Recommended Posts

After months of effort, WindowBlinds 6 is here. The ultimate utility for customizing the look and feel of Windows gets a massive overhaul.

You can read the usual marketing blah blah over here. This post is for Neowin users who are already technically savvy and are interested in the real meat of what makes WindowBlinds 6 tick and why they might want to give it a try.

So what is the big deal about WindowBlinds 6? Here are some items off the top of my head:

#1 IT IS FAST.

WindowBlinds 5 (the last major version) made huge strides in making GUI skinning perform very fast. But WindowBlinds 6 takes it to the next level. Hardware manufacturers and driver makers have been preparing for the requirements of Windows Vista and its "Aero" experience.

Ironically, WindowBlinds 6 benefits from this even on Windows XP and as a result, the hardware acceleration is even more extreme.

WindowBlinds 6 should, on most systems, be not just faster than the bundled "Luna" but it should be faster than classic. Try it for yourself and compare moving and resizing of windows. GDI (which classic uses) is barely accelerated these days and that's what classic and Luna use. DirectX, by contrast, has continued to get faster and faster.

On Vista, Microsoft has already created a DirectX acceleration layer called the DWM. The compositer keeps every window in video memory. As a result, WindowBlinds 6 skins are, by definition, exactly the same speed as Aero (unless the skin doesn't use blurring in which case WindowBlinds is faster).

#2 IT USES HARDLY ANY MEMORY

On Windows XP, WindowBlinds 6 has no dedicated process at all. It loads, integrates into the Windows XP drawing routines, and is done. You don't get more "native" than that.

On Windows Vista, there's a tiny stub program to interface with the DWM to maximize performance.

#3 FULL VISTA SKINNING.

Vista looks nice. Aero is a good skin. But Neowiners have seen lots of good skins over the years. And no matter how good it is, people want to personalize it. Just as people personalize their cars, boats, cell phones, and virtually everything else they use, people want to personalize the thing they spend hours a day looking at.

img17.jpg

Full Vista skinning means being able to change things like the explorer backgrounds, IE 7 tabs, toolbar buttons, and lots of other subtle things.

Here's a more subtle example:

img1A.jpg (full version here)

Here on Neowin, we've talked about Aero Diamond a great deal. It was an alternative UI design Microsoft was contemplating. Ultimately, Microsoft opted with Aero. But some people (myself included) think that Aero Diamond was a more elegant design. WindowBlinds 6 includes a skin called Diamond that is inspired by Aero Diamond.

#4 BETTER SKINS

First thing to remember is that existing MSStyles and WindowBlinds skins will work on WindowBlinds 6. A user can download SkinStudio 5 and convert MSStyles to WindowBlinds skins that will run on Vista.

In addition, Stardock has been working on a new skinning utility called SkinStudio 6.

img1D.jpg

It's a total re-design of the program that will make it much easier for people to make skins. This will, in turn, allow far more artists to make WindowBlinds skins than previously which will return in far more variety (i.e. some people hate, some people like).

More importantly, SkinStudio 6 will include tutorials and usability guidelines to help new skinners to make better looking skins.

#5 MORE POWERFUL

For Neowin users, control matters. Let me give you a couple of examples of what WindowBlinds 6 can do in that area:

img20.jpg (full version)

A user can drag and drop the little color picker (see right side of window) onto the preview and tell WindowBlinds to only change that color within a user-defined range. Then, they can save it as their own custom sub-style (see the "red turbo", I made that within the program).

Another thing users can do is control the level of transparency and blur options in a given skin:

img23.jpg

There are also options to opimize remote desktop performance (even if you're not into skinning much, if you use remote desktop, it's well worth it). There's options to control mouse over and pulse animations.

There's even an option for telling WindowBlinds to use Aero for everything but the Start bar/menu.

So those are a few things that I think Neowin users will like about WindowBlinds 6.

You can get it here: http://www.windowblinds.net

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/591615-windowblinds-6-for-neowiners/
Share on other sites

has anyone had problems with windows blind 6 and v4.23 of msgplus?

