Stardock Curtains Pre-publish Review, request for reply prior to publishing

from Stardock Forums

Hello Stardock,

I have begun my review series on several Stardock software packages, starting with Curtains, then WindowBlinds, and wrapping it up with Object Desktop.

The reviews will be published on most social media sites, as well as my own tech platform. They will be pushed out over the course of the next 60 days.

This is a request for your reply regarding the following Cons I will be publishing on Curtains.

Summary:

Curtains is an enthusiast product and could have the Taskbar Skinning market cornered, and thus worthy of a premium price. Among all competitors, it comes closest to allowing users to recreate a true Windows Classic Taskbar theme, but lacks a few major skinning abilities.

If the features below are added, no other software would come close to being as complete as Curtains.

Con 1. Inability to change inactive titlebar glyphs. Four states needed: Normal, Mouseover, Pressed and Disabled.

Titlebars

Required for a true classic theme.

Con 2. Taskbar buttons need one additional state: Pressed.

Taskbar buttons

Currently there is no feedback when clicking taskbar buttons.

Con 3. Inability to skin the system tray. One state needed: Normal.

System tray systray

Required for the classic system tray border.

Con 4. Inability to skin the taskbar rebar grippers. One state needed: Normal.

Rebar grippers

A basic requirement for all themes when toolbars are used.

Con 5. Inability to skin the toolbar Chevron Buttons and glyphs. Two states needed: Mouseover and Pressed.

Chevron and glyph

Required for a true Classic theme.

Con 6. Inability to skin Qucklaunch buttons. Two states needed: Mouseover and Pressed.

Quicklaunch buttons

Hovering quicklaunch buttons would complete Curtains as a top-tier piece of software, and make it #1 in the space.

I welcome your feedback on the (constructive) criticism above. If you have any of these features planned, please let me know directly in this thread or via direct email (using this forum account's email address). Publishing happens on Monday, June 5, 2023.

Editor's note: All of the above features are available in WindowBlinds, but come with a large performance hit and premium price. Curtains is the sweet spot for power users with attention to detail who want to skin their taskbar.

Regards,

-Jeff (ZorkV)

curtains feedback review
10,200 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

"Among all competitors, it comes closest to allowing users to recreate a true Windows Classic Taskbar theme"

It is made for all sorts of themes, it's a bit unfair to just reduce it to the purpose to make windows look like the stone age of computing.

"All of the above features are available in WindowBlinds, but come with a large performance hit"

Why would You want those features in Curtains then? 

Also keep in mind, the program was last updated a long time ago and ist not yet compatible with Windows 11.


Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Recreating a true Windows Classic theme is the overarching synopsis of my article/review series. Regardless, it's irrelevant to the features (or lack thereof) of Curtains.

Adding a few skinnable elements to Curtains will not result in a performance hit. The Stardock execution of each underlying Windows service is behind the performance hit in the battle of WindowBlinds vs. Curtains. Since Curtains doesn't have this performance hit, it is the only option available to retro/power users at the moment.

Most of the power users in the enthusiast/tech groups I participate in are only now just beginning to move from Win8.1 to Win10. Windows 11 doesn't have a LTSC release yet, and won't for quite a while.

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top


Hello Stardock,

I have begun my review series on several Stardock software packages, starting with Curtains, then WindowBlinds, and wrapping it up with Object Desktop.

The reviews will be published on most social media sites, as well as my own tech platform. They will be pushed out over the course of the next 60 days.

This is a request for your reply regarding the following Cons I will be publishing on Curtains.

Summary:

Curtains is an enthusiast product and could have the Taskbar Skinning market cornered, and thus worthy of a premium price. Among all competitors, it comes closest to allowing users to recreate a true Windows Classic Taskbar theme, but lacks a few major skinning abilities.

If the features below are added, no other software would come close to being as complete as Curtains.

Con 1. Inability to change inactive titlebar glyphs. Four states needed: Normal, Mouseover, Pressed and Disabled.

Titlebars

Required for a true classic theme.

Con 2. Taskbar buttons need one additional state: Pressed.

Taskbar buttons

Currently there is no feedback when clicking taskbar buttons.

Con 3. Inability to skin the system tray. One state needed: Normal.

System tray systray

Required for the classic system tray border.

Con 4. Inability to skin the taskbar rebar grippers. One state needed: Normal.

Rebar grippers

A basic requirement for all themes when toolbars are used.

Con 5. Inability to skin the toolbar Chevron Buttons and glyphs. Two states needed: Mouseover and Pressed.

Chevron and glyph

Required for a true Classic theme.

Con 6. Inability to skin Qucklaunch buttons. Two states needed: Mouseover and Pressed.

Quicklaunch buttons

Hovering quicklaunch buttons would complete Curtains as a top-tier piece of software, and make it #1 in the space.

I welcome your feedback on the (constructive) criticism above. If you have any of these features planned, please let me know directly in this thread or via direct email (using this forum account's email address). Publishing happens on Monday, June 5, 2023.

Editor's note: All of the above features are available in WindowBlinds, but come with a large performance hit and premium price. Curtains is the sweet spot for power users with attention to detail who want to skin their taskbar.

Regards,

-Jeff (ZorkV)

For title bar buttons we are limited by what Windows natively supports.  This is why you cannot have the states you would like.

On the taskbar features the software is designed to be a lightweight skinning solution with less features than its big brother WindowBlinds.  This is for compatibility, performance and ease of creating skins.  The more you add the more you are starting to recreate WindowBlinds.

Con 3 looks to be something that might be viable as that is simple.