“BetaNews has reported fresh rumours that Microsoft will
build skinning into future versions of Windows, in an attempt to
give the OS the theme capabilities of Linux. Right now these
are only available from third parties.”
“(The BetaNews gang spotted a job ad back in January where
Microsoft was hiring developers with experience of extensible
Window managers.)”
“We’ve heard these rumours too and can shed a little more light
on the project. We hear that Microsoft does indeed have such a
development project on the go, although it’s only got semi-official
status, and is comprised of developers who worked on the Real Media
Player 7 and MSN Mars projects. The goal is to introduce basic
themes into Whistler, the consumer version of Windows 2000.”