WindowBlinds 4 Alpha 1 released

Friday, January 24, 2003 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News

WindowBlinds 4 Alpha 1 has been released. Version 4 is a major rewrite of WindowBlinds that is designed to be much more low level than previous versions of WindowBlinds, use less memory, and skin a lot more.

The main features of WindowBlinds 4 include:
+ Skinning of the command prompt
+ Skinning of pretty much every part of the Windows OS including the explorer task panes (shell styles), and many small areas that users may not have noticed before not being skinned but will almost certainly notice being skinned now.
+ Skinning of lots of dialogs and notices that Windows XP itself doesn't change normally such as the logoff screen, the transition dialog, and more.
+ Smart painting, a new technology that makes WindowBlinds much faster and in some cases almost as fast as running "classic".

The alpha only is available for Windows XP users. Subsequent builds will be released for other versions of Windows. It is currently only available on Object Desktop. Follow the link if you want to purchase or upgrade Object Desktop which comes with DesktopX, ObjectBar, WinStyles, IconPackager, ControlCenter, and much more.
26 Reply 2 Referrals
First Previous Page 1 of 2 Next Last
MogWaEE
Reply #1 Friday, January 24, 2003 9:18 PM
Hmmm, is there a way to tell an app not to inherit cloring options? I have Blackcomb (amazing theme!) running, and it set my text to white, which is fine with the theme, but I can't read my links in Opera using their standard skin anymore. I would like to be able to set it to black just ofr that app. I tried setting windowblinds to only skin the titlebar for Opera, but it still inherits the colouring scheme.
Thanks in advance for any input you might have.

Diafragma
Reply #2 Friday, January 24, 2003 9:19 PM
I am also having problems with some of the taskbar showing just black on some of the WB skins...

GreenReaper
Reply #3 Friday, January 24, 2003 9:25 PM
WogWaEE: Alas, there is no way to change colours for just one app, as it is a systemwide setting. In IE you can force some things that are set to standard text colours to be a specific colour - maybe there's an option to do that in Opera?

Beastatron
Reply #4 Friday, January 24, 2003 9:46 PM
Question: I bought windowblinds 3.5 and I dont have object desktop. Will I be able to update to 4 when all the bugs are fixed? And if so will I have to pay another $20?

GreenReaper
Reply #5 Friday, January 24, 2003 10:05 PM
If you bought it recently, probably not - maybe someone from Stardock could confirm this?

If you do end up having to upgrade it's historically been $10 for current users.

GreenReaper
Reply #6 Friday, January 24, 2003 10:07 PM
Sorry - get rid of the "not" in that sentance.

jark
Reply #7 Friday, January 24, 2003 10:16 PM
i am running vox so i am running a skin that is WB4 aware.

i got the command prompt to be skinned thanks to the help from woodbridge. however, mozilla form elements are still jacked.

Kevin_C
Reply #8 Saturday, January 25, 2003 2:28 AM
so far so good.. only problewms I've had are disappearing systray icons or partially covered systray icons. displaying the clock in the systray seems to fix the glitch though. I did get a memory at address 0x???? could not be read error the first time I loaded WB as well. but I haven't really had any issues that make me want to change back, the speed improvements alone are enough to stick with WB4.. keep up the great work!!

Wauslee
Reply #9 Saturday, January 25, 2003 2:59 AM
THis version is working quite fast on my system and I even have the skinned command prompt however I don't have skinned task panes. Is there some special setting for this that I am overlooking?

CheeseCow
Reply #10 Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:37 AM
Woo!

Finally the speed is almost up to par with the Visual Styles. Now this is a good thing. And since it skins the command line, it even have an edge. However I can't click the menu options in the command line. You know, like "properities".

Anyway, this should be enough to drive most VS-people back to WB. I will stick with it for now, at the very least.

PS: Colony rocks!

Powered by SkinBrowser!

paulaakiyama
Reply #11 Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:39 AM
me too... the task panes are not skinned...

GreenReaper
Reply #12 Saturday, January 25, 2003 4:31 AM
Are people who can't get the explorer task panes using a non-English version of XP? There may be a problem with non-English versions of Windows XP not skinning the task panes according to other reports on the newsgroup.

stark23x
Reply #13 Saturday, January 25, 2003 8:12 PM
I'm almost done fixing up my skin to include the new options...(THANKS FOR MAKING ALL THIS WORK FOR ME STARDOCK!)

It's definitely improved the perceived speed of my old PIII laptop. Things render just a little faster. I like the shell skinning a LOT...I've almost completely transformed my system from the default Windows look in every respect.

I love this company. I swear to god.

S J N
Reply #14 Saturday, January 25, 2003 11:51 PM
I can't seem to get my tiled backrounds to work

Otherwise this is the best yet! Fast..fast...fast

Bushman
Reply #15 Sunday, January 26, 2003 11:01 AM
The Nvidia theme works fine but after I loaded the alphia WB on top ove the regular wb program the icon link doesn't work. I have to go to display to set things. Other than that this looks great.

stark23x
Reply #16 Sunday, January 26, 2003 1:03 PM
Currently tweaking the hell out my skin, and I found a typo in SkinStudio, in case the powers that be are watching...

IN may of the Text Layout dialogs, the word "Disabled" is spelled "Diasbled."

Mark Jaquith
Reply #17 Sunday, January 26, 2003 1:07 PM
It's fast for sure, and skinned task panes have been on my wishlist for a long long time. For some reason, it doesn't skin my command line window. Hm...

GreenReaper
Reply #18 Sunday, January 26, 2003 2:13 PM
Mark: You need that option enabled - click the Advanced button in Display Properties, it should be there.

MarkSnyder61
Reply #19 Sunday, January 26, 2003 4:11 PM
Not as stable as previous version, but I think final release will be better? Haven't noticed any speed change on a P4 2.8Ghz. You definately cannot allow it to skin Adobe Acrobat v5 because it does something to the functionality of it and when you try to use the program it just goes away (closes the application)??

Douglas Weil
Reply #20 Sunday, January 26, 2003 11:21 PM
Agree with the other comments about it being very fast and seemingly very solid for an alpha version.

Couple of things not working include the skinning of some applications like WMP and Windows Messenger, both of which are pretty minor issues. Also, apparently the changes I made to the skin in WB don't translate over to WebBlinds, but it's possible that they didn't under previous versions

Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

  • Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
  • Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
  • Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
  • It's simple, and FREE!
Login
First Previous Page 1 of 2 Next Last

Home | About | Privacy | Upload Guidelines | Terms of Service | Help
Copyright © Stardock Corporation. All Rights Reserved.


web-wc01