#Windowblinds 6.0 Full Support For

Windowblinds 6.0 Full Support For

However, as we all know, os/2 sizzled out, and Stardock was forced to port its Object Desktop suite to Windows in 1997/1998. The company made name for itself as a major os/2 ISV with their Object Desktop suite, a set of applications that extended os/2вЂ™s graphical user interface. Stardock, the company behind Windowblinds, actually has a fairly long history. Read on for some findings. Stardock was kind enough to provide OSNews with a copy of WindowBlinds 6.0. Last week, Stardock released version 6 of WindowBlinds, their Windows skinning suite, which is the first version to include full support for Windows Vista.

Version 3 included support for Windows XP and was released alongside Windows XP itself. The second release added various new features like sub-skins, scripting, user-controlled colours, and so on. The first version was released in 1998 for Windows 95, and was developed by Stardock and Neil Banfield. It works by applying new visual styles, called skins, across the entire user interface (title bars, push buttons, start menu, taskbar, etc.) of the operating system.WindowBlinds itself is also quite an old application.

Adds вЂblurred glassвЂ™ capabilities to Windows XP, as well as some hardware accelerationThe new configuration program has a ribbon-like tabbed interface thing, and I must say, it is very easy to use, and looks rather dashing too. Full support for Windows Vista, including IE7 and the sidebar WindowBlinds 5, released November 2005, added per-pixel alpha blending for the entire window border.Beautiful WindowBlinds 6 Theme for your Windows XP Download: Windows Aero Frost Author: fediaFedia Authors Note: Windows Aero Frost for XP WindowBlinds 6.0.WindowBlinds 6.0 adds, among other things, the following features:

The вЂLeoвЂ™ theme for instance does some weirdness where the windowвЂ™s toolbars appear to be a few pixels wider than the actual content of the window вЂ“ those are little mistakes I do not wish to see in themes shipped by default. These are obviously themes designed for use with the new version, but some of them still contain some errors. Nice touch.By default, WindowBlinds 6.0 ships a few themes. When you switch a skin, or change some specific elements of a skin, the apply button will now blur and decolourise your desktop during the time it needs to adjust the desktop to apply your changes. Additionally, you can change the colour of the interface of the program (surprising, is it not?).

I do not want fire breathing dragons, flames, or snowflakes falling inside my titlebars. When I set out to find a theme for my desktop, I want that theme to be subdued, elegant, and consistent. There are ten million billion themes out there, but 99% of them are вЂ“ excusez-moi вЂ“ utter rubbish. And sadly, this is where WindowBlinds fails вЂ“ in my opinion. You can also create and manage themes for VistaвЂ™s sidebar, or use the Sidebar theme defined by the actual WindowBlinds skin.A skinning application is obviously only as good as the themes available for it. Sadly, you cannot edit WindowsвЂ™ default Aero theme вЂ“ I had hoped I could colourise VistaвЂ™s taskbar to match the window frame colour (one of my pet peeves about Vista, the taskbar always remains black, no matter the frame colour), but sadly, this is impossible.

The interface is well thought out, changes are easily made, and, not at all unimportant, you can easily switch back to WindowsвЂ™ default, and turn WindowBlinds off completely.To summarise: a great, mature application, but, in my opinion, hindered by a lack of elegant themes.If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.IвЂ™m kind of annoyed by this вЂReal users use the command lineвЂ™ mentality.Sure, I tend to use the keyboard to the exclusion of the mouse. WindowBlinds itself, however, is a great application, that does what advertised in an easy and very usable way. Obviously, however, I know that the quality of a theme is a subjective matter вЂ“ so it might as well be true that for you, there are enough WindowBlinds themes that tickle your fancy.So, the likeliness of you wanting to have WindowBlinds is dependent on whether or not you can find a theme that you really like. This problem is made harder for a Vista user like me, since not a lot of themes have been adapted yet for use with Vista. Elegant themes like this are hard to find for WindowBlinds, and that simply is a real miss.

ItвЂ™s always nice when programs and features look like what they represent, and work like their look suggests. It rocks to have a well-designed GUI help me to do in three to five keystrokes what would take a command-line user a modestly-sized sentence, or a pure mouse user (oh, how I pity those poor souls) twenty or thirty seconds of lining up the cursor onto the correct spots. ItвЂ™s great being able to summon application controls or OS controls with the touch of a single key (Alt or Win, respectively) and dismissing them just as easily. I like having my commands organized into quickly-scannable lists of commands related to a particular topic (whether youвЂ™re using dropdowns or ribbons, the concept is the same). I like reading in well-designed eye-friendly variable-width fonts (that is a requirement for me, given how much of my life I spend sitting before a screen). I like having pretty programs, which have been enhanced by the (appropriate and conservative) use of graphics and sound.

рџ™‚ As for the included skins. I have always tried to make my own skins usable, but for many what matters most is the look, and it is not necessarily a subtle look.I donвЂ™t think this is necessarily a bad thing вЂ“ itвЂ™s just a thing. Usability is not necessarily their top priority. Most WindowBlinds customers are looking for something spiffy. Even more disturbing is that many of them are, by all appearances, very popular.The reason it is full of them is that they are popular (and not, as you might imagine, the other way around).

In my view, what matters is that some people like them вЂ“ and if thatвЂ™s the case, whatвЂ™s the harm if you do not?(Me, I like Blackcomb, but IвЂ™m the simple sort. Not all of the highly rated skins are likely to be to your taste, but thatвЂ™s true of any art form. I suggest you make use of the вЂњsort by ratingвЂќ option ( ).

I remember it from long time ago when I was trying to get rid of explorer in a Windows box I had to use. вЂњFatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8192 bytes) in /home/geoshell/sites/geoshell.org/gallery/lib/adodb/adodb.inc.php on line 808вЂќThatвЂ™s when trying to check some screenshots. IвЂ™ve replaced my explorer with it and my system is much more responsive.

I will never understand why would I like to have little goldfishes swimming in my windowsвЂ™ title bars.ItвЂ™s a shame, WB6 is a solid, powerful and affordable product, ruined by the lack of cool themes besides the always present yet-another-custom-aqua-like theme. The only really useable themes come from the base package and, as someone already pointed out, theyвЂ™re inspired in other OSes GUIs.

Download Windowblinds 6.0