WindowBlinds 4.5 Preview

A quick look at what's coming..

Tuesday, January 4, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WindowBlinds

Ah customization of Windows. It's a gradual process.  Using the popular voice over IP chat program, Ventrilo, let's take that journey with WindowBlinds 4.5.

...In the beginning there was Windows classic. And it was good. Simple, fast clean.  Then Windows XP came and it came with a skin (known as "visual styles" when you're "skinning" the entire GUI).

And so the title bars and borders were changed. And it was still good. But not complete. For only theme-aware applications can be skinned by Microsoft's msstyles run through Windows XP.

But there was Stardock, who had been skinning the GUI of operating systems for many years. They had WindowBlinds.

WindowBlinds could skin even non-theme aware programs (i.e. most programs aren't theme aware). And so it was better.  But skinning more elements of the GUI also came at a performance cost that some noticed. 

So then Stardock came out with WindowBlinds 4.x. culminating with WindowBlinds 4.4 released in 2004. And its use of hardware acceleration and other features exclusive to Windows XP make WindowBlinds not just faster than the default Windows XP style (so fast that the high performance PC company, Alienware chose to bundle WindowBlinds with their computers) but on part with the original classic Windows interface.  Users could have their cake and eat it too.

And soon WindowBlinds 4.5 will be here. It has some very key features:

Hue/Saturation colorization. WindowBlinds had colorizing before but not like this. Before, you could apply a color to an entire skin. This worked on some skins quite well but on many skins not so well. Why? Because if you take a blue and yellow skin (For instance) and apply red to the whole thing, the entire thing looks..well washed out.

Hue shifting is different. You shift the colors of the skins rather than apply a color mask to them. This has the effect making skins look a lot more normal and interesting.

So a skin like VectorCell might look like this normally and we'll load up the Setup dialog of that Ventrilo program so you can see the dialog of a pretty busy looking window:

But with Hue and saturation shifting it could then be made to look like this:

Notice how natural it looks? It doesn't looked washed out. Even if you would never want a purple skin on your desktop, it now looks like it designed with purple in mind.

Or how about if you wanted to have it be a more vibrant blue?

You can have that too.  Or any other color you can think of. All looking as if the skin was always meant to have that.

But let's go with something harder. Something more challenging. How about some skin that has lots of colors?

Here's Faux-Toon. It has many colors. You could not colorize this with the old system because it would look very muddied with a single color grafted onto everything.

Not that we'd recommend this color combination but rather just as a demonstration of the difference between hue-shifting (a WindowBlinds 4.5 feature) and what you can imagine applying some arbitrary color to the entire thing.

Plus you have the fact that there's thousands of WindowBlinds skins out there:

And once last look at this dialog using the default Windows XP msstyle:

So in other words, if you want Windows XP to look like Windows XP consistently you will want WindowBlinds.

The Second new feature of WindowBlinds 4.5 is the ability for WindowBlinds visual styles to now include special styles just for the frames of Internet Explorer / Explorer browser windows. We don't have any examples done yet so we'll have to wait to show some screenshots. But you can probably imagine what skin authors will be able to do with this.  We may expand this further so that in a given skin, skin authors can define specific frames for specific programs within a single skin if they choose.

The Third new major feature of WindowBlinds 4.5 is the ability to have per-pixel alpha channels on the Start menu itself. Those of you who like very nice Start menus can imagine the cool stuff that can be done with this.  We don't have any skins done yet that show this off (we're working on them now).

The Fourth major change in WindowBlinds 4.5 which may get into 4.5 or have to wait until a minor update is the ability to have per-pixel alpha on menus.  Many skinners have requested this for years.

The Fifth major addition to WindowBlinds 4.5 (or it may get into a subsequent update depending on time) is support for the 64bit version of Windows.

Plus, there are tons of small tweaks and changes here and there to improve performance, fix bugs found/reported, etc.

So there you have it, WindowBlinds 4.5. It should be out in the next couple of weeks.  If you have Object Desktop you'll get this automatically.  You can purchase WindowBlinds or Object Desktop here.

