SOURCE: Winbeta
Sometime after the launch of XP, somewhere in Redmond, someone on the Microsoft design team was in the progress of developing something for Media Center. It was believed to be too powerful for public consumption and forever archived in the servers at 1 Microsoft Way.
Devoted Channel9 member W3bbo spotted an interesting theme on one of the ?people_ready? television commercials airing in the States. After some dedicated searching, he finally uncovered this mystery XP theme by Microsoft. W3bbo writes,

"During Royale?s development (the XP Media Center theme), the graphic artists also produced a black version of the skin, sans the overused ?glass? effect. The result is an aesthetic black skin named ?Royale Noir?, it even works with Office 2003.

Since the skin was never released (or reached final adjustments) there are a few issues with it: some of the colors don?t meet the overall ?feel? (they?re too purple-ish compared to the greys of the bitmaps) and the inactive titlebars are a little too dark.

You?ll find it?s been signed by Microsoft and doesn?t require a custom UxTheme.dll in case there are any doubts as to its authenticity.

If you already have Royale installed, you?ll need to remove it as both of these skins share the same name.

This skin has not been released to anyone outside Microsoft, until now."

Review

Without a doubt, XP Media Center?s Royale theme was a huge improvement over Luna. It updated the clich? beveled look-and-feel of XP to a contemporary glossy style, whilst keeping similar color schemes and layouts. In my opinion, it was the most usable non-standard XP theme available.

Royale Noir is an almost exact copy of Royale except with a dark purplish tint. If Royale was day, Royale Noir is night. No doubt about it, this is a ?dark? theme. If you?re the sort of person who likes bright and vivid colors, stay away from this theme.

As W3bbo pointed out, there are quite definitely issues with this theme due to its incompleteness. The most obvious being, the ?Start? button?s hover and active states are unchanged from Royale, inconsistent with the purple tint surrounding. However, there is even a color scheme for Office 2003 so it will not default to the blue Luna colors.

Looking at it from the big picture, Royale Noir is a welcomed alternative to the extremely small collection of verified-by-Microsoft XP themes. However being incomplete, it is not recommended for the general consumers. Enthusiasts are welcomed to try it to stand out from the crowd, but even still, you?ll feel right at home with the familiar Luna/Royale style.

Download Royale Noir

Extract files to ?c:\windows\resources\themes\royale noir? and double click on ?luna.msstyles?. Select ?Noir? from color scheme. Code-signed by Microsoft. No UXTheme hack required.

As I emphasize again, I take no credit for this amazing find. W3bbo did an amazing job uncovering this mystery XP theme, hats off to him!

News Source: istartedsomething.com