[Modnar]

Before we go any farther, something has to be clarified. The BuildSkin application is a programming assistance tool designed to help remove some of the tedium - not to mention aggravation - involved in creating a functional skin. It does not, will not, and can not do all of the work for you.

How it can assist your efforts is by keeping your art assets (small images that make up the skinable interface) along with the XML code (that specifies the positioning of these images) organized. This makes it possible to create small changes at a time, to a single interface element, save it and be able to use it at a later time. Kind of like creating sub-routines or functions in programming. They're re-usable material.

These elements allow you to build a large skin a piece at a time. Then, once all your pieces are complete, you can put them all together and publish a complete skin. Another option is creating variations on a skin. Perhaps you want to create a fancy and minimal version of your skin. Or, perhaps you need to add another screen resolution due to lots of requests.

Another issue is taking advantage of other people's moments of genius. Maybe some other user has created an interesting skin or effect and released it as a stand-alone mod. You can take that element (art and XML) and place it within BuildSkin. Thereafter you could include that element in another skin. (Keep in mind that you must have the creator's permission in order to release or publish anything that contains their content.)

Regardless of which way you plan to use BuildSkin, it is much easier to mix and match various interface elements to create a unique skin.