Last year, Microsoft released “Dark Mode” to Windows 10 users.  Dark Mode gave users an alternative color and style option to the Windows GUI. 

Now, Stardock is preparing to release a new customization program called Curtains.  Curtains works similarly to the modes that Microsoft has implemented.  Any app that already supports the existing dark and light modes will automatically benefit from Curtains.

Stardock Curtains

Stardock Curtains includes several new styles such as Graphite, Crystal, Sky, and Midnight.  It also includes styles that give users the ability to change Windows to look like previous versions of Windows (XP, Windows 95, etc.), as well as alternative operating systems.

Stardock is well known for its customization programs including Fences, Groupy and Start10.  It also is the developer of classic GUI “skinning” apps such as WindowBlinds.  Unlike WindowBlinds, which is far more comprehensive, Curtains doesn’t take over the painting of the Windows GUI but instead works akin to how Dark and Light mode on Windows 10 works.  This means that it inherently takes advantage of different DPI settings and is able to leverage apps that already support Dark and Light Mode.

For Creators

Another big difference between Curtains and WindowBlinds is the complexity of a Style versus a WindowBlinds skin.  Because WindowBlinds essentially takes on the responsibility of drawing the GUI of windows, skins must include all of the GUI controls.  One missing element or one poorly designed control and a WindowBlinds skin can look incomplete.  By contrast, Curtains only needs to supply a handful of images and settings.  It’s simple enough that style modifying and creating is part of its configuration.

It is very simple to create or modify existing styles

Availability

Curtains will be going into beta on Stardock’s Object Desktop suite of Windows enhancements tools next week (late April 2020).  A stand-alone version is expected later in the Spring.

Visit www.objectdesktop.com to get it.

Screenshots

Fluent Peach (Peach Mode)

Dark Waters

Crystal

Fluent Red (Red Mode)

Workbench

MacMono

Midnight

Warp

We've had quite a few new and updated WindowBlinds skins hit the WB gallery on WinCustomize over the past couple of weeks. I've been featuring many to the front page, but it's always fun and useful to list them here as well.

If you have any recent favorites post them in the comments below!

Valdemar by 2of3

Faux OSX by don5318

Tang by LightStar

GreenTan by don5318

Outer Limits by vStyler

The first 3 rows are ones I set. 

The second 3 rows are just ones MS’s “frequently used” populated. 

edit: columns!!!

This early, I haven’t used much.

These are the apps I first install onto a new PC.  What are the first apps you install?

About 2 years ago, I built my first PC. It was a long time coming - I’d been using a friend’s older computer ever since mine went up in flames (dramatic, but also kind of literal) and it was really starting to lag terribly when I played games. I had decided that I wanted to build it myself in order to become more informed about the process, since I worked at a PC gaming/software company.

I’ll never do it again, but I learned a lot! One of the most notable differences for me was moving from Windows 7 over to Windows 10 - the new menu just wasn’t working for me. Before I came to Stardock, I honestly knew little-to-nothing about desktop customization and would have had no clue that I could fix this little problem of mine using Start10.

Fortunately, my squinting at the Start menu in confusion while I tried to find things was short-lived. After firing up and testing multiple games, I finally turned my attention toward optimizing a few things on my desktop. The first was that pesky Start menu.

Look, I’m all about change - change is progress! But when it comes to my Windows experience, I’ll be honest - I’m stubborn and I like what I like. This was just so much cleaner and easier for me to navigate:

To be honest, I have pretty simple wants. It wasn’t until I started thinking about writing this blog that I started to play around a little more with customizing. I found a ton of really fun Start menu buttons over on WinCustomize and, because I’m a giant nerd, I knew immediately which one I had to have. 

After adding my new button, I started to explore some of the color and transparency settings in the app. I also decided to go all-in with the theme (though I haven’t changed my desktop background yet - that’s another post!). Admittedly, the text is a little hard to see, but adjusting the transparency down to about 40% from the default 80% made it easier to look at. You could use any picture here - something personal like a family vacation or a child’s school picture, or something you’re a fan of like (in my case) Green Lantern.

I personally like using the modern style menu, and keep my taskbar a solid black color (rather than making it mostly transparent). I tried turning it green to fit my “theme,” just to see how I’d like it, and let’s just say...there’s such a thing as TOO much color, haha!

While I have a lot of fun messing with styles, colors, and pictures, the main reason I enjoy Start10 so much is because of how practical it is. It’s much easier for me to navigate in general, plus it integrates wonderfully with Fences - which is another app I just can’t live without anymore.

How do you customize your PC? What kinds of Start10 options would you want to try?

This PC is using Windows 10.  But not just Windows 10 on its own.  It's been upgraded a bit with Object Desktop. That's what Object Desktop does.  A lot of the things in Windows we see today first showed up in Object Desktop.  A few examples include transparencies, shadows, gadgets, ZIP files as folders, GUI skinning, etc.  There is a natural progression to the operating system.

On this screenshot I have Groupy, CursorFX, Fences, Start10 and a new app that hasn't been announced yet. 

The PC of the future series is going to explore where we think the desktop is going. This PC has 64 CPU cores and 128 logical processors.  It has 128 GB of memory and an extremely fast GPU.  So what are we going to do with this hardware? That’s what this series will explore.

Edit: Additional screenshots below.

I received a nice article in my email from Review Geek, going through photo editors and image manipulation and creation software for Windows systems, paid and free, so figured that in these days of being almost exclusively at home, folks might be interested in the software that's out there, and what each program does, as well as whom they're most compatible with.