Yes. Until that's resolved I can't use WB6 on my Vista laptop, for that reason plus others. Nevertheless it works great under XP.

I'll just copy over my comment from the front page article:

On Vista it's something entirely different. For one, the skins draw a piece of crap border for thumbnail windows. There's absolutely no border for the small taskbar applets (Network, Power, Calendar) and Volume has a completely broken border. The Diamond skin has such incredibly small spacing for the menus when Vista's default Aero has a healthy amount of spacing for menu items. One solution is to enable Aero borders, but one problem: why doesn't the glass black out when maximized? On top of that the maximized titlebar text is completely unreadable when using Aero borders and Diamond. And finally, Messenger Plus on Vista won't cooperate with WB6.

Can someone please address these concerns?

I used to use WB until I got tired of the font problems. It was resetting the font sizes and it took forever to get them straightened out. I also had the problem in their own app that the fonts would overlap each other, the content of the boxes would be blacked out so you could not read them, etc. I have run it on two different machines and had the same problem. I have tried different versions and had the same problem.

I used to use WB until I got tired of the font problems. It was resetting the font sizes and it took forever to get them straightened out. I also had the problem in their own app that the fonts would overlap each other, the content of the boxes would be blacked out so you could not read them, etc. I have run it on two different machines and had the same problem. I have tried different versions and had the same problem.

Full version WB6 will not do that.

yes i have it aint workin for me(plus)....also i have few xtra problems like if i choose smalltaskbar i get this:

post-45419-1191372138_thumb.jpg

nuts, thanks for getting back with a response with msgplus. i really like the vienna startmenu =(

ummm for the small taskbar, i think if you search through the optons, there something where you can change the scale of the taskbar, cuz if you're using vienna too, i'm not havin gthat problem.i could be wrong though

I bought it and am pleased with the new blur effect in XP.

What I have noticed, whether it's a bug or something which couldn't be resolved by Stardock programmers I don't know, is that the blur does not work when it is over the top of another maximised window. See below:

Blur working:

245gbk0.png

Blur not working, because the window is over the titlebar of a maximised window beneath it:

30rl3s3.png

Is there any prospect of this being resolved in an update?

edit - in fact it isn't just maximised windows, it's any window. The titlebar of the window underneath doesn't get blurred.

If it was free, id use it.. Till then UXTheme patch ftw.

You can download the free version if you dont want to pay for it, plus uxtheme skins cannot change the start menu so radically as what WindowBlinds does, you have to see Molten in action to believe it. This kind of comment is brought in everytime there is a WindowBlinds thread :(

can anyone recommend a good, aero theme for xp, that has maxed glass effect?

My fav of all Vista WB skins:

http://rotkiv.deviantart.com/art/YAFVC3-for-WB5-31899971

I have downloaded WB6 free trial to see how it looks/feels like...best skin included is Diamond but even that has a bug in SoundForge 8.Zoom in/Out tracks button is messed up.Other than that,it is faster than I expected,I don't feel the difference between WinXP .msstyles and WB like WB5 which is new.Good job.

62421709sg4.jpg

Edited by TEH-EViL

looks very nice indeed. esp. the aero diamond skin. i am thinking about buying me one copy of it too ... but i am waiting for some more opinions. :)

