DirectSkin 4.5 has been reviewed by Mike Gunderloy at the Larkware site.
"DirectSkin is a single ActiveX control with a simple purpose: it brings
skinning to your applications. That is, you drop the control on your form and it
is not itself visible. Rather, it enables your application to make use of
Stardock's skinning technology, developed for its own WindowBlinds application.
Your end users can then select from a variety of "skins" (which you need to
provide) to change the look and feel of your application. Thus, you're not tied
to the standard Windows widgets and colors; with enough artistic creativity,
your application can look like it's made from wood, burnished metal, burnt
toast, or rotting fruit."
(Note to application developers: I'd pass on the "rotting fruit" look, if I
were you! Talk to your marketing folks, rotting fruit is passe!)
The article concludes "If you do feel a need to implement skinning, you ought
to take a look at DirectSkin; it's been very widely deployed and tested, and
this is precisely the sort of thing that you ought to buy instead of trying to
build for yourself. You really don't want to spend the next six months fiddling
around in Windows graphics internals only to come up with a solution that
doesn't cover all the bases, now do you?"
Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous
books and articles on programming topics.