WindowBlinds 5 Beta: Next Tuesday
It's coming..
Monday, September 26, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
The first public beta of WindowBlinds 5 is almost here. Stardock released the alpha this week to its internal QA team to put the program through its compatibility testing before sending it out. WindowBlinds 5's most notable new feature is the ability to support "glass" and full alpha blending of the title bar and border (no more jaggy borders). The critical step has been to deliver this functionality without affecting performance for reasonably modern video cards.
In addiion, WindowBlinds 5 no longer has a "wbload.exe" and instead extends the painting of the Windows GUI in a more "native" way. Or put another way, it has "zero foot print" in the same manner that the default bundled Windows themes (msstyles) use.
Users who have Object Desktop will be able to try out the beta next Tuesday (Oct 4). Users of WindowBlinds 4 will be able to upgrade to Object Desktop at a reduced price. Moreover, users who purchased WindowBlinds 4 after September 1 will receive WindowBlinds 5 for free.
WindowBlinds 5 will also be designed to run on Windows Vista natively by the time Windows Vista ships (the beta of WindowBlinds 5 should run on the beta of Windows Vista though the Windows Vista GUI is still in a state of flux obviously).
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Reply #62 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 5:00 PM
| Does anyone know where/how I can find when my OD Network subscription expires? I can't remember when I last renewed it. |
Double-click Registration Info in Stardock Central, then click Update. It should confirm your registration, and display your expiration date.
Reply #64 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 8:26 PM
Reply #65 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:39 PM
Reply #66 Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:15 AM
Reply #68 Wednesday, September 28, 2005 9:03 AM
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Reply #71 Thursday, September 29, 2005 3:38 AM
| are only the window borders transparent? or does that include the TOOLBARS like winv? |
Yeah I'd like to know also, as it would be pretty good if most of the interface could support transparency. Some interesting things could come of it.
Reply #73 Thursday, September 29, 2005 5:27 AM
The reason why our (and many other) corporation didn't upgrade from Win2k to XP is that XP does not offer significant benefits in a corporate environment for official work purposes, (they thought I went crazy when I mentioned the nice GUI
still each time ppl keep on asking what OS am I running ) so the costs of a migration/testing of core business applications/redesigning remote login and whatever scripts/deploying the new OS in a 60.000+ employee environment was not taken. I guess I'm not the only one stuck with win2k this way.I'll also get stuck with the todays WB skin offering, as I bet, from next tuesday (BTW happy birthday essorant) noone will develop new skins for the 4.x platform.
Reply #74 Thursday, September 29, 2005 8:45 AM
| I'll also get stuck with the todays WB skin offering, as I bet, from next tuesday (BTW happy birthday essorant) noone will develop new skins for the 4.x platform. |
I very much hope that this will not be the case. It should not that hard to provide non-translucent border options as well. Indeed, the performance implications of using translucency make it quite a good idea to avoid it unless it is necessary to the design of the skin, in the same way it's a bad idea to use UIS2 with shaped borders if you can use UIS1 with square ones.
Reply #75 Thursday, September 29, 2005 9:03 AM
Reply #77 Thursday, September 29, 2005 8:04 PM
Reply #78 Friday, September 30, 2005 8:26 AM
Reply #79 Friday, September 30, 2005 11:28 AM
| I will say this: The hardware requirements to run WindowBlinds 5 in glass are a lot lower than the hardware requirements to run Microsoft's Windows Vista Aero in glass mode. |
You meant "Vista Beta" right?
Reply #80 Friday, September 30, 2005 11:45 AM
| You meant "Vista Beta" right? |
No. Microsoft requires graphics cards which support Pixel Shader 2.0, a 3D grahpics function introduced in DirectX 9.0 and only present on certain graphics cards. There is no indication that they will change that requirement for the final release, as their system is based on using pixel shaders to render the borders. From what I know, WindowBlinds 5 just requires the ability to draw semi-transparent images, which is something that (if all else fails) the OS will do. Of course, it won't do it very fast, but a small amount of help from the graphics card speeds it up significantly.
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Reply #61 Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:59 PM