WindowBlinds 6 Beta 2 arrives
Almost...there...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
If you have Object Desktop you can now download WindowBlinds 6 beta 2. For the uninitiated: WindowBlinds is a program that allows users to easily and safely change the look and feel of the Windows user interface (title bars, start bar, star menu, scrollbars, push buttons, etc.). Object Desktop is a suite of programs that allow users to personalize their entire Windows experience.
Now, WindowBlinds 6 is the next-generation version of WindowBlinds. Amongst its cool new features is the ability to do full blurred glass even on Windows XP. Full support of skinning every piece of Windows Vista. Advanced animation and advanced colorization, user sub-styles and well just tons of other features both big and small.
Beta 2 is a huge overhaul to the underlying structure of WindowBlinds. For years, the skins you download for WindowBlinds have gone into the WindowBlinds directory. But with Windows Vista, Microsoft really frowns on programs putting data in the program files directory. So beta 2 migrates all the skins to the shared documents folder.
Those of you who are technical can probably appreciate the immense amount of effort involved in smoothly migrating what can amount to gigs of skins from one place to another without disrupting the user experience in the process.
Below are some screenshot highlights:
Taken on my Windows XP box. Check out the blur effect in the title bar. You can blur existing skins even.
This is the quick way of being able to Vista-ize your existing skins. There's literally an option to vista-ize skins (even in Windows XP).
The advanced coloring support is extremely cool. Now you can specific which colors you want to affect. It takes a little practice but it's worth it. Now you can hue shift parts of your skin. So even if a skin author makes a skin a different color than you desire, no problem, you can easily change it.
The dragon on the start menu is a smooth, >30fps animation with fire effects. It does this on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Again, technical users out there can tell you - non-trivial to get this kind of performance.
WindowBlinds 6 not only has these cool features but it does it using trivial amounts of memory and is FASTER than Windows XP or Windows Vista are normally. We include the Diamond skin. Feel free to dual boot to a Windows XP box, load up Diamond with full blur on and check out the performance. Then boot to Windows Vista and run the default Aero. Which is faster? WindowBlinds 6 makes full use of the DWM on Windows Vista to maximize performance/lower memory requirements.
If you have Object Desktop, check it out for yourself, let us know what you think. We release on October 2nd!
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Reply #63 Thursday, September 20, 2007 5:49 PM
Just a thought, honestly I don't care where they go, shortcuts are easy enough to make.
Reply #64 Thursday, September 20, 2007 5:55 PM
Even on XP Brad?
Reply #65 Thursday, September 20, 2007 6:04 PM
A screenshot might help too.
Neil....I uninstalled the latest and went back to the previous...or one of the previous version since the install borked the archiving. But...I'll uninstall this and try again to see if it does it again. If it does I'll post a screenshot here.
Reply #66 Thursday, September 20, 2007 8:29 PM
Even on XP Brad?
I don't get that either. The previous beta seemed to work fine on Vista keeping the skins in program files, didn't it?
Reply #67 Thursday, September 20, 2007 9:45 PM
Reply #68 Friday, September 21, 2007 12:39 AM
What I wanna see is for this blurring thing to work correctly.I am falling in love with this feature..
Only problem areas seem to be window frame over window frame,over widgets,xion,OD.After a second reboot,taskbar blurring began working(it dosnt blur the bottom pixel for some reason)
No start menu blurring?Now THAT would be very cool.
EDIT:the taskbar blurs comepletely when locked...just not when unlocked.
Reply #69 Friday, September 21, 2007 9:06 AM
- OS: Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate
- Motherboard: MSI 975X Platinum PowerUp Edition (MS-7246), 2 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1,
2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
- North Bridge: Intel Glenwood-DG i975X
- CPU Type: DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2400 MHz
- Memory: 3 GB DDR-2 SDRAM
- HDD: 3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS ATA Device (320GB, SATA)
- RAID/IDE JMicron JMB361 SATA-II AHCI Controller (not used)
- Video: nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (p355) Video Adapter
- Audio: Creative CA20K1 X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity Audio Processor
- DVD-RW: NEC DVD_RW ND-3540A ATA Device (ATA)
- DVD-RW: PLEXTOR DVDR PX-755A ATA Device (SATA)
- DVD-RW: MY5251Q AAI903R SCSI CdRom Device (DEAMONTOOLS virtual drive)
- Wireless: Ralink RT2561 802.11g Turbo Wireless Network Adapter
- Remote: Microsoft MCE Remote Control Kit
Let me know if you need more information.
Reply #71 Friday, September 21, 2007 3:13 PM
Reply #72 Friday, September 21, 2007 4:38 PM
Reply #73 Friday, September 21, 2007 9:54 PM
Reply #74 Sunday, September 23, 2007 4:15 PM
Cheers for your reply brainiac on how to get roll up button in all blinds
How do you get them to roll up?
Reply #75 Sunday, September 23, 2007 11:43 PM
Reply #76 Monday, September 24, 2007 3:45 AM
EDIT : Problem solved by unchecking archiving.
Reply #77 Monday, September 24, 2007 6:29 AM
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Reply #61 Thursday, September 20, 2007 3:21 PM
thought i might have a chance to play a little als