Stardock releases WindowBlinds 3!
Tuesday, November 13, 2001 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Stardock releases WindowBlinds 3.0!After months of effort Stardock has released its third generation of its popular GUI customization program, WindowBlinds. Version 3 of WindowBlinds adds a host of new features and on Windows XP makes WindowBlinds skins behave as native visual styles. It brings this technology to existing versions of Windows as well. Any Windows user running WindowBlinds 3 will be able to completely transform the Windows GUI to look however they want it to.
Stardock has focused on improving WindowBlinds’ performance to the point that it is, on Windows XP, faster than the bundled visual styles (Luna) when running a similar skin. It does this while using fewer resources and less memory as well. Stardock was able to do this by taking advantage of new hardware acceleration features in video cards (visit http://www.xpbench.com to see if your video card supports XP APIs). WindowBlinds 3 boasts a completely new architecture designed to minimize resource usage while providing new features such as SmartBars, Inclusion lists, Hyperpaint, per skin font/color customization, animated mouse-overs, and more.
For users of Windows 98, ME, 2000 WindowBlinds brings much of the new XP theming architecture over. In the coming months, users with WindowBlinds 3 on those versions of Windows will be able to take advantage of “XP theme aware applications”.
WindowBlinds allows users to customize nearly every part of the Windows GUI. Title bars, scrollbars, start bar, radio buttons, push buttons, etc. It can also add additional buttons to the title bar to enhance productivity such as roll-up buttons, URL buttons, always-on-top buttons, and more. It supports a fairly powerful but simple plugin format so that users can put nearly anything they want onto the Windows title bar.
The complete WindowBlinds 3 guide is at:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb3/wb3_guide_final.htm
Users can download it at: http://www.windowblinds.net.
Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb-nov01.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/temp/wb3galore.gif
https://www.wincustomize.com/images/news/1182001101801PM1.jpg
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Attila
Reply #4 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:01 PM
Reply #4 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:01 PM
Woohoo, I'm loving WindowBlinds 3, however, I'm going to wait untill I can upgrade for free after July 1. I'm not lacking anything using the RC2 beta am I? It's been rock solid for me on Windows 2000. w00t!
Attila
Reply #5 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:05 PM
Reply #5 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:05 PM
What does that mean anyway.. should that be July 1, 2002 instead of 2001 as it says in the GUIDE?
Attila
Reply #6 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:05 PM
Reply #6 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 5:05 PM
What does that mean anyway.. should that be July 1, 2002 instead of 2001 as it says in the GUIDE?
Enzyme
Reply #8 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:42 PM
Reply #8 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:42 PM
All very well, but someone spelt wincustomize wrong in the guide! - think of all those click-thrus on www.wincustomiz.com 
digitaljames
Reply #9 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:55 PM
Reply #9 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 6:55 PM
Amazing....general public gets it before ODN subscribers..Bah!
digitaljames
Reply #10 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 7:49 PM
Reply #10 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 7:49 PM
Spoke too soon...way to go Stardock...finally I get XP Cobalt 
digitaljames
Reply #11 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 7:49 PM
Reply #11 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 7:49 PM
Spoke too soon...way to go Stardock...finally I get XP Cobalt
Frogboy
Reply #12 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 1:36 AM
Reply #12 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 1:36 AM
Yep. Had to do some last minute tweaking to XP Cobalt which delayed the ODNT/enhanced build a few hours.
pjpowell
Reply #13 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 8:42 AM
Reply #13 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 8:42 AM
Attila: The July 01 thing means that if you bought WB2 after (or on presumably) 1/July/2001 you will get an automatic free upgrade to WB 3.0
I believe the 01 refers to the year 2001. So basically if you bought it before July 2001.
If you bought WB 2 before that date then you pay $8 to upgrade. Hope that clears things up.
I believe the 01 refers to the year 2001. So basically if you bought it before July 2001.
If you bought WB 2 before that date then you pay $8 to upgrade. Hope that clears things up.
Attila
Reply #14 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 10:54 AM
Reply #14 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 10:54 AM
PJ, thanks.. Brad kinda cleared it up for me at deviantART. Someone should proof read that guide as it's linked all over the place. If you're interested, the release of WB3 got some mention over at ActiveWin: http://www.activewin.com
Dokt
Reply #15 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 12:12 PM
Reply #15 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 12:12 PM
Hard to imagine a bigger improvement. I've never used Windowblinds in the past because it brought my dual PIII 1Ghz, 1Gb RAM, GeF2 DDR64Mb, W2K system to a crawl. Haven't noticed any performance hit at all with this version. Good job.
paxx
Reply #16 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 4:58 PM
Reply #16 Wednesday, November 14, 2001 4:58 PM
Wow, that XP Cobalt skin is totally awsome! This will be my GUI for a long time, I'm sure! Wow wow wow!
Bravo Alexandrie!
Bravo Alexandrie!
Galfant
Reply #18 Thursday, November 15, 2001 10:10 AM
Reply #18 Thursday, November 15, 2001 10:10 AM
Now if we could just get themed icons and cursors to go with this fantastic program. WBManiaIV is an excellent skin. Perhaps it could be updated?
Agit0168
Reply #19 Thursday, November 15, 2001 6:54 PM
Reply #19 Thursday, November 15, 2001 6:54 PM
Has anyone had any problems with the installer??? It's kinda hosed on my system. When I add a skin, it does not appear in the skins tab in the display properties, but it does show up in the skins applet in the windowblinds control panel. Just curious
Frogboy
Reply #20 Saturday, November 17, 2001 1:34 AM
Reply #20 Saturday, November 17, 2001 1:34 AM
What language of Windows you using? (English, Japanese, Dutch, etc.)
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Reply #1 Tuesday, November 13, 2001 3:52 PM