Chaninja -skinners become biggest community on the internet.

I remember back in university thinking , how the hell can i get windows to look better ? Well the answer soon arose in "skinning" and theme building.


Initially Stardock created Object Desktop,Stardock used to be the world's leading independent developer of IBM's OS/2 software. Core amongst those products was Object Desktop for OS/2. If you bought a machine pre-loaded with OS/2, there was a good chance you had Object Desktop on it.

Object Desktop filled in the gaps in the OS. It added features and new functionality to OS/2 as well as made it look nicer. One of the features in Object Desktop allowed users to add new looks to the OS. The term "Skinning" hadn't been coined yet.

The tool was then spred via online communities.

I found a few graphics communities and once i had seen http://www.deviantart.com i was hooked.
Deviantart is a non commercial portal that is the biggest online community on the web.

Years later this little niche community has mushroomed and become the biggest sub culture on the internet.There are now GUI Olympics and big applications available to skin windows 95 - XP. Customising operating systems is as cool as customizing ones motor vehicle.

Out of these communities has come the cult status of the theme creators or skinners. One such pioneer has been Chaninja. From humble beginnings The Chaninja has progressed to becoming a somewhat legend on the internet.

Names such as Tallyhawk , Sentinel and Chaninja Style have become sought after downloads on the net resulting in hundreds of thousands of download from boards and community upload sites.

I was amazed whilst doing research to find youngsters waiting and begging for months for Chaninja to launch a new theme suite. Teh demand had become so huge that Chaninja chose himself a dojo @ http://www.chaninja.com.

Theme suites involve customised icons,taskbars,wallpapers and any conceivable application used on a PC/Mac and cellphone.

my desktop will never be the same…

chaninja can be found residing at http://www.chaninja.com