Softvelocity's Clarion for Windows has been my tool of choice for many years, that is up until version 7.0 - I may write more on that later.  However, while Clarion is a great tool for rapidly developing database applications it has been challenging to make Clarion applications eye-catching.  I have purchased a number of add ons to make my Clarion applications more visually appealing.  I think I started with Capesoft's Makeover, then Gitanosoftware's Looks Good Package.  Of course I later used XP Theme and Taskpanel (now marketed by Icetips).  Most recently I had tried Cool Frames and Cool Buttons.  While each of these allowed me to improve the appearance of my software, I found them all lacking in one way or another.

When developing an application you want it to be good looking, and consistently good looking.  I found that there are always some portions of an app that just wouldn't style correctly.  For example, I use Clariontools Wizards in almost all of my programs, but these forms seemed to be difficult to style, makeover, or whatever you want to call it. 

Recently I purchased Codejock's Skin Framework - http://www.codejock.com - and in order to add this great feature to my Clarion apps I bought the Wrapper for the framework from Noyantis - http://www.noyantis.com and have been very pleased with the end results and the short amount of time taken to implement the skins. Skinning is very complete.  The first application I chose to Skin included a lot of third party templates.  These included:  Query and Report Wizards, Fomin's Report Builder, dpQuery for importing, Gitano's G-Cal for date picking, and more.  The only disappointment I had was when adding Capesoft's Secwin to the application.  While the imported Secwin forms were instantly skinned, text in many areas was not readable with Microsoft ClearType enabled.  I finally ripped out Secwin and popped in Gitano's G-Sec and was able to turn Clear Type back on.  I feel the issue I had was more a problem with Secwin than the skin framework. 

Bottom line:  the purchase of the Codejock skin framework and the Noyantis wrapper is a purchase I would suggest to any Clarion developer who wants to make their program more visually appealing.

The screen shots above are just two looks you can add.  The program is running on Windows XP but these samples have a Vista look and feel.