“The new version 5 of WindowBlinds adds features like per-pixel alpha blending, as well as the ability to change toolbar icons, progress animations, and the hue and saturation of the Windows interface. WindowBlinds runs as a Windows XP extension to the Themes feature, so it doesn’t require any additional program to run on your PC to work. It also takes advantage of your graphics processor to display its interface eye candy, so that your CPU won’t slow down. In fact, the company claims that repainting, resizing, and moving windows will be noticeably quicker as a result of this use of video acceleration for the UI. The Hyperpaint feature even lets you adjust the degree of hardware acceleration. Hyperpaint uses the extra video RAM on your video card to buffer windows, which makes moving them faster.”
I purchased a copy of ObjectDesktop, which contains WindowBlinds, DesktopX, IconPackage, etc a few years back. Was disappointed to find a month or so ago when I went to install it on my laptop that it no longer would install. It said I had to purchase a new copy. I just don’t understand that. I could understand not letting me download updates that would bring it up to the newest version, but why can’t I install the old version I bought? It was a nice product and would probably run really nice now days on my Pentium 4 2.6GHz with 1GB RAM, but I would have to purchase it again.
Seek and thou shall find: http://www.stardock.com/support.asp
“Enter the email address you ordered under originally to receive an email with the serial numbers and download links for the Stardock products you have previously ordered.”
I guess your problem is solved.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Most of the themes available appear too garish to use as a day-to-day UI. There is obviously a lot of work put into the design of the title bars, fonts used, gradients, colour schemes, pixel widths etc of the UI in Windows – I don’t see anything on the themes listing site that betters a bog standard XP.
I am impressed, however, by how Stardock essentially modifies XP’s theming engine to use the GPU to render themes – something that is sorely needed on an XP machine with a lot running. I personally see that as the only benefit to installing and using WindowBlinds. While the alternate themes may be fun for a while, I can’t see any that would come with longevity of use.
There was a really good one called Vista_WB that was just like the Glass theme from Windows Vista, but apparently Microsoft had some words with the creator of the theme and it got pulled. If you can find it anywhere its worth giving a spin.
Most of the themes available appear too garish to use as a day-to-day UI. There is obviously a lot of work put into the design of the title bars, fonts used, gradients, colour schemes, pixel widths etc of the UI in Windows – I don’t see anything on the themes listing site that betters a bog standard XP.
People want different themes for different reasons. Some want to make the coolest screenshot to impress their friends while others want to make the default theme more usable. WB includes hardware-accelerated XP Classic and Luna themes, and there are a few nice themes that are useful for day-to-day work.
Devoir and Retro – both by essorant – are my personal favorites. For Retro, though, you should go into the WB overrides section, bump the font size up 10% over the theme’s size, and disable special font effects. (Shadowing small fonts is terrible for readability, at least with ClearType.)
Take a look at http://www.stylesuites.com/
Mostly mac themes
What is the functional difference between StyleXP and WindowBlinds? Is there a set of features one has over the other? Are they even addressing the same thing?
The target they aim is almost the same, revamp the UI and make it more customizable, but StyleXP and WindowBlinds are deeply different in approach:
WindowBlinds provide it’s own engine to do this;
StyleXP rely on a modified uxtheme.dll that load third parts themes while original MS uxtheme.dll will refuse to accept them (and load the classic theme decorations instead).
Boot are also complete and complex programs that have also additional features that allow to further customizing of UI aspects like icons, animations and so on.
If you are interested only in skinning the UI, uxtheme.dll can also be downloaded separately and applied manually (basically you need to net stop cryptsvc and replace the original system .dll) or with automated scripts or simple programs available everywere; on the other side I don’t know if exists “minimal” third parts solutions based on WindowBlinds approach, but, of course, there you can simply use the free version of WB that’s however a good program.
What is the functional difference between StyleXP and WindowBlinds? Is there a set of features one has over the other? Are they even addressing the same thing?
No. StyleXP is just a hacked UXTheme.dll in a pretty package, whereas WB gives you hardware acceleration, and it’s got ‘secret’ stuff from MS in there, and much more.
XP Themeing service is no more than a stripped down modified Windoblinds 3. I have no evidence to support that. But I remember reading many different sources that claim Stardock and Microsoft collaberated on XP’s theming engine. I’d love if someone out there could clear this up and find any evidence to either support the rumors or disprove them. I think it’d be quite interesting.
That is a completely untrue rumor.
Though, Microsoft did distribute WB 3 on the XP Beta server, for about a week or so, and then was pulled because such rumors were started.
I get bored fairly easily with themes, backgrounds, and such. So, I tried ObjectDesktop a while back. It was nice for what it did, but the version I was using didn’t seem terribly stable.
It’s good to hear that they’ve made progress with their product. I can’t help but wonder how Stardock will deal with Windows Vista though.
Thanks to Windows Blind 5 – I can now have a very similar look to Vista on my standard XP desktop.
There are dozens of really nice artistic designs on the site.
One of my favourites is a window border style that combines ‘brushed metal’ with transparent edges it looks like a strangely attractive Apple/Microsoft hybrid.
The thing that amazes me is that this is only a few Megabytes to download, speeds up my Windows, uses my 3D card for something and only costs $19.00.
It is great to have transparent windows and glowing buttons without having to purchase an extra 512MB of ram..