Two "Skins" Folders

[Kaelri]

I've noticed that having two Skins folders - one in My Documents, the other in Program Files - has been causing a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. I'm sure that's partly because everyone who used 0.14 is used to doing things in Program Files, but it happens to new users, too. And the difficulty is that they are often not aware of the problem, which means we'll spend a lot of time and effort trying to help them solve an error, only to discover that they've been working in the wrong place. (I know the Program Files\Skins folder already has a .TXT warning, but it's clearly not enough.)

I think we could fix this by placing the Program Files skins/themes into a new folder, something like "Backups". So it'd be:

C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Backups\Skins
C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Backups\Themes

This would be a clear message that these are not the skins people should be editing.

[jsmorley]

I've noticed that having two Skins folders - one in My Documents, the other in Program Files - has been causing a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. I'm sure that's partly because everyone who used 0.14 is used to doing things in Program Files, but it happens to new users, too. And the difficulty is that they are often not aware of the problem, which means we'll spend a lot of time and effort trying to help them solve an error, only to discover that they've been working in the wrong place. (I know the Program Files\Skins folder already has a .TXT warning, but it's clearly not enough.)

I think we could fix this by placing the Program Files skins/themes into a new folder, something like "Backups". So it'd be:

C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Backups\Skins
C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Backups\Themes

This would be a clear message that these are not the skins people should be editing.

This would have to be a step taken after the files are copied to My Documents, and the downside I could see (playing devil's advocate) is that it makes transitioning from full to portable less intuitive. Right now they can make a copy of Program Files\Rainmeter, rename Default.ini to Rainmeter.ini and they are all set.

I agree that it can and has caused some heartburn though. They install, run Rainmeter, then proceed to edit skins in Program Files and are frustrated that they can't make their changes take effect.

[dragonmage]

Maybe add a little message at the end of the installer that says

"Your skin folder is C:\Blah\Blah\Blah"