Stardock releases WindowBlinds 3.4

Customize Windows to look and feel how you want it to!

Canton MI, July 23, 2002. Stardock has released WindowBlinds 3.4. WindowBlinds is a program that lets users completely customize the Windows graphical user interface. It extends visual styles on Windows XP to support a host of new features while bringing visual styles and those extended features to Windows 2000/ME/98 users.

WindowBlinds can change the visual appearance of the title bar, title bar buttons, borders, scrollbars, push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, tree view controls, the Start bar, properties dialogs, explorer backgrounds, dialog backgrounds, and much more.

Version 3.4 of WindowBlinds adds these new features:

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The ability to inverse the colors of a window

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SmartColoring(TM). Can now intelligently color visual styles that weren't designed to be colored. (enabled in the "advanced" dialog in the appearance tab).

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Installable fonts

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GUI controls can now paint different different versions of that control depending on the size

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Taskbar pop-up group menu skinned (Windows XP)

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Mouse over states on radio buttons & checkboxes

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Taskbar button has a flashing button state

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Spin controls are now skinned

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Start menu selected item can have its own background (rather than a solid color)

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Display properties now skinned by default

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Users can opt to skin only the title bars on non-theme aware applications

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Microsoft Instant Messenger now skinned

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Tree-view +/- buttons skinned

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Windows Media Player now skinned (Windows XP)

 

Links:

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http://www.windowblinds.net/docs (docs)

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http://www.windowblinds.net/benefits (benefits of the enhanced version)

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http://www.windowblinds.net/skinning (skinning guide)

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http://www.windowblinds.net/download.html (download)

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http://www.windowblinds.net/xp/wb3advantages.html (WindowBlinds on Windows XP)

The Windows XP Connection

When Microsoft released Windows XP, millions of users were suddenly introduced to a totally new user interface. Best of all (from Stardock's perspective anyway) Windows XP allows users to switch from the new look to the old classic look of Windows. But to do this, Microsoft created an API framework to do this. WindowBlinds 3.0 when on Windows XP leverages that framework to be integrated into the OS.  Stardock worked with Microsoft during the beta of Windows XP and was present at its launch (it is also Microsoft certified for Windows 98, ME, 2000 as well as XP).  For non-XP users, the news is also good in that Stardock has brought the whole skinning framework to Windows 2000, ME, and 98 so that skinning is provided nearly as a native part of those OSes. The free download version of WindowBlinds essentially acts like Windows XP with a few features disabled.  The enhanced registered version though vastly extends what's in Windows XP with hardware acceleration, on-the-fly colorizing, skinning of non-theme aware programs, and much more.

The net result is that Stardock and the various skinning sites have seen an explosion of new users since Windows XP was released. With "skinning" (changing ones GUI) legitimized by Microsoft and millions getting a taste of it, the demand for more options became huge.

A few examples:

Tabbed interface made popular by BeOS

WindowBlinds 3 supports semi-transparent explorer windows

Combined with ObjectBar, WindowBlinds can make Windows 98/ME/2000 look like Windows XP visually.

 

A few Notable features of WindowBlinds

16.8 million colors to choose from on your visual styles!

Don't like the color of a visual style? Change it to the color you want!
Per application skinning

Use WindowBlinds to assign each of your programs to have its own unique visual style!
Explorer backgrounds!

Globally give your explorer windows their own background. Many skins can optionally change your explorer background as well.
FAST & SMALL!

Not only does WindowBlinds greatly extend the visual abilities and features of the Windows GUI, it is the fastest performing way to do it. That's because it can take advantage of hardware acceleration. Features like Hyperpaint can actually eliminate repainting when moving windows around. That's because today's video cards come with a lot of video memory for use for games. This video memory is unused when you're not playing games but WindowBlinds can make use of it to improve your desktop performance.
Take control of your mouse
Use WindowBlinds to determine how your mouse clicks will affect the title bar:
Windows XP users can pick and choose their own Start bar

