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Long Zheng  a blogger in Australia, talks about a newly discovered XP Theme that was never released previously. Its a dark looking theme that's similar to Vista's Aeroglass ones and its perfect for those who don't intend to jump over too soon. Thanks to devoted Channel9 member W3bbo who spotted this interesting theme and revealed it, much to the delight of many Digg readers.

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.