Difference Between WindowBlinds and Style XP - What Is The Difference?


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do a forum search, there was a good thread about this a month or two ago. frogboy explained his side, and other people explained the msstyles side.

cheers,

joe

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Style XP is really just an application that uses an interface to draw msstyles (the skin format in XP). Windowblinds, draws the skin on top of the existing window.

You'll get arguments about which one is faster. But on my machine Style XP is the hands-down winner. I was a big Wndowblinds fan before XP, and Style XP came out. I found myself constantly turning it off when I'd have more that 7 or 8 applications running. With Style XP, the drain on system resources is next to nothing-my intellimouse uses more, if that tells you anything. So there's one opinion.

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Originally posted by adonai  

Style XP is really just an application that uses an interface to draw msstyles (the skin format in XP).  Windowblinds, draws the skin on top of the existing window.  

Incorrect. StyleXP is an app which patches out a security check in uxtheme.dll.

All skinning is performed by the MS code (StyleXP does no skinning of the apps, it just removes a check).

I am not sure what your description of WindowBlinds is supposed to mean, as all skinning systems paint on the windows (thats how they work! - including msstyles)

Our testing has shown WB is faster and more resource efficient, but this may vary from skin to skin (many WB skins are much more complicated) and from person to person (different hardware etc)

You'll get arguments about which one is faster.  But on my machine Style XP is the hands-down winner.  I was a big Wndowblinds fan before XP, and Style XP came out.  I found myself constantly turning it off when I'd have more that 7 or 8 applications running.  With Style XP, the drain on system resources is next to nothing-my intellimouse uses more, if that tells you anything.  So there's one opinion.

WindowBlinds 3.1 and 3.2 are much improved over the already fast 3.0. If you have not tried them, then I suggest you do.

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Being open-minded when it comes to software, I gave Windowblinds another shot. The latest trial version on their site is 3.1a. As can be seen in the pictures below there is no comparison on my machine.

My description of windowblinds: What I meant by that was that windowblinds has it's own skinning engine which runs on top of the existing window. When you have several windows open they sometimes flicker when minimizing/maximizing and you get a glimpse of the plain window underneath. This doesn't happen with Style XP. Blame my system if you like but I've heard others state the same.

stylevswb.jpg

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adonai:

err StyleXP.exe only patches the dll on memory, nothing else... this is why it eats less resources.

Check the svchost.exe process that is eating 7mb of ram... well, guess who's behind all that: msstyles! :)

Even tho, I think msstyles work quite better for me... I have the same flickering problem you have

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Why bother adding code on top of something that already integrated with the OS? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that using an integrated subsystem of the OS is far more efficient and effective.

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saint: I'll agree with you there...they've also got quite the head start on Style XP. Windowblinds has been out for 2-3 years at least. Style XP has only been out a few months, is still beta, and giving Windowblinds serious competition.

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Actually, the svchost process that runs the theme service is also running a whole ****load of other stuff:

svchost.png

Plus the themes service is still running when you're using windowblinds, the wbload process is mainly just there to speak to the themes service and give it the skin information in a way it can deal with, iirc.

Although, frankly, i couldn't care less about a few megs of ram one way or another, i've 640Mb, for ****s sake, 3Mb make approximately no difference whatsoever to me.

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