WindowBlinds 4 Feature Guide

[Frogboy Administrators]

Read the full article here: [Full Article]

Info & Requirements

Developed by: Stardock Corp. (www.stardock.com)

Price: Trial version is free for unlimited time. Enhanced version is $19.95. Can also be purchased as part of Object Desktop suite ($49.95).

OS Requirements: Windows XP or Windows 2000. Windows 98/ME versions coming soon.

Home Page: http://www.windowblinds.net

More Skins Available at: WinCustomize.com, deviantART, LotsOfSkins, SkinBase, XPThemes.com

Introduction

WindowBlinds is a program that that enables Windows users to completely change the look and feel of the Windows user interface. Windows XP comes with the ability to change its "visual style" between blue, silver, and green as well as switching to "classic" mode. WindowBlinds is the Microsoft certified way of extending Windows XP to support additional "visual styles". WindowBlinds visual styles can change virtually every aspect of the Windows graphical user interface (GUI) such as title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, the Start bar, menus, tool bars, the task pane, dialog backgrounds, and much more. It also adds additional features to the Windows operating system such as roll-up buttons, always on top buttons, URL links, MP3 players, user control over how double clicking and right clicking on the title bar will behave, and many other functionality enhancements. And WindowBlinds 4 is able to do all this while actually increasing the performance of the Windows GUI. WindowBlinds 4 accelerates the Windows user interface both in terms of productivity gains and raw performance. Additionally, it optimizes visual styles on the fly such that they use less memory than the included Windows XP visual styles.

WindowBlinds is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop extensions. It is also available stand alone at WindowBlinds.net.

Neowin Guide to what is special about WindowBlinds 4

People who have used older versions of WindowBlinds may not realize just how much tricky programming had to be done to get it to work at all. Imagine this -- one program that had to run on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. That means WindowBlinds 3 had to work with the "lowest common denominator".

For WindowBlinds 4, Windows XP was the targeted platform. In fact, upon release, it only worked on Windows XP. This allowed Stardock to concentrate on taking advantage of all the goodies in Microsoft's new XP APIs. APIs that the included "uxtheme.dll" don't make full use of.

• msstyles are not hardware accelerated. WindowBlinds are.
  
• msstyles don't make any attempt to avoid duplicate painting of the same thing. WindowBlinds 4 includes "smart painting" which throws out duplicate paint messages. This means that WindowBlinds skins tend to size faster and overall use less CPU when being repainted because they aren't repainted as much.
  
• WindowBlinds interacts directly with shellstyles (the task panel). Programs like Style XP and uxtheme patchers require you to actually *replace* your shellstyles.dll with a hacked one.
  
• WindowBlinds makes use of the same compatibility APIs as msstyles do. WB users can switch into "skin only theme aware applications" and enjoy equal compatibility as msstyles does. Or they can disable that and skin virtually all apps (nearly all non theme aware programs work fine too and problematic ones can be excluded).
  
• WindowBlinds 4 can skin the command prompt. Msstyles can't.
  

In other words, WindowBlinds 4 behaves more natively than uxtheme does. This is mostly due to timing. Stardock had a year to work with the released version of Windows XP to learn all the new developer features. Whereas uxtheme was developed at the same time as XP and hence didn't have as much time (or incentive) to add in these kinds of features.

Many new users confuse "bundling" with native. Uxtheme.dll is no more part of Windows XP than WBlind.dll. The difference is that when you install Windows XP, this DLL is installed by default. It is worth knowing that one can turn this off completely by disabling the theme service. One of those big svchost.exe processes is actually the theme service. And uxtheme.dll gets attached to every process on your system because it, like WindowBlinds, uses system hooks.

