eXperience Win11 Support (Soon)

Wednesday, November 30, 2022 by SimplexDesigns | Discussion: Skinning

Working on updating the theme to support some of the new windows 11 features. Got a wip graphics for the sub-style blue, more to come at a later date. Also looking into adding dark mode support if I find a good way of doing so, its quite difficult to wip up darker images that match the XP aesthetic style. The start button will be cropped by removing the "start" text to get the theme prepped for the next version of Windows 11 that will limit the start button width to 48 pixel wide. Sorry this has to be done for the 11 Sub-style, but its Microsoft's doing...

IF you have not tried of the theme you can find it here, but without the changes listed below.

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/9262/

 

Tabs Support (WIP) - Removed gradient from navigation bar in order to blend the new 11 command bar in with tabs. The lighter color overlay cannot be changed so this is the best we got. You will also notice the caption buttons have been squeezed closer together and moved more to the right. I did not notice that they were not pulling the correct values as to how they were on XP, this has been fixed in this version.

 

Start11 - 10/11 Themes supported now. Still looking into a different design for the 10 Style, as of right now I just have it pulling the top image from the 7 mode start menu. Its unfortunately one image so I cant really make it 2 tone like windows XP due to start 11 having the font color hard codded to use light/dark mode font color defined by windows rather than Windowblinds.

DrJBHL
Reply #1 Wednesday, November 30, 2022 6:27 AM

It's gonna be super...can't wait! One of my fave skins. ❤️

SimplexDesigns
Reply #2 Tuesday, December 6, 2022 11:57 PM

DrJBHL

It's gonna be super...can't wait! One of my fave skins. ❤️

Metallic Tabs done! Actually figured out also why the borders were so thick. So all substyles will include that fix. You can see how thin the borders are compared to the blue substyle from the first screenshot in this thread.

Doing some trickery for windows 10/11 secondary taskbars. I added the system tray bg to the main taskbar image so that the clock section on the secondary taskbar matches the main taskbar style. Not sure how it will work under windows 10 with no system tray icons atm, only have 11 installed.

DrJBHL
Reply #3 Wednesday, December 7, 2022 12:27 AM

It's really coming along. I like the start button and the new borders. Good work, sir!   

SimplexDesigns
Reply #4 Wednesday, December 7, 2022 12:38 AM

DrJBHL

It's really coming along. I like the start button and the new borders. Good work, sir!   

 

Start button is untouched. I will include PNG files for Large and Center Buttons as separate files to reduce using more substyles. They can be applied with start11 when you turn off skinning the start button under windowblinds.

Blue style now has finalized tab frame.

 

Olive Style

SimplexDesigns
Reply #5 Thursday, December 8, 2022 10:11 AM

I have finished updating all substyles for windows 11/start11 support. I also axed all of the Win7/8 substyles and merged them into the main 10 substyles. That was a huge pain in the butt to do but it was needed as it set me up to easily add alternate substyles in the future. Currently adding Classic style from Windows XP. Got a few elements done. File explorer is next! 

 

(Win11 substyles were needed since I cant quite get the top frame to have gradients for where the tabs render, they miss align with the address bar bg. Made them flat instead.)

DrJBHL
Reply #6 Thursday, December 8, 2022 2:41 PM

SimplexDesigns

Start button is untouched.

I see why I thought it was new. I use the medium sized task bar so the image of the start button in reply #2 looks larger, occupying the whole task bar width...yours is the small task bar. The button doesn't stretch, does it? 

SimplexDesigns
Reply #7 Friday, December 9, 2022 7:35 AM

DrJBHL


Quoting SimplexDesigns,

Start button is untouched.



I see why I thought it was new. I use the medium sized task bar so the image of the start button in reply #2 looks larger, occupying the whole task bar width...yours is the small task bar. The button doesn't stretch, does it? 

 

Button does not stretch. It stays at a predefined image size. I use small taskbar icons mostly, so it looks normal there in skin studio. The buttons were only ever designed for small taskbar icons due to how it worked back on windows xp/vista. If it does not fit your taskbar is because you are probably using medium or large taskbar icons in start11. Set it to small and it will look right. Though you probably dont like them that small. I will try to include larger buttons to apply with start11 but that might be a bit longer. I would need to learn how to recreate those from scratch and mimic the look 100%. I have yet to get it to look right.

 

Also did some trickery to get the captions working on the classic substyle. Each time I tried to get it working, it failed. But with the magic of sizing margins I was able to make the glass area use only 1 image rather than tile it in.

 

First Iteration of the navbar Background, you can see it tiles the gradient all the way down.

 

Here is the finalized iteration of it. Because of this trick I learned. I can apply it to all the other xp styles in it to get the gradients back.

 

 

Here are also the 2 Start11 menu styles 10/11 modes.

 

SimplexDesigns
Reply #8 Monday, December 12, 2022 7:56 PM

Got the gradients to work with the new tabs section frame. It required some trickery with making the frame for tabs the gradient bg and using an overlay to add the frames back in. Looks quite nice now.

 

The theme selection also have been cleaned up. I will include a separate wba file that will have the windows 7/8 versions of the theme due to the taskbar looking cut off on those systems due to sizing margins to the text on the taskbar buttons.

 

Windows Classic XP Substyle:

 

PaulSteele376
Reply #9 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 11:28 AM

Have you added the Chartreuse Mongoose, Blue Lagoon, and Candy skin for the next update for eXperience11?   

SimplexDesigns
Reply #10 Wednesday, March 8, 2023 9:41 PM

PaulSteele376

Have you added the Chartreuse Mongoose, Blue Lagoon, and Candy skin for the next update for eXperience11?   

 

Sadly those themes were never fully finished and are super broken. I have no plans on adding those at this time. I have submitted a new version thats awaiting approval.

 

The new version includes a huge hotfix for windows 11 machines. I had to resize the start buttons to fit in a size limitation imposed by microsoft now and has some adjustments to system theme colors that apply to the taskbar/startmenu so that the icons and text are readable on those substyles. And the final fix was adding win11 tab support to watercolor, it never had it for some reason. It now displays correctly.

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