Why do all the available styles look just like the default?
 

I was under the impression that with the new CSS capabilities of 4.x that designers would be free to design more creative styles. However, all I seem to find are are styles that are barely more than color variations on the default style. There are some glaring issues with the default style like: The "+ Post New Thread" button, and the use of what appears to be Times New Roman for the "What's New" heading in the CMS. These, and other, attributes obviously appear poorly chosen for the surrounding style.

Where's the great styles hoped for with this release.

As a designer myself i would say most of them are holding off any major designs till the structure is properly sorted out. The CSS Elements are still a little sketchy with every release you see more than 200 Bugs fixed. So just wait till the design elements are stable, you will some decent styles around.

Dont forget with new vB4 CSS, the structure is very complicated, the time spent on creating a style must have atleast doubled if not tripled.

noticed that as well. still waiting for some cool styles.

The issue is with the images in your stylevars settings. To change that I downloaded the statusicon and misc folders to the cutom skin folder. I then changed the images that I wanted different in those folders. You also have to change the image directory setting in stylevars.

http://charismaticcentral.com/forums...php?styleid=33

Notice the status icons are different and the nav images too on this skin. The nav image is in the misc folder and the forum icons are in the statusicon folder.

I've attempted to design 2 complex skins now and have been met with more problems than it's worth. Trying to convince vBulletin Solutions their style sheets and coding aren't proper is a waste of my time, until those are fixed I wouldn't expect anyone to release anything.

Not to mention the variables are still changing for some reason, there are at least 3-4 that were changed what they controled in the 4.0.1 release, making the 4.0.0 not completely backword compatible already.

What. A. Joke.

There are limits to what you can do with 4.0. Maybe start with some skins that are not so complex. I learned how to convert my skins in about 2 days of playing with the stylevars. I now have 17 custom skins for my members to choose from. I can convert 2 skins per day only working maybe 6 hours max (3 hours per skin). It is simple, it just takes a little time to learn it. Before 4.0 I never had any success trying to do any skinning.

I like your skins, however, all you've done is change the colors. That just means changing the stylevars. It doesn't look like you did anything to change any of the css to change the look of the site or modified any templates to get a different look, both of which are the things the original poster is talking about.

skinbox.net has 2 skins that are fairly different from the original layout. Of course they're paid skins so sometimes you have to pay for quality.