First Previous Page 2 of 3 Next Last
Joan Polishan
Reply #21 Thursday, January 6, 2005 9:08 PM
I just love your site
digicatz55
Reply #22 Thursday, January 6, 2005 10:25 PM
I have been wanting a skin with semitransparent, everytthing for ages. I want the interface to look projected, ala a hud, with the ability to make all borders frames and such fade out on background , leaving window contents and be more visible in the primary window. Allso is it possible to have a combined tiitlebar/menu? in the same line? This would be universal so as to avoid off size windiws? ie full screen not being full becacuse the title bar area is missing.

digicatz55
NightTrainthedark
Reply #23 Friday, January 7, 2005 5:19 PM
It's all good.
feelingoofed
Reply #24 Sunday, January 9, 2005 8:55 PM
lets have the beta of 4.5, where can i download the beta of 4.5?
arkansasdave 69
Reply #25 Monday, January 10, 2005 3:07 PM
eager to see whats new
DocX
Reply #26 Tuesday, January 11, 2005 12:31 AM
Thank-you very much for all of the hard work you guys have done to make this program so cool. It makes me always want to have a subscription to Object desktop to get all of the great things you guys come up with. My only concern at the moment is being able to turn off the animation the the new windowblinds GUI. While it looks very cool it really slows things down for my computer while Im trying to select a skin. The new color sys is pretty sweet. Im having a lot of fun with it! $$$ Well spent. Keep up the great work guys!
cojaro
Reply #27 Wednesday, January 12, 2005 10:44 AM
so ill be able to colorize certain parts of the skin, and not put a color over everything?
athlonia
Reply #28 Thursday, January 13, 2005 3:06 AM
yaya! cant wait to get it! I was wondering about 64 bit support!
dalefan26
Reply #29 Friday, January 14, 2005 12:15 PM


wow this sounds really great........if i read it right then it means i wont have to change the skin when i want to colour code........i love colour coding every day but sometimes im ina hurry and this will be a great help
Blanken
Reply #30 Friday, January 14, 2005 12:34 PM
lets have the beta of 4.5, where can i download the beta of 4.5?
Frogboy
Reply #31 Friday, January 14, 2005 12:56 PM
It's on Object Desktop.
Drika2
Reply #32 Tuesday, January 18, 2005 4:11 PM
Hi there first of all wonderfull news on the per pixel alpha blending, something DesktopX knows from it's birth.
Brings me to a question as beautifull as they all are the single progs and I know you can save the whole lot if you have the central or theme program.
But is,nt it time for a core set library to hold all the processes so only one proces slot in windows is taken and the end user can still choose what to run and what not if you like and maby even that forinstance WindowFX can be routed
for use in any other module by means of one central proggie where you decide what does what like the coloring effects and so on

Hope this story is a little clear
thank you
Kuruus
Reply #33 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 9:30 AM
I keep trying to download the newest version (4.5) but keep getting errors as though the web link isn't there. What gives?
CerebroJD
Reply #34 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 10:03 AM
Uninstall the current version of Windowblinds, reboot, install the new version.
Jess McGuay
Reply #35 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 10:06 AM
Not sure but I was getting errors like that and went to the Chat of SDC to let someone know and discovered the Motd says you have to uninstall old version before you install 4.5 (duh). After I did that it installed just fine. Seems they really should post that info about needing to remove the old ver in the history txt so others don't get stuck
haircat
Reply #36 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 10:09 AM
haircat

I've tried to download Windowblinds 4.5 from Stardock Central about 8 times.
I keep getting error messages.
IPKNexus
Reply #37 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 11:30 AM
Anyone know if it works with MCE 2005? Last one didn't
Chef Garry
Reply #38 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 2:23 PM
there was a problem with SDC which has been fixed. give it another go.
joesse
Reply #39 Monday, January 31, 2005 6:48 AM
i am so excited to see the new window blinds. hope it comes soooo soon.
joesse
Reply #40 Monday, January 31, 2005 6:49 AM
i am so excited to see the new window blinds. hope it comes soooo soon.

Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

  • Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
  • Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
  • Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
  • It's simple, and FREE!



web-wc01