WindowBlinds 4 Preview

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Thanks to Brad Wardell aka Frogboy from Stardock for letting us know about the upcoming update to their award winning skinning software for the windows platform. WindowBlinds 4

It's been over a year since the release of WindowBlinds 3. WindowBlinds, a program designed to allow users of Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98 completely customize the graphical user interface (GUI) of Windows, had reached its third generation version. WindowBlinds 3 was designed to take advantage of some of the new features of Windows XP and make those features available to users of other versions of Windows.

Windows XP comes with the ability for users to choose between a new "Windows XP style" and the "classic" Windows look. But in order to do that, Microsoft developed an impressive customization engine that could load a visual style and apply it to the GUI. WindowBlinds 3 made use of much of this engine.

Truly Native Skinning
The goal of WindowBlinds 4 is to largely eliminate the trade-offs of customization while providing users with the ability to completely customize virtually all aspects of the Windows GUI. These goals are:

Make WindowBlinds 4 so much faster that it's compared with "classic" in terms of speed. This is provided in a new technology called "Smart painting".
Exceptionally high reliability on even the most obscure of programs. While there will always be odd ball programs out there, WB 4 should be able to skin more programs on Windows XP than Windows XP itself can.
Complete skinning of all of the Windows GUI including command line boxes, Internet Explorer and Explorer toolbar icons, log off screens, task panels (shellstyles), etc.
Forward and backward compatibility. Resources spent on making sure it works seamlessly on "Longhorn" and beyond while still adding new features for Windows 98, ME, and 2000 users. Creating skins for WindowBlinds means your skin will be able to be used on today's version of Windows and tomorrow's.
Skincast II. Multiple channels on Stardock Skincast where users can subscribe to them have SJ's (Style Jockeys) make available cool visual styles for users.
A new visual style format. One that makes it easier for new users to create their own visual styles. For instance, skinning task panels doesn't require hacking some DLL but instead can be done nicely in a matter of minutes.
Advanced coloring features. Ability to choose colors of different parts of the UI just as you can do with the "classic" UI.
Ability to have collaborative skinning.

View: Full Preview Documentation

#1 Nxt_Gate on 17 Dec 2002 - 03:20

NICE!!

(2 replies) #2 alternadoxy on 17 Dec 2002 - 03:24

well, i'm all for it. but i do want to point out that the command line isn't completely skinned because it needs a visual style type of scroll bar,

and it clearly doesn't.

#2.1 dacbo on 17 Dec 2002 - 14:03

might be the non-registered version

#2.2 CheeseCow on 18 Dec 2002 - 07:10

Since the image comes from the www.windowsblinds.com server, I'd doubt that it is the unregistrered version. I believe they haven't managed to skin it yet.

(1 reply) #3 PureEdit on 17 Dec 2002 - 03:33

Yeah, and backgrounds would be nice, but I never use CMD really, so I dont care

#3.1 daoutlawz on 17 Dec 2002 - 11:12

[neoquote=#3.0 by PureEdit]Yeah, and backgrounds would be nice, but I never use CMD really, so I dont care

[/neoquote] this quote was meant for the post above this one

well, it does say just a preview, which probably means its no where near finished yet? either way ive never been a fan of WB, it has always been slower then msstyles..

(1 reply) #4 puckmaster87 on 17 Dec 2002 - 03:52

i hate that program - it screwed up my computer! luckily i had a recent system restore

#4.1 jardragon901 on 17 Dec 2002 - 06:59

Err its not out yet how can you say something like that lol, what exactly was the last version you tried?

Last edited by 3835 on 17 Dec 2002 - 08:38

#5 Knoxca on 17 Dec 2002 - 04:39

#6 humcheepeng on 17 Dec 2002 - 09:02

Long live the msstyle.

#7 CheeseCow on 17 Dec 2002 - 09:45

About time. It's strange really, how they have been able to do so well when Visual Styles have been a lot faster & skinning more apps for over an year now. And just to think, using a Visual Style doesn't cost anything either.

It's good however that Stardock have realized they need something [list] [*]Faster than Visual Styles[/*] [*]Just as stable as them[/*] [*]and with more features[/*] [/list] Because for the last year, the advantage of Visual Styles have been the ability to place buttons were you want them, and a few other tricks. But it have been slower, less stable and aside from the tricks 'n stuff, it have been lacking, such as the Task Pane and up until recent versions the sliders. What could be selling WB 4 is the color features, that's a nice one. Also having different skins for each application is good. But other than that, I say BAH! After starting using Linux, I've got all the eye-candy I need. (apart from the MCE Visual style & Codename

ashboard, of course)

Just hope they will bring colorization options to Icon Packager as well, that's a program that could use it.

