Custom themes for my desktop..

Using WindowBlinds 4.5's coloring to customize your themes

Tuesday, February 15, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WindowBlinds

WindowBlinds is a program that enables users of Microsoft Windows to apply themes (which we refer to as "skins" or "visual styles") that change the look and feel of your Windows GUI. However, WindowBlinds 4.5 allows users to change the color of each particular "theme". Traditionally, people would download a given "theme" and if it wasn't the color they liked, they were out of luck. Now, with WindowBlinds 4.5's hue/saturation support, the skin's default colors are only the beginning...

Let's have some fun with the new coloring feature of WindowBlinds 4.5. I don't think most users, even long time users, really appreciate just how powerful the built in coloring features are in this new version. Going to a hue-based coloring system is a big deal.

To demonstrate it in action, I'm going to pick a skin that that one wouldn't necessarily would realize how much coloring it would add to its longevity - Morphium's SouLuna skin.

So the image to the right here is how it looks on my system with no coloring at all.

 

So here's what I do. I click on the "Change Skin Color" in the WindowBlinds configuration (found in your system tray typically or by double clicking on the WindowBlinds icon).

Now I'm going to go to town..

Now it's somewhat bluer..


I feel..pretty..


All business now!


Evergreen enough?


How about now?


Drab?


Same as above but with saturation turned up a bit.


Bloody!


Far out! (inverted)

My final desktop appearance today with the colors changed. I've got so many blue skins already that it's sometimes interesting to go with a skin that has more of an earth tone. But as you can see, with the hue/saturation/gamma features of WindowBlinds 4.5, you can get a lot of different looks with just a single skin...

WindowBlinds 4.5
Price: Free to try, $19.95 to register on its own or $49.95 if purchased as part of Object Desktop.
Web: www.windowblinds.net
Developer: Stardock (www.stardock.com)

 

10 Reply 71 Referrals
joeKnowledge
Reply #1 Tuesday, February 15, 2005 7:51 PM
you USE Microsoft FrontPage??? I never liked the program, but i guess I should give it a shot again... It just seemed to always have the strangest code..


anyway, I have been using recoloring for a while now. I like recoloring essorants skins, and a few others.

But I would NEVER touch Soul Luna.... shame on you!

Draginol
Reply #2 Tuesday, February 15, 2005 8:06 PM
Frontpage sucked until the latest one in Office 2003. Now it works pretty well. What I do is write my article to https://www.stardock.com/brad/blog-021505.html where I just hit print screen and paste into my article and then I load it up in IE, and paste it into Ju.

joeKnowledge
Reply #3 Wednesday, February 16, 2005 10:42 AM
yeah, that is when I change the color of the skin. matching the wallpaper color to a skin is really nice.

McPest
Reply #4 Thursday, February 17, 2005 10:39 AM
..nice

Debilynn628
Reply #5 Monday, February 21, 2005 9:46 AM
I discovered this a few weeks ago and have had lots of fun with it! There are so many blue skins, and while blue is very nice, I think the other colors were feeling a little neglected. Now they all get to play !

boopish
Reply #6 Wednesday, February 23, 2005 1:06 AM
This was a very interesting lesson indeed....my skin library just multiplied with possibilities!!! One question however, I tried this using CGlasswb V1 by Craig Orman, and although my blind changed, my object bar (used Longhorne M4 by ssuuddoo, with the option "use windowblinds skin" checked, remained the original green color instead of the nice peachy pink I had made. What did I do wrong? And can I save my new skin color under another name - I don't want to overwrite the original.

Thanks for your time and patience for this newbie question.

FreakishNick
Reply #7 Thursday, February 24, 2005 4:28 PM
Windows Skins Rock

butch123
Reply #8 Thursday, February 24, 2005 5:11 PM
Windows Skins Rock couldnt have said it better if I had said it myself

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