What is the difference between WB and Visual Style?
Monday, March 28, 2005 by Greg_GtO | Discussion: WindowBlinds
What is the difference between Windowblind and Visual Style?
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Reply #2 Monday, March 28, 2005 6:03 AM
Windowblinds is stardocks program to change your visual style.
Msstyles is another program similiar to windowblinds that changes your visual style.
Reply #3 Monday, March 28, 2005 6:49 AM
WindowBlinds doesn't hack, it hooks. It hooks into the messages sent in Windows that is related to painting the GUI and paints it own current skin instead of the standard windows GUI.
Reply #4 Monday, March 28, 2005 7:00 AM
StyleXp is the program, not msstyles. Reply #6 Monday, March 28, 2005 3:56 PM
I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS?
Reply #7 Monday, March 28, 2005 4:10 PM
I personally say Windowblinds RULE! stay away from VS and stick with the best!
Zero.
Reply #8 Monday, March 28, 2005 4:34 PM
| I see a lot of people at Deviantart use Visual Style and they say WB sucks... I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS? |
Well keep in mind using StyleXP hacks your XP system. Hacking your XP system is never a wise idea.
Reply #9 Monday, March 28, 2005 4:39 PM
Reply #10 Monday, March 28, 2005 5:48 PM
| I see a lot of people at Deviantart use Visual Style and they say WB sucks... I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS? |
These people are sadly mis-informed. WindowBlinds rules, for so many reasons.
Ask one of those guys at DA to point you to a skin with the titlebar buttons on the left side. Or one with a rollup button, or one with WinAmp controls built into the skin....... etc, etc..
Reply #11 Monday, March 28, 2005 6:32 PM
I know many people don't feel comfortable with hacking system files, but seriously, I've never seen a problem with hacking the uxtheme.dll. So, I don't use windowblinds because I'm afraid of hacking system files, I use it because it simply is a better program. Let's see, windowblinds is MUCH more powerful, capable of using both msstyles and windowblinds skins, and (if you know what you're doing, and disable the themes service), windowblinds runs FASTER on your computer than traditional msstyles. So, you know, the only upside to msstyles are that they're free... and windowblinds is not an expensive program at all.
So yeah, don't listen to those guys on deviantart. alot of people online don't like windowblinds, but the reason they think it sucks is because someone else told them that it sucks, and so on. The original complaints (and only time windowblinds had any real problems) stem back from pre-WindowsXP times, when windowblinds was not as native to the system as it is now. Of course... there was no alternative at the time either, so windowblinds was still the best at what it did.
Yeah, stick with windowblinds, and the let the deviantart guys use inferior methods of theming.
Reply #12 Monday, March 28, 2005 7:04 PM
Visual Styles:
A visual style is a partiuclar type of "skin" designed to change the look and feel of the entire user interface of an operating system.
On Windows XP, there are two popular formats for visuals tyles - WindowBlinds and MSStyles.
WindowBlinds visual styles are designed to be more flexible than MSStyles but require the user to use the commercial program, WindowBlinds ($19.95) in order to get the most out of them.
MSStyles are very basic but are also free. They cannot move title bar buttons, cannot change border sizes, cannot add additional buttons to the title bar, cannot change styles on title bar text, cannot control alignment on controls or text.
Advocates for MSStyles will argue that these limitations are a good thing because most msstyles tend to be pretty derivative of the existing Windows XP look and therefore are more "usable". Proponents for WindowBlinds will argue that WindowBlinds users can use msstyles as well via SkinStudio and that the whole point of "skinning" your GUI is to be able to make it look and feel how you want not just tweak it a little bit. MSStyles cannot change tool bar buttons or progress animations and don't skin as many parts of the Windows XP OS.
The advantage of WindowBlinds (the program) is that in addition to being able to use WindowBlinds visual styles as well as MSStyles via SkinStudio that it can provide hardware acceleration based on graphic card improvements that have been made since Windows XP's release back in 2001. In addition, WindowBlinds provides features such as color changing on the fly, per application visual style support, mouse button customization, mixing and matching progress animations and toolbar icons, and can skin non-theme aware applications.
For a full list of WindowBlinds features versus the bundled msstyle system, visit http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4
Reply #13 Monday, March 28, 2005 7:48 PM
Reply #14 Tuesday, March 29, 2005 10:48 AM
With WB you get VS skins (msstyles) and WB skins (wba).
That alone is a good argument even if you aren't worried about hacking your windows files.
Btw, if anyone claims that VS skins runs without a footprint, they are wrong. It's just "hidden" within one of them scvhost.exe processes running on your system.
Reply #15 Wednesday, March 30, 2005 1:30 AM
Reply #16 Wednesday, March 30, 2005 3:40 AM
WindowBlinds>StyleXP anyway though.
And I don't know that hacking your uxtheme.dll file is very risky anyway.
Reply #17 Wednesday, March 30, 2005 3:54 AM
Reply #18 Wednesday, March 30, 2005 5:07 AM
| was under the impression that StyleXP didn't hack your system, it just safely modifies the memory to allow different visual styles, kinda like what BootSkin does with bootscreens. But I could be very wrong. WindowBlinds>StyleXP anyway though. And I don't know that hacking your uxtheme.dll file is very risky anyway. |
| Also keep in mind hacking your system files violates the MS EULA. |
The most importants ....
Reply #19 Thursday, March 31, 2005 3:46 PM
What exactly does the "Themes" service do? I was reading WB runs much faster if you disable this service. I just disabled it, but I am curious as to what it does exactly.
Reply #20 Thursday, March 31, 2005 4:46 PM
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Reply #1 Monday, March 28, 2005 4:47 AM