The Features

The big features of WindowBlinds 4 include:

• Full Skinning of the Windows XP UI. Uxtheme only skins parts of the XP OS and at that only "theme aware" parts. This means parts of the OS look like Windows 95 and parts look like XP and other parts just aren't changed at all.
  Compare: Windows XP on its own vs. With WindowBlinds
  This also means WindowBlinds skins things like the logon/logoff dialogs, please wait dialogs, and other dialogs not touched by msstyles. In WindowBlinds 4.2, toolbar skinning and the copy, move, delete and other animated images will be skinnable too.
  
• Productive Features such as being able to set what mouse clicks do to the title bar. You could have right click on the title bar minimize a window for instance. You can add more buttons to the title bar such as roll-up, minimize to system tray, always on top, etc. You can put clocks, stock tickers, weather info, etc. into the title bar or anywhere else for that matter.
  
• Free Form Skinning. Msstyles tend to look similar because their borders must be 4 pixels with title bar buttons in set spots. It's more about replacing existing bitmaps with new one than what has traditionally been called skinning. In WindowBlinds, buttons can be placed anywhere, borders, title bars, etc. be any size or shape. As a result, there are visual styles for WindowBlinds that look quite crazy. It is this free form nature that had led companies such as Microsoft themselves to Warner Bros, Touchstone Pictures, Bell South, Nintendo, ATI, nVidia, and many many others to license WindowBlinds for their own use.
  
• Colorizing. You can change the color of your visual styles to any color you want. You can even change the gamma or invert the colors entirely -- on the fly.
  
• You can assign different visual styles to different programs.
  

Trying WindowBlinds for yourself

You can try WindowBlinds for yourself. It is the world's most popular desktop enhancement with over 6 MILLION downloads at Download.com on its own. It has nearly 2,500 different visual styles on WinCustomize.com alone and more visual styles are made all the time.

Version 4.2 will work on Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98 and is due out in November.

[Veedems Veteran]

Thanks for the info. If DeadAIM and WB got along, or Aimutation had a few annoyances fixed, I would be using WB in a second. For now, though, I stick with msstyles.

I will admit, before possible flaming starts, that WB4 is much much faster than previous incarnations.

[+Woodbridge Subscriber²]

One of the things I love about WB the most is the custom colour feature. A lot of mmstyle skinners are besieged with requests for X and Y colours. Add a custom colour option and they can choose what ever colour they like. For example Bant's Reluna mmstyle skin comes in blue, and guess what...the public want an olive version :rolleyes:

I've ported Reluna to WB4 and added custom colour masks to it. Now I can have Reluna in what ever colour I'm in the mood for :)

(edit: click on pic for fullsize)

Before anyone asks, I can't give you the Reluna WB4 version, and yes, I have asked.

[folio]

Compare: Windows XP on its own vs. With WindowBlinds

A good article. :)

But, the above quote I did not like. To show XP on its own, you used a .gif file which obviously give the Luna look a bad image (yeah, its not the best of styles but its better in full colour). Then, to show WB4, we've got a nice .jpg image showing all the fancy bits. If WB4 is better, do you really need to have XP in a .gif file? :)

I'm not having a go at you, I just really can't see why that had to be done..

Although I personally do like WindowBlinds, I prefer the 'in-built' way. Most WB themes are for me either not my taste, or too fancy. SkinStudio does look promising however, with the future versions hopefully supporting Trillian.

Anyway, like I said, sorry if it sounded as though I was having a go, I just had to ask. Me and a few others have been wondering.

-folio

[Frogboy Administrators]

folio: No, you make a good point.

Originally I did the before after for WB 3 and back then both were .GIF files. Then when I updated the WB shot to WB4 I saved as a .JPG.

Today I went ahead and updated both since as someone else pointed out, mIRC is now theme aware. And WindowBlinds itself has more features too then it did back when the original shot was made.

Windows XP normal:

Windows XP with WindowBlinds (using Bant's cool Ciela visual style):

[folio]

Thanks for clearing that up. I wondered why it had been done. :)

Oh, and good choice of skin to show WB4 off. Very wise choice. :D

-folio

[Frogboy Administrators]

Thanks. Yea, I wanted to give Bant some extra kudos so I chose his visual style. I think he may become one of the big skinners overall in the coming year or two. His talent is pretty impressive.

