.... Re 'Power User'....once upon a time...in the dawn of skinning it was all within the realm of the 'power user'.....the person actually willing to break his/her OS....just so it might look more interesting, or work in a clever/novel way.
There were precious few "What do I do now?" questions and more of the "How the heck did you do that?".
Skinners [and users] both had dirty fingernails....and sleeves rolled up.
These days it's a bit more 'us and them', and it's the [more numerous these days] them that ask the 'what do I do now?' questions. ...
Hey, Jafo! Yep, I remeber those days. Everything done by hand, .. no skin studios or whatever, just be ready to reinstall OS every other month. While I visit the galleries and forums relatively frequently I don't post, but your statement revived those memories. I remeber skinnerz like treetog, dangeruss, adni, Mike and others who use to almost weekly post new blinds skins on skinz.org and then here. Brad and you frequently commented on our creations and that was very cool (and most likely you still do). Since then the community here has grown beyond the most optimistic predictions. I think that back in 1999 or 2000 even Brad couldn't imagine such a growth. Compared to back then with a smaller, maybe closer and better connected skinnerz, today the community seems to be large, maybe less connected, but still moving forward and producing quality. When I look at some of my work from that early period (like
this one or
this one -- BTW, for some reason my skins don't connect to my user name, only
this one does), I see that the new talented creatives have taken charge and really produced some high quality stuff that is better looking and/or more complete and bug free. So, I'm not afraid or doubtful about the community future. Anywho, keep up with the great work you guys do.