Click on the "Advanced" button in the Appearance tab and you can now choose to use the Start bar from a different visual style!
Skin only the programs you want
WindowBlinds includes an inclusion list. So you can optionally just have it skin only certain programs while ignoring all others.
Thousands of skins that are easy to create
There are thousands of skins to choose from already and if you want to make your own visual style, there is a large, friendly and helpful community of "skinners" who can help you. You can make a simple WindowBlinds skin in only a few lines of text and a few graphics.  There are powerful yet easy to use tools like SkinStudio available that let you get started.
Extended visual styles
WindowBlinds supports 2 visual style formats, UIS1 and UIS2. Most skins use UIS2 because it is more powerful. But UIS1 aka Extended Visual Styles, has some specific advantages:

UIS1 Advantages

bulletMuch faster than UIS2 or Windows XP's visual styles
bulletMore compatible than UIS2

UIS1 Dis-advantages

bulletHarder to skin (it's actually easier to create a UIS2 skin and convert it to UIS1)
bulletTitle bar buttons have to be on the title bar (UIS2 allows buttons to be placed on the sides or bottom of a window)
bulletBorders have to be equal in size and default to 4 pixels in size.

SkinStudio support for UIS1!

In preparation for WindowBlinds 3.1 along with the GUI Olympics Stardock has been working hard to update SkinStudio.

From SkinStudio, users can convert their UIS2 skins to a UIS1 skin. The thing to remember about this is that most UIS2 skins can't be converted exactly because they are too advanced. The rules to remembe rare: 1) The borders must be the same on all sides, 2) The borders should be roughly 3 to 5 pixels in size for best results. 3) Buttons need to be on the title bar 4) Title bar effects such as icon centering, and title bar text backgrounds are not supported.  You can try it for yourself and see how it works. Since the speed gain is significant and compatibility is increased, it's worth a try.

Once you click on the convert menu item, this dialog comes up. You can either add it as another style (a compound skin) to the existing skin or create a new skin. The other settings will let you tweak compatibility issues.  The Conversion Info will give you warnings on what may or may not work. For example, the H20 skin being run in this screenshot couldn't be converted exactly because it centers the icon and it has no borders. The borders would end up being 4 pixels and thus require some editing. H20 is therefore better done as a UIS2 skin. Skin authors will generally focus on making the design they want and worry less about whether it's UIS1 or UIS2 - both are faster than what's built into Windows XP thanks to hardware acceleration and format optimization anyway.
Gamma Correction!
Ever get a skin that is too bright or too dark for your tastes? If you're using the enhanced version, you can use WindowBlinds 3.1's new gamma correction feature to make skins lighter or dark to your tastes.

3.jpg (173763 bytes)

Get a dark skin that you want to make lighter?

4.jpg (167995 bytes)

Or a lighter skin that you would like to make darker.
Smart Buttons
WindowBlinds 3.0 shipped with the ability to create smart bars and a few skins do support it (most notably, Logika). The goal of SmartButtons is to do away with buttons hard coded for a specific function (such as rollups, always on top, etc.). Smart buttons replace those and allow the users to select what those buttons do from the WindowBlinds configuration dialog.

logika.jpg (182738 bytes)

Logika was the first third party skin to use Smart Buttons. The 4th button from the right is a smart button. A user can change what it does from the WindowBlinds configuration dialog.

Adding smart buttons:

The real problem was a lack of documentation on how to create a smart button for skin authors.

Here's how they work:

A smart button is made up of 3 parts:

1) The title bar button itself. Skin authors designate a standard title bar button to be a smart button.

2) The smart button graphics. Skin authors define the graphics smart buttons should use depending on what the user has selected (smartbutton.generic for the default and then others like smartbutton.rollup, smartbutton.aot, etc.)

3) The smart button definition. This is just a [SmartButton0], [SmartButton1], etc. defined in the skin with enabled=1 under it.

Here's how to do it in SkinStudio:

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First the skin author presses the "add button" option on the left side and this dialog comes up. One of them is Smart Button.

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Then it will add the button to the title bar along with a Smart Buttons grouping to let the user assign the various state graphics. Note: You ONLY have to include a Generic image if you want as it will always fall back to that.  You can have up to 5 smart buttons in a skin.

 

Add to all this that there are thousands of WindowBlinds visual styles available with cool features like animation, MP3 player controls, sound effects and more and you can see why WindowBlinds is so popular.

You can download WindowBinds at http://www.windowblinds.net