Skinning Windows with WindowBlinds 4.3

What it is, why it's cool

from JoeUser Forums

WindowBlinds 4.3 got released today.  So what is WindowBlinds? Why would you want to use it?

WindowBlinds is a program that lets you change the look and feel of your Windows GUI. What does that mean?

WindowBlinds can change (for starters):

  • Title bars
  • Borders
  • Title bar buttons
  • Title bar button positions
  • Add extra title bar buttons (roll-up, always on top, MP3 controls, clocks, whatever)
  • Border sizes
  • Push buttons
  • Radio buttons
  • Check boxes
  • The Start bar
  • The Start menu
  • Scrollbars
  • Toolbar icons
  • Progress bars
  • Progress Animations
  • Task panel (explorer tasks)
  • And much more!

If you're running Windows 98, ME, or 2000, it's the only program that can do this.  If you're running Windows XP, XP comes with its own "skinning technology" that is essentially a derivative of WindowBlinds called UXTheme.  Microsoft includes 3 skins with it (which we call visual styles). Blue, Olive, and Green.  Microsoft has released a few additional visual styles since Windows XP's release:

  1. Air Combat
  2. Age of Mythology
  3. XBox

All three of these use WindowBlinds.  Some people have added more visual styles by cracking their digital signing protection in uxtheme.dll. Some programs do this on disk and others in memory. But with WindowBlinds 4.3, and SkinStudio, you can import .msstyles files into WindowBlinds without having to hack any of your system files.

So what are some of the specific niceties of WindowBlinds?

Here's a few quick reasons to use WindowBlinds:

It really can skin pretty much every part of Windows.

 

This is a big deal to me: You can set what double clicking or right-clicking on the title bar will do. This is a huge time saver.

You can change the color of your skins on the fly.

WindowBlinds, unlike Windows XP on its own, can skin "non-theme aware" programs. Most programs aren't theme aware so you end up having a system that looks partially like XP and partially like Windows 95. The ONLY way to make Windows XP consistently look like Windows XP is with WindowBlinds.

WindowBlinds can change progress animations. The progress animations in Windows are the same as they've been for the past 10 years.

Toolbar icons can be changed in WindowBlinds.

 

These are just some of the reasons to get WindowBlinds. And what's really nice is that with WindowBlinds 4.3, it's actually faster than the built in visual styles because of hardware acceleration.

You can try it for yourself at www.windowblinds.net

 

windowblinds
20,820 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I'm really impressed with all the features you have added to WB. Skinning as many parts of Windows as WB does makes the experience more seamless and complete. However, I have been disappointed that now the console skinning as not working correctly. (Actually, as I'm sure you are aware, it does skin properly, but if you try to resize it, it shrinks very rapidly and you can't resize it normally.) I'm assuming that skinning the console is a real bear.... I'll look forward to having that issue resolved.

Overall I've been very happy with WB. Keep up the great work! And on a side note, I really like having the ability to DL the most recent beta versions via Stardock Central (buggy updates lately though...).
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
The betas have been there on SDC. Of course now it just has the build. Perhaps you don't have it checked to show pre-release/beta versions?
Anyway this release continues the excellence of previous releases and adds a little more each time. One thing not mentioned is that it can morph during skin changes. Its a far more smoother transition than previously with WB. However it amounts more to eye candy than something more skinned, it is still a nice addition. Only does it when changing via WB Config and not display properties.
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
Interesting product, does have a few bugs. I item I have always been interested in, which no software does yet, it would be great and useful if I could change the individual colors of my folders in Explorer. Wouldn't it be nice to rank folders by color so that searching through explorer would be faster? There's a interesting project.