OK, I've been holding this in for a few weeks now and I can't take it anymore. Ever since we switched gears with The Daily Commute I've been thinking about a podcast client downloader app. This is really what's holding up the podcasting revolution. So, my posse and I set out to design a simple and powerful client app that we could easily skin to make it look however we want. We ended up using some Alpha Blending code from a CodeProject article, and figuring out all the intricacies of developing skins. What we've got now is a .NET 1.1 Windows Form derivative that does 32-bit alpha blending (a la Avalon), can swtich skins while running, has no jagged edges, draws a beautiful drop shadow on the windows beneath it, can fade in and out, and loads skins defined with an xml file generated from a typed dataset. We've been just in awe dragging them around on our desktops all last week, and we wanted to give everyone a look-see at what we're up to.

Here's a hi-res screen shot that shows two instances of the same app running. We've set it up so that you can switch skins by moving the mouse wheel. The top skin is a corporate looking skin that has the appearance of smoked glass. You can see through it in places, and it's opaque in other places. The skin below it actually started out as a piece of aluminium. The artist took a hammer to it, took a picture of it, added light and shadow, and it slowly took form. Both of these skins were developed graphically by Dax Pandhi at Nukeation Studios. The guy is a frickin genius.

http://www.pwop.com/PwopCatcherSkins.jpg