Can we all just stop arguing about what's already been, and just concentrate on what's to come? I know my skin won three medals, so I'm hardly likely to complain, but all this hostility isn't exactly dignified. The results aren't going to be changed by complaining, and the judges all had their own reasons for voting the way they did, so let's just accept the outcome and move on. There are still plenty of chances to win here, and the prizes only get bigger in the coming events.

By the way, I just want to clarify that I don't have a problem with people using my skins as a starting point for the layout of their designs. I'd just prefer that people use a little more creativity and come up with their own ideas for layout. It's very uncomfortable to see a skin uploaded which is basically a copy of one of my skins with a new paint job, especially if the author then goes on to claim that their skin is better than one of mine.

Ruined Inc>> One notable feature that the two top skins have over your Gilla skin is color customization. I think this goes a long way to making a skin a 'power skin', as it allows the user to have the skin look and work exactly the way they want it to. I actually meant to say 'dinks' rather than 'metalX' when I made my comment before. The similarity is noticeable, but you have made some changes which make the workings of the skin different, perhaps even better. My comment about people using my skins as templates wasn't really aimed at yourself anyway.

Ruinedinc - I don't get all the complaining. I offered to have one of my skins (Seti glass) removed since you complained about it being here, and now I find out you 'borrowed' grayhaze's skin for your layout and features (with no credit given apparently) and then complain that yours didn't score higher than his. To be honest with you, I think your skins are very well made but I've never used one and probably never will because your color schemes are so radical. I think in terms of 'usability' a wildly dramatic color scheme makes a skin less functional as an every-day working UI design. Because of the work I do a power-user skin to me is all about function and usability. I need skins to stay out of the way when I'm doing graphics (most of what I do is package design) kind of like what Milton Glasser said about type layout - "the best typography goes unnoticed". I think a power-user skin should at least be neutral in color, but that's just my take on it.

I didn't realize you were more than one person. I didn't mean to get you riled up - sorry if my remarks rubbed you the wrong way. I was just trying to say what a power user skin is to me, which I believe was your question. I admire your creativity and your very different approach to color in skins. Relax... you have two medals already and I'm sure you'll get more. The comment about Gray's skin was based on the above thread. Sorry if I misinterpreted what was said. what's wrong with typography? I always thought that was a brilliant statement from old Milton

I have to say that making Gilla colorisable would not have worked adequately with WB the way it was when the skin or the contest were started. WB did not apply colorisation to the [colours] section correctly until very recently (and as far as I know still has some issues). I have no doubt if WB supported it correctly that malform would have included that feature (since he asked me about the very same subject). To me I prefer a skin to look nice than to have lots of features (Of course if it has both then that's great ;)) Now WB supports colorisation on [colours] he could add it fairly easily in time for the colorisable skin category. (drop into #stardock and I'll give you a hand if you want, malform) Just have to say that I bear no ill feeling to the judges or those who did win in fastest skin. Let's not get into arguments about things we cannot control. The judges decision is their decision and is final. Hopefully Stardock can learn from the experience for future contests and we can learn to be happy for each other. After all skinning should be FUN!

That should have been 'I prefer a skin to look nice than to have lots of features at the expense of looks'