Skinable UI’s?...

[tabclear]

Just a quickie…

What is everyone’s opinion on skinable UI’s? Do you think a P2P program would benefit from a truly skinable interface? I don’t mean skinable as in you can change the background to a picture, make the scrollbars pink and change the font. I mean truly free form skinable. This would allow users to add options they like, leave out the ones they don’t. Order things the way they like them, and generally have something that just looks nice on their desktop.

All opinions welcome.

Tab

[Roamerick]

But in practice I'd rather have a GOOD ui than a skinnable one. It may seem a truism, but it's amazing how much work some common interfaces for P2P programs need to just be usable, nevermind pretty.

[BloodySabbath]

One app that was going to try this approach was Hotline (http://www.bigredh.com). Its too bad HLC went under (for all practical intents and purposes) before they could release version 2.0 - Hotline is still a great source of files if you know where to look.

[MusicMan]

The more options and control the user gets, the more popular it is going to be. This is sort of the case with Gnucleus, one of it's main reasons for being popular is that it offers it's users so much control. It's users can tweak the software for maxium performance. Although that was slightly off topic, I agree mostly with Roamerick's post.