Last edited by 19840 on 18 Dec 2002 - 07:03

(1 reply) #8 phobic on 17 Dec 2002 - 14:01

I switched to WindowBlinds from the stylexp hack/fix/whatever and I think it's much improved from the days of WB 2.0(ish) when it locked up my PC and caused all sorts of problems. It doesn't take up much memory and I'm really liking the themes for WB lately. I guess I just got bored with the stylesXP thing because after a while, all the themes started to look the same. There are exceptions yes but a lot of these themes are bland, gray, Mac Ports. I tried to go back to stylesXP once but the skin was so boring and lifeless. I'm really looking forward to WB4.

#8.1 Kombatant on 17 Dec 2002 - 20:43

I was almost bored, and then I discovered the Keramic 2.0 theme over at [url=http://members.home.nl/djp/flash/index.html]http://members.home.nl/djp/flash/index.html[/url]. Life has been beautiful since

#9 Palmeiro on 17 Dec 2002 - 14:19

Oooh I'm looking forward to this

#10 CarlosMiguel on 17 Dec 2002 - 17:06

do we really need this thing? i am contented to what windows xp looks like ...

#11 thornz0 on 17 Dec 2002 - 18:47

[quote]do we really need this thing? i am contented to what windows xp looks like ... [/quote] and others arent. Let the creativity flow

#12 Frogboy on 17 Dec 2002 - 20:53

Incidentally, WindowBlinds 3 already skins more programs than msstyles. Msstyles only skins theme aware applications. And for many people, myself included, WindowBlinds 3 is already faster than msstyles. Just depends on the skin you use. The popularity of WindowBlinds isn't the result of "marketing" afterall, it's not like there are ads in newspapers and TV or on the web and such. It has equal availability to Style XP and such. It's got a huge user base because so many people do find that WB 3 is fast, reliable, and has more and better skins. Obviously ones mileage may vary. Some people find WB 3 slower than msstyles. Some people really cared about the task pane not being skinned. But bear in mind, other people considered things like being able to change the color of your skin to anything you'd like to be something much more important than the task pane being skinned (especially since many if not most power users turn off the task pane). Compatibility of UIS1 skins is about on part with msstyles. It's UIS2 skins that are problematic since they do much fancier things with the user interface. There are hundreds of UIS1 skins though and they are more flexible than msstyles. That said, WB 4 will be a major advance, particularly on Windows XP. The performance advantage should be enough that no one, no matter what their configuration is, will say msstyles is faster (well unless they just don't bother to use it and post about their experiences with older versions which happens often). It'll also be more apparent that WB is at least as "native" if not more so than msstyles when it's skinning things like the command line and every other significant element of the UI. And that it does so without requiring skin authors to mess around with shellstyle.DLLs.

(2 replies) #13 unisol54 on 17 Dec 2002 - 21:46

windowblinds blows ... it hogs resources and never does what it promises....it screws up the comp after uninstall....so i'm not the least excited bout this piece of code

#13.1 jardragon901 on 18 Dec 2002 - 05:23

Err Windowblinds 3 uses a lot less rescources than most msstyles so you are mistaken on that count.

#13.2 CheeseCow on 18 Dec 2002 - 07:07

No. Perhaps by now it uses less memory, I did a lot of testing a while back, and it added more to the memory consumption than .msstyles. And that was tested with BOTH a simple & complex theme. In addition, it isn't "native", in the sense than it iisn't the OS that paints, WB hooks into an application and paints on top of the OS, giving additional overhead. Perhaps it's not all that true with WindowsXP, but it still uses more system resources.

(1 reply) #14 prell on 17 Dec 2002 - 21:49

hey that skin is pretty slick.. I usually hate those massive gaudy skins, but that ones pretty decent. Does it exist for earlier windowblinds? If anyone knows, please send me a private message or email. Thanks

#14.1 jardragon901 on 18 Dec 2002 - 05:28

its called Colony and its available now [url=http://skins.wincustomize.com/MikeB314/wb/Colony_wb_ss.jpg]pic here[/url] [url=http://www.wincustomize.com/download.asp?SkinID=2983&LibID=1]download link here[/url]

(2 replies) #15 nomis_nehc on 17 Dec 2002 - 23:43

I am curious, but this hasn't been released... why not post it just like another post in the forum? these pics... they don't really count as software, does it? just thought that it's really different than other software news, know what I mean?

#15.1 tronmaster on 18 Dec 2002 - 02:54

Actually, I liked Windowsblinds 3. But for some strange reason Desktop X always, even on a clean install screws my computer up and I have to do a Restore. Ack.

#15.2 CheeseCow on 18 Dec 2002 - 07:08

Because Frogboy talks to someone on Neowin, and asks them to post it. But it is good news, and I'm glad they posted it.

#16 alanzeino2002 on 18 Dec 2002 - 08:50

I like the software, but i h8 how it has to run in the sys tray and take up sys resources

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