I'm not going to recommend one or another, as there's no "one size fits all"...there wouldn't be an article to refer you to if that were so. If you have additional programs to add, please do so.

I'm adding OnOne Photo Raw 2020 (https://www.on1.com/), a program I use and enjoy a great deal as a stand alone, and as a Photoshop and Lightroom plugin, as well as Topaz Labs AI software which you can view here: https://topazlabs.com/shop/ . I use their Sharpen AI and Denoise AI as well as their Adjust AI programs which are both standalone and Photoshop plugins, like OnOne Photo Raw. They are truly excellent programs which save time in post production editing and help me with creative ideas, as well as just straight editing.

Anyway, the article I received is linked above, as well as here: https://www.reviewgeek.com/39536/7-great-photo-editors-on-windows-for-hobbyists-and-professionals-alike/

Have a good rest of the week, and stay safe and healthy!

CursorFX 4 was released last week and I have been having fun checking out cursor themes to use with it. Some of these are included with CursorFX, but there many more available on WinCustomize for you to download. I wanted to add a few of my favorites here to help you get started, but be sure to take some time and browse the CursorFX gallery.

There are tons of cursor themes of all types there and I'm sure you will find something that's perfect for your desktop setup!

Get more CursorFX themes here.

Zoltik by Apocalypse_67

Nemesis Fx by neone6

Hal 2030 by theAVMAN

ElectroSexual by Vampothika

Volcano Lava by Hakudos

Prior to coming to Stardock, I never got to work from home. I was the director of an afterschool program for K-4 kiddos and if you couldn’t be in the “office,” then you couldn’t work. Making the shift into an industry that is already largely digital was certainly different, and even though I would work the occasional day from home, I generally prefer to be in the office (there are some pretty great people there, after all). 

Now I’m working at home on the daily (like most everyone else), and the adjustment has been more challenging than I thought it would be. A day here and a day there working without all of the benefits I have at the office (like my 3-monitor, 2 PC setup) is no big deal, but now every day? I’ve had to make some adjustments.

We have an entire catalog of Windows customization and optimization software, and I put a solid few of them to good use, particularly in the office. Multiplicity, for example, allows me to control my dual PC setup without having to waste precious desk space on a second keyboard and mouse (because duh, that’d be less desk for my action figures, right?)

Now, I’m only working with one PC at home (although I do have my laptop for when I need it), so I don’t really need Multiplicity right now. But, I’m down a monitor and my setup isn’t as efficient as it is at the office. So, to that end, Groupy has been indispensable in helping me save space and navigate my tabs (sooooo many tabs) more efficiently.

Sometime last week, I needed to stream some Star Control: Origins on Steam for a promotion. My normal setup at the office involves 2 PCs, and El Gato, and (typically) a second person. I usually run production and monitor the chat while they play. Suddenly, I’m flying solo with less equipment, but I still needed to maintain and monitor the same amount of things - Teams, Steam Chat, X-Split scenes, etc - and so I turned to Groupy. I’ve had Groupy installed on my home computer since we released it, and while I do occasionally Twitch stream from home, I’ve never had to do it for work before.

Being able to hotkey between my tabs was absolutely essential. When you’re live streaming, you don’t want to break the viewers’ immersion, so not having to stop and drag windows around or squint at my messages was the key to keeping things running smoothly. For my hotkey, I use the default (Win+~), which works just fine for me.

Grouping Teams, XSplit, and my web browser together into tabs also saved me space. I have precious little to go around with my secondary monitor (obviously my first was taken up with the game), and this made it much more possible for me to keep everything up that I needed at one time. 

Now, if I’m being honest, I’m a fairly plebeian Groupy user. I know lots of other people, like our CEO Brad for example, who utilize the program to a much greater extent than I do. It works for them and they love it. While my needs are much simpler, Groupy has still allowed me an ease of use with my Windows programs that I never had before.

Are you a streamer and have you tried Groupy yet? Let me know how you use the app in the comments!

As thousands of people adjust to working from home amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, video chatting has surged to the forefront of necessary tools. This unexpected new development has driven many to try Zoom, an enterprise video conferencing platform with real-time messaging and content sharing.

Unfortunately, Zoom's infrastructure wasn't prepared for the surge of users that have joined since the pandemic started, and the convenience of the platform comes with a security cost. "Zoombombing" is the latest trend for online hackers, who will find their way into an active meeting and disrupt it by displaying pornographic images, writing racial slurs, or any number of other disruptive activities.

Zoom has become a popular choice for many teachers who have had to suddenly convert their learning structure to online learning. With Zoom, they can see and interact with their entire class while they instruct. As the reports of security issues continue to mount and accounts of hackers disrupting meetings become more disturbing, New York City has taken the measure of banning the app from school virtual classrooms. Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city was "not going to put our students' privacy and our students' data at risk. It's just as simple as that." 

The city's Department of Education partnered with the NYC Cyber Command to make the decision and are encouraging schools to defer to Microsoft Teams and Google for remote learning instead. The Department of Education says that they have been training teachers on the use of Teams for several weeks.

Eric Yuan, Zoom's founder, has said that he would freeze all new product development until the privacy issue is corrected. The company enacted a "waiting room" feature and additional password protocols for all basic and free accounts, including those used by classrooms. Only time will tell whether these additional features will be able to put Zoom back in users' good graces.