So next year custo will have been around for 10 years! That's a lot of history. I think it's time we put together a definitive history of customization, from pre-custo winamp skinning right up to vista and EVO. I've attempted a basic outline here (definitely needs some work):
If you can think back to what the community and skinning scene was like at any of those points, please edit that page and contribute! Or just post here if you have any stories of times gone by so we can fill in the gaps... :)
In the beginning there was darkness. And on the first day, the spirit of Fli7e gazed upon the WinAmp and he said: "dude, I can reshack them bitmaps". And lo, customisation was born. And on the second day, the Soft of the Null noticed these reshacked versions and released a version with extracted, easily changeable graphics. And from that day forth this was called skinning.
No doubt that there are earlier examples (on various platforms), but the current movement started there.
Ok this is good, i've put craeonics little story up ;) Can anyone remember what other skinnable apps where important back in the day... what was the first way to theme windows, was it Litestep?
Yeah that would be easier, we have a year to do this tho so why not ;) I'd imagine it will end up as more of a history of customize.org but at least this way we don't exclude anything of interest that might have happened elsewhere
I've been thinking of wwriting a history of skinning one day (hell, I even study history these days). But not now. I do have some random pointers:
- The first "skins" (reshacked versions of WinAmp) popped up at layer3.org. This was a bit before my time, but I get the impression the skinners of these days had some links to the demo scene.
- The term "skin" comes from the skins used for characters in Quake and the like.
-i mean, there you can find artist that don't make any use of computers, but to scan/upload their works -but if you're looking to really "Pimp your ride at the virtual world" ...this is the right spot ...is there any other?
-btw some members right here are members there (like me) (haven't uploaded there :s)
DevArt started as a skin site and was nice and quiet, but after six months the floodgates of Teen Angst opened and ever since it's been all about "art".
egolatra: dA is a customizing site. Click on all categories>customizing.
I know that, i submit some of my stuff in there, but what i mean is: DA isn't just a customizing site. They have a lot of categories, so, telling that, we are a pure customizing site. If we had to compete, our rivals should be, i.e. wincustomize
craeonics, layer3 was actually the second site that contained skins, the first of which was the digideck archive which would become custo (also created by glenn)
Tib bit: during the end of the first incarnation of custo, an error caused everyone's user name to show up as glenn. As a practicle joke on modblog (possibly deskmod too), they did it on purpose. They set it in the code to go off on every April 1st. >;]
Btw, you will find a lot of history at Teknidermy. They have some way back interviews with site admins and such. The WayBackMachine has some stuff here and there too.
The daily screenshot hadn't been changed for a year at this point, no news posted, and they'd put the site on a windows server which broke some of the code. Most people had left for DeskMod or Skinz, tho DM was up on eBay as they couldn't afford the hosting costs and Skinz was in eFront hell. Bad times for the skinning community!
Anyone got any stories from around that time? I was only an occasional visitor back then but i remember how bad things got when ChangeMusic took over.
I've added it to the history page along with some more of the links and info posted here (keep it coming :)
and you usually deserved it if you were uploading icq+ photoskins, or winamp photoskins. I rather miss the days of tearing into some kid who just put a picture from his favorite band into a winamp skin generator. *pine*
