DirectSkin is a software component that is used by software developer

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

s to add skinning capability to their applications, which may or may not be exposed to end-user

End-user

Economics and commerce define an end user as the person who uses a product. The end user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product...

s. It is made by Stardock

Stardock

Stardock Corporation is a software development company founded in 1991 and incorporated in 1993 as Stardock Systems. Stardock initially developed for the OS/2 platform, but was forced to switch to Windows due to the collapse of the OS/2 software market between 1997 and 1998...

, and is derived from the WindowBlinds

WindowBlinds

WindowBlinds is a computer program that allows users to skin the Windows graphical user interface. It has been developed by Stardock since 1998, and is the most popular component of their flagship software suite, Object Desktop. It is also available separately, and as an ActiveX/COM component...

component of their software subscription package, Object Desktop

Object Desktop

Object Desktop is a software subscription service created by Stardock for OS/2 and relaunched for Windows in 1997....

. Being implemented as an ActiveX/COM

Component Object Model

Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...

 component, it may be used by any COM-capable language, including Visual Basic

Visual Basic

Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...

, VB.NET, C#, C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 and Delphi.

DirectSkin uses the WindowBlinds UIS file format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

, leveraging skin authors' existing knowledge. Users either contract Stardock or third party companies to create their skins, license existing skins for use with an application, or make their own using SkinStudio.

DirectSkin has seen use in various applications; the most public has been that of the ATI

ATI Technologies

ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...

 CATALYST Control Center, a graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 for their graphics card device driver

Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....

s running on the .NET Framework, introduced in 2004. Another example is Syncfusion, a toolkit for creating .NET applications.

External links

• DirectSkin official home page