Rainmeter Resume Vol.1

Here it is. The first news article of the new founded Rainmeter Group on deviantART. In this article we are going to try to inform you about the latest things going on inside the Rainmeter community.

Brains started smoking about what the best way it would be to represent Rainmeter on devART. Finally we got it to manage and came up with the first Rainmeter group on devART ever.

For those of you who don't know what Rainmeter is: Well, actually we always were living side by side with you, since devART has an own category for Rainmeter deviations. By having a look into it, you will probably notice, that it has something to do with desktop customization. And that's it! With Rainmeter you can empower your desktop with an expandable library of useful tools – handy notes and application launchers, weather and feeds from the web, system status and more. Then, you can rearrange and modify them to suit your personal style. With Rainmeter, your desktop is finally yours. And the best thing about it is, that you can easily learn it and make your own 'skins'. Your desktop is not bound to any templates made by others any longer. Make your owns with Rainmeter!

The aim of this group is actually the same. We want your desktop to become free and independent from Windows, no matter wich version you are running. We want to motivate you to make your own skins. Once you are a member we will try to improve your skills together and finally we want to promote your artwork. Yes, desktop customization can be art aswell.
About three weeks ago we founded this group. About one week ago we officially opened this group for you and during this time our member count has been increased to a current number of 25 members exactly. We never believed that it would be a that big success. Powered by this success we want to grow even more. Rainmeter haven't experienced it's borders and also this group hopefully haven't yet. The amount of Rainmeter users is a ever growing number and each of them needs help sometime. This group and the official Rainmeter forums are the perfect home for them.

To promote the best skins, we are launching a "Skin Of The Month" (=SOTM) contest each month. On our forums you will find a thread regarding the current contest.
The contest consists out of two phases. The first phase is currently running and offers the chance to make suggestions, no matter wether the skins are made by yourself or someone else. Only thing we need, is the permission of the owner to upload it to our account, so that we can promote it and let the skinner - or, as we call them Raineer - get an greater audience. Since there are no suggestions made so far, you still have a chance. We would especially like to feature a work made by a 'little' Raineer, as they really need it more than a well known artist.
After the first phase has been finished, we will launch the second phase - the actual voting phase. As for causes of better organizing, we will hold both phases at the official Rainmeter forums.
SOTM is the final platform for both, the Raineers to promote their work and for the users to easily search high quality Rainmeter skins.

Sadly we have to announce, that the especially for Rainmeter launched Accuweather feed will stop soon. They had problems with their servers, wich is connected with too many updates. There were too many Rainmeter users out there, who called their server each second. Officially there was a limit of 15 minutes, wich really is fast enough for a weather skin. So we will lost this feed soon.
Therefore many Raineers started working on a new weather skin to avoid the probably standard help request 'My weather skin does not work' coming up within the next weeks on the Rainmeter forums for several times. As for now we can only advice you, to change the weather skin. Even if it was a nice service, Rainmeter is not bound to Accuweather. There are so many alternatives out there, wich haven't been discovered yet. So don't worry. For those of you who really need a weather skin, just have a look into the Rainmeter category. Probably in the near future there will appear as many weather skins as you never have seen before.
Just lean back and follow us and see what the SOTM for this month comes up with - maybe a new weather skin. Who knows? Or simply make your own weather skin. Always feel free to call for our assist at the forums. With the big community in your back you will never get lost in your riddles.

Well, after the bad news about weather skins, we have also have good news for you. Rainmeter is facing it's 1.1 release. What this is all about we will tell you next time. This time we are going to tell you about a handy application that hopefully will find it's way into the 1.1 release. You may already know JSMorley. He is one of the brightest stars at the Rainmeter sky. He always comes up with some nice helper tools and also some really neat looking suites. His current project is called RainBrowser and offers the user the possibility to browse through his skins in an easy way. You can view the currently running skins and edit their Metatags. Metatags are used to define the author, the name, a description, instructions, the license, a preview image and things like that. A very useful function is, that you can search your skins, as you can easily put any search tags on your skin settings. The datas are understandable implemented in the applet, so that you can also edit them without having RainBrowser running. You can also browse through your entire skin folder and load any skins from your RainBrowser. By now it is still in the beta phase but we look forward to have it included in the improved Rainmeter 1.1.

In the end we would like to do some self-promotion for our forums. There is actually not much to say about it.
Whenever you look on promotions for forums, they will say, that they are the most helpfull, the most friendly, the most active and the most whatever, community on earth. Well, while most forums lie in the view of these points, we do not so! We are truely the most helpfull, the most friendly and the most active forum. Maybe not on earth, but at least in the world of Rainmeter.

Rainmeter Group | Rainmeter Forums | Rainmeter Group at the forums | Rainmeter Download | Rainmeter Manual

Now have a look and get an idea on what your desktop could look with Rainmeter running:


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