[blueice]

yeap, Bant's reluna is very nice as well. Is anyone working on an official port to WB4 with his permission? I try the import fetaure of skinstudio but some controls seems not ported correctly. :-(

[Redestium]

Very cool, WB has come a long way since I last tried it. I might give it a shot provided I can find some skins to my liking.

[+Woodbridge Subscriber²]

yeap, Bant's reluna is very nice as well. Is anyone working on an official port to WB4 with his permission? I try the import fetaure of skinstudio but some controls seems not ported correctly. :-(

I've PM'd Bant about releasing a WB port, but he doesn't want other people porting his themes (bad experience of WB ports).

Importing into SkinStudio is not 100% perfect, it still requires you to go over the skin and correct minor errors, but it still takes out 90% of the leg work of porting an mmstyle.

[vf-]

why can't Bant just convert it since he made one above for WB Ciela

[Frogboy Administrators]

Updated.

http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb4/

[BroChaos Veteran]

sorry if this has been asked before, but how do you disable skinning of the right click menu? is it possible?

[Meehowski]

Very nice.........I'm lovin' it!!

Thank you.......be well..........

Mike

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

hey what do I need to convert all my VS to WB themes?

I want to try this WB 4

[Veedems Veteran]

hey what do I need to convert all my VS to WB themes?

I want to try this WB 4

584964710[/snapback]

skinstudio 4 from stardock

[MindTooth]

WindowBlinds 4.6 released!

Glowing Glowing Glowing!

Stardock has released WindowBlinds 4.6. WindowBlinds is a program that enables users to "skin" their entire Windows GUI to give it a totally different look & feel. When installed, users apply "visual styles" that change title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, the Start bar, etc. WindowBlinds also includes a number of usability enhancements such as supporting roll-up buttons, always-on top buttons, links, and other additions to the Windows title bar (or borders).

System Performance can also be enhanced using WindowBlinds. The program supports a host of performance enhancing features such as Hypercache, a technology that uses the extra video memory in most modern video cards to increase performance along with features to change the way users interact with the GUI to match their needs.

Visual styles in WindowBlinds support a wide variety of features such as animation, sound, flexible button placement, alpha-blended Start menus, skinned menus, toolbar icon changing, and even replacing the copy, move, download animations in Windows.

The new version of WindowBlinds adds the ability to have alpha blended "glow" effects for title bar buttons, push buttons, and other controls. When a user mouse-overs a control in a visual style that makes use of this feature, a glow effect appears that can go outside the window (i.e. it's really cool looking). 4.6 also has a number of tweaks to further increase performance and reduce memory use.

WindowBlinds is available as shareware at www.windowblinds.net. An enhanced version is available for $19.95 that adds a host of additional features. The enhanced version is also part of Stardock's Object Desktop (www.objectdesktop.com) suite of Windows extension utilities.

Download:

WindowBlinds 4.6

[aggrophobik]

Do alot of ppl. use the free/shareware or do most ppl. pay for it?

[#Michael]

Do alot of ppl. use the free/shareware or do most ppl. pay for it?

586430752[/snapback]

Most people start out with the shareware and then either decide the like it enough to buy it or stay with the shareware. If you buy, trust me it is worth the cost. Also consider this, if you are spending the $19.95 on WB itself, you might consider spending a bit more and trying out the entire objectdesktop subscription.

If you buy one stardock product and like it, you get a $10 credit toward the rest of the subscription cost. Well worth it.

[aggrophobik]

Thanks for the advice. Much appriciated.

[Gelosea]

is it true that the glow effects dont work in windows 2000?

[MindTooth]

is it true that the glow effects dont work in windows 2000?

586543009[/snapback]

I think its only the Aero thing in Xp that supports it. Honestly I don't know...

[MindTooth]

How about update this now? Hehe...