WindowsBlinds or XP VS Skinning Engine?


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But how does WB differ from the VS engine on XP? It is faster? More reliable?

Faster/more reliable/allows you to do way more types of skinning than on VS (per-pixel alpha blending for one).

Just download the trial and check it out.

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But don't say Windowblinds is faster or more reliable. I have yet to see the GDI+ (xp skinning engine) to give any errors. I have seen systems get terribly slow because of Windowblinds. Windowblinds does have an awesome bunch of features. Depends. If you want fancy skins in XP, go Windowblinds. If the stuff you find on Deviantart for the default engine is enough for you, then stick with that.

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But don't say Windowblinds is faster or more reliable.

The XP skinning engine is based on WindowBlinds, and the days of WindowBlinds "slowing down" systems and what not are things of the past. Take a look at sites like Extremetech who did benchmarks on system with and without WindowBlinds, there was no difference to speak of.

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The XP skinning engine is based on WindowBlinds, and the days of WindowBlinds "slowing down" systems and what not are things of the past. Take a look at sites like Extremetech who did benchmarks on system with and without WindowBlinds, there was no difference to speak of.

Uh?? XP skinning engine based on Windowblinds? Never heard of that. I thought XP was GDI+ rendering?

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I own both, but I personally prefer a hacked uxtheme.dll

There a such a small amount of WB skins that actually interest me. I'll admit, the entire reason I bought WB was because of KoL's themes, period. The Vista one that MS fussed about was the selling point for me.

I don't notice anything faster or slower with either, and I'm running a laptop with 2 GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Centrino Proc and Windows XP SP3.

Every now and then I'll see something that I kind of like from WB, but I really have a strong dislike for most of the stuff I see people creating. They just aren't for me.

I love Watercolor Emico, Luna Element series, stuff from KoL, Bant, b0se, etc. I think the first 2 I mentioned happen to be the most usable themes I've ever used in my life. Now, I've used a lot but nowhere near what a lot of theme enthusiasts have used.

I just don't find enough usable themes with WindowBlinds without having it look like some cyborg-ized UI. It's nothing against WB, I just shudder at those themes. I'm not 10-I just want usable themes that look slick and sleek. People enthusiastically ask me about themes I use and how I've done it. With WB, they've got nothing positive to say about it.

I also find skinning Windows with WB to be more trouble than it's worth. I have yet to find a hacked untheme that interferes with Microsoft Project. With WB I always have to make a complete exception to stop it from skinning the winproj.exe file. If WB skins it, I can't manage the window correctly - I can't use the X button to close the outer window like I could with a hacked theme file. And the other office apps work fine, but just not project. There are other apps as well, and I just get sick of making exceptions. It's never an issue if I'm not using WB.

The other thing that I notice with WB far more than a hacked uxtheme is the progress bar problems. 1 in specific that I constantly run across is if I'm running a progress bar in the background, and then open a window in front of it. If I interrupt that windows front display view and temporarily hide it, it fills in the bar 100%. The progress indicator could indicate that I've got 15 more minutes on a transfer but the bar will be filled in the entire length. Sometimes it will go back to normal but I rarely have the issue with a hacked uxtheme.

WB for me has the feel of a "kit car" more than a hacked uxtheme. When I use certain themes I feel like they don't fit the way they were designed to fit. Some progress bars are off by a few pixels, buttons are hidden/not viewable until you mouse over them, and standard buttons don't work but are there only for show. Once again, take KoL's early Vista theme as a prime example of this. But I've never seen it in a uxtheme, period. Maybe that's just my lack of experience but I've just never seen it.

In WB, some themes will change the IE Flag animation to something they've designed as part of their theme. Like, the upper-right corner of the Control Panel, for example. When you apply a different theme it won't always reset this or make it go away. You've got to kinda hack around to reset that resource. It's just another annoyance for me because if you apply a totally different theme, you sometimes have 2 different theme components because of that little detail.

If you don't know what you are doing, both of them can be a pain to uninstall...maybe that's not the right phrasing but I'll offer this: as easy as a uxtheme file is to replace and/or rename, plenty of people have issues with it because of WFP and all that jazz. WB is normally a no-brainer to install and uninstall. But, WB always always always leaves garbage files behind as well as the wbload entry in the winlogon section of the registry (people who use autoruns from winternals after uninstalling WB5.x or 6.x versions may see what I'm talking about.)

That's my thoughts on the stuff anyway. Take it with a grain of salt.

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For Vista and onwards, I'd stick with Uxtheme, but for XP, I'd use WindowBlinds depending on the type of style you're going for.

WindowBlinds has some good features such as "glass", etc. But I agree with +Ghost96 on the "kit car" thing, some themes have bugs which make the experience worse.

For a minimal look, WindowBlinds' extra features aren't required so it really depends on what look you want.

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