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Just pull a 4Chan and ignore the UK gov, or better troll them. It's not like they can enforce the fine across border.
    • It has NEVER been shown that all these overreaching creepy methods of surveillance have ever saved a child or prevented a terrorist attack. Not a single one. It's the kind of people like you who just wave it away as "paranoid conspiracy" that makes big tech and governments this creepy mass data hoarding entities. Not only that, 3/4 of these surveillance ideas undermine the very foundations of safe online communication because they always want to have a backdoor in everything "just in case" they might need it to... checks the notes "save the children". If you put a backdoor into encryption chain there is no encryption chain anymore. You know what encryption keeps safe? Your medical records, your online shopping and credit card during payment, your photos in the cloud, your emails, your passwords, everything. There is ZERO guarantee only the good guys will use it. And if you think police suddenly can't apprehend child abusers because of encryption, Epstein was running his entire sex trafficking ring using GMail which is not even encrypted end to end. Or to make matters even worse, USA has a **** and a good buddy of Epstein as a president. Absolutely NOTHING has been done to address it. Maxwell just got a better "hotel" room as a reward. This clearly shows how they absolutely don't really care about the children but they care about the absolute control over all of us. And you're defending them here. Good grief. On top of constant attempts to insert backdoors into encryption chain, the entire age verification nonsense is again entirely over reaching, creepy, invades everyone's privacy with premise of yet again "protecting the children" instead of demanding device makers to provide simple and powerful tools for PARENTS to control how their children use devices and what they do on them. THIS would be the way, not the stupid age verification for everyone. Imagine if government would be dictating companies how their phones work and not the company's IT department. The parents should be the IT department to their children. And for everyone excusing "they are not knowledgeable enough" buuuuuulsheat. We live in a digital age, if you have children now, you absolutely are well versed in digital everything at least to basic extent. If you're not, how do you even function in these times then? Reality is that parents are just lazy and don't want to deal with this. They want government to raise their kids because they are too busy scrolling stupid Instagram and Tiktok or some bs.
    • You could make the argument that K should not be included, but FC, the fried chicken, is not the framework, it's the product. It's the Paint in Paint.NET. A closer analogy is if KFC included the name of the deep fryer they used. HennyPennyFC.
    • Flying as the central point eh... As a massive Spyro fan who has replayed the Reignited Trilogy three times and the originals 4 times... I have some doubts, but maybe...
    • Apple is expanding Private Cloud Compute beyond its own data centers by Pradeep Viswanathan At WWDC 2026, as part of the improved Apple Intelligence capabilities, Apple today announced that it is expanding Private Cloud Compute (PCC), its privacy-focused cloud infrastructure for Apple Intelligence, beyond its own data centers for the first time. Private Cloud Compute was designed to handle Apple Intelligence requests that are too complex to run fully on-device. The PCC system does not store user data and does not allow Apple or anyone else to access user requests. Last year, Apple also expanded its Security Bounty program with rewards of up to $1 million for researchers who could find serious vulnerabilities in PCC. Until now, Apple's PCC data centers were using Apple's own silicon. As part of the expansion, Apple is working with Google and NVIDIA to run new Apple Intelligence workloads on Google Cloud systems powered by NVIDIA GPUs. Apple will be using this new infrastructure to execute more demanding AI tasks while maintaining the same privacy and security guarantees of PCC. The new implementation uses NVIDIA Confidential Computing with NVIDIA GPUs, Intel CPUs with TDX, and Google’s Titan chip. Apple says it has worked with Google to build additional protections beyond a traditional confidential computing deployment. Despite the expansion to third-party data centers, Apple claims that its core PCC requirements remain unchanged, including stateless computation, no privileged runtime access, non-targetability, and verifiable transparency. The company highlighted that it will continue to control the PCC software stack, and Apple devices will only trust PCC software that has been cryptographically approved by Apple. To take security to the next level, Apple mentioned that it is maintaining an append-only ledger of Google Cloud hardware that is part of the PCC fleet. The company claims this will help reduce the risk of supply chain attacks. In addition to AI infrastructure, Apple also worked with Google to use technologies behind the Gemini family of models to build the next generation of Apple Foundation Models to power Apple Intelligence features across on-device and cloud workloads. As expected, for more demanding AI tasks like agentic tool use and complex reasoning, Apple will rely on the expanded PCC infrastructure running on Google Cloud. The expansion of PCC on Google Cloud will gradually ramp toward the full set of protections during the summer preview period. As before, Apple will also publish binaries for public inspection, provide research tooling, and give researchers access to live PCC nodes in research mode through the Apple Security Bounty Program.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Very Popular
      Captain_Eric earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • One Month Later
      amusc earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      506
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      222
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      92
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      86
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      81
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!