It’s the double-up, jam-packed edition of ILDX! An edition I just made up seeing as how I missed last month’s…

Well, it was a busy month (on and offline), but we’re back—and with some really great picks thanks to the awesome work some authors have been putting out.

Let’s get to them!

Outstanding General Info

INFINITY Ultimate DX Weather by RedneckDude

Who says weather is dead?

This slick widget matches the WB and DX theme of the same name. It features The Weather Channel current and five-day forecast information, and you’ll need to sign up with them to use it. For DX 3.2 or higher, this one has some really nice graphics that goes well with several different styles. It also contracts to reduce its footprint on your desktop.

Star Trek Original clock and date by Maraudeur

I’m not much of a trekkie, but these are some cool looking widgets I can appreciate nonetheless. The zip includes two widgets—clock and date—that are designed to look like the Star Trek navigation consoles. It’s got neat details like buttons that turn the lights on/off, and others that open up Windows calendar or date & time.

It’s something out of the ordinary and can really spruce up your command center.

Most Creative / Original

The Captains Watch by theAVMAN

The AVMAN is always coming up with creative and original DX objects and this one is no exception. I simply love this. Beautiful, you-just-have-to-see-it graphics, and smooth animation. You might not be able to stop opening and closing the thing! If you must have a clock on your desktop, I highly recommend giving this one a try.  

Mood Lighting by BuzzH58

These realistic down lights would make a wonderful addition to any desktop. They look great on most medium to darker walls, adding a warm ambience to the overall feel of your workspace. You can move them around to set them up just right, and they come with an on/off switch.

This and the Captains Watch really exemplify the variety of simple ways you can add more fun to your desktop with DesktopX.

Most Innovative / Resourceful

Weather List by Vad_M

This is mostly for builders. It’s an extensive example on how to use the TreeView, Image List, and ListView activeX controls. If I ever work up enough courage to try something this professional-looking, I know I’ll be taking this widget apart and combing the scripts.

Thanks Vad!

DX Timer by RomanDA

This is a simple application that does exactly what it says. You click the button enter a number of minutes and the timer will beep once time’s up. It shows your start time, end time, and current time. You can get the gadget version - HERE

Resourceful, practical, and useful. Another great example by RomanDA that shows how quickly and easily you can put DX to work for you.

Themes of the Month

Notable DX by Redneckdude

This is a very clever design with a nice color palette and font choices that make the whole theme a delight to use. It feels so…summery and breezy, which I normally wouldn’t associate with post-it notes, but it worked and I loved it.

All the standard goods included, except weather.

Insect Music by Vampothika

For her first DX theme, I’d say Vampothika is off to a roaring good start.  Made to match the WB of the same name (and same author,) this theme includes all the standard goods plus weather. Everything can be hidden out of the way, but really, it looks good on the desktop.

I love the unique, contrasting color scheme and the nice details on the buttons (check out the animation on the play button.) The overall design itself it has a very dark, techno, electronica feel to it.

One thing’s for sure, there ain’t another theme that looks like this one, and I hope we’ll be seeing more DX themes from this author.

Autosave to the Rescue!

Have you ever been so caught up in a DX project that you forgot to save? Not only did you spend hours working on it and forget to save, but DX suddenly crashed and you Lost. Friggin! EVERYTHING!

Hate when that happens. If you do, too, this trick might be for you.

We are going to create an autosave object to run while you’re working. You’ll have the object remember to save your theme at intervals, so you don’t have to.

First create an object.

Open its properties and go to the General tab. Click Change object type. In the drop down, choose DesktopX. In the second drop down to appear, choose Save Desktop and then click OK.

Now, whenever you click on the object it will save your desktop. But there’s nothing automatic about that, so we’ll create a script to Execute the Command on a timer.

Still in the General tab, click on New to create a new script.

Copy and paste the script below:

'Called when the script is executed

Sub Object_OnScriptEnter

            Object.SetTimer 1,600000 '10-minute timer

End Sub

Sub Object_OnTimer1

            Object.ExecuteCommand

End Sub

In the script above, I set a ten-minute timer (1000 = 1 second, 60000 = 1 minute, etc) You can adjust this to your liking.

Close the DesktopX Script Editor and apply properties.  Presto, bingo, nothing to it!

As you know, DX pops up an information box every time you’ve successfully saved your desktop, so you will have to clear that each time. I would not recommend setting the timer to a frequent interval, or leaving this object running unattended—you’d either end up with a frequently nagging info box, or a screen full of unclosed info boxes.

When you’re done, add a snazzy image and export it, so you can quickly import it into whatever project you’re working on.

Thanks for reading. Until next month, Happy DXing!

Here is another quick video I was working on today.  This shows the WindowBlinds 7 theme coloring feature being used on two skins, both with great results.

I wanted to get a general feel from the skinners about Windows 7.  I know some of you already have updated some WindowBlinds themes to get them ready for Windows 7, and I wanted to see who else is doing similar work.

1. Do you plan on updating previous WB skins to work with Windows 7?
   
2. Are you creating new WB skins just for Win7?
   
3. Do you plan on making skins compatible with XP, Vista, and Windows 7, or just one of them?

Thanks in advance to any skinners who answer. 

As many of you have read before, I am a big fan and user of Netbooks.  Customizing them with new themes, icons, etc. really isn’t any different than any other type of PC, you just have smaller screen real estate to work with.  I have been using WindowBlinds 6 for a while with my Acer Netbook, and it runs great.  However, there was one small issue and that was the WindowBlinds configuration window wouldn’t always fit on the screen making it a bit difficult to navigate.  Several of you expressed the same issue.

No worries though, as the new UI for WindowBlinds 7 fits perfectly on a Netbook screen when maximized.

Here is a screenshot of mine.

As you can see it fills the screen completely and allows for easy navigation around the entire interface.  Windows 7 themes never looked so good on such a small screen.  I will be writing more articles about Netbooks very soon, so keep a look out.  Get more info about WindowBlinds at www.windowblinds.net, and be sure to stop the WindowBlinds theme gallery on WinCustomize and check out some of the many themes you can use on your desktop.

One of the really cool features of WindowBlinds 7 is Live Previews.  When you select a skin you can use options like in the Transparency tab to change the blur and opacity of the skin.   With the Live Previews you can see the changes you are making in real-time so you can easily get your skin looking just the way you want it to.

The example above is obviously transparency, but this will also apply to coloring and other yet unannounced features.

Check out this video.

You can get more information about WindowBlinds at www.windowblinds.net .  If you purchase WindowBlinds 6 now, you will get upgraded to WindowBlinds 7 for free!

I almost forgot it was a Friday.  That’s a tough day to miss for sure.  This was an awesome week for skinning, as many of you got a taste of the WindowBlinds 7 beta that was released.  Along with many getting the Windows 7 RTM this week, I’m pretty confident skinning is going to get a great boost in the next few months.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Expandercal by gef This is a slick DX object that expands and has a smooth look to it.
	Walkies by Ausvet This is another cool .dream from Ausvet.  Hard to categorize but it looks more “technie” to me.
	Pressurized by bk13GarbageMan A very creative set of dock for ObjectDock.  Great job!
	Summer Lake by welshdragon I just enjoy this scene, it looks fantastic on the desktop.
	Miricla by Mirsguy This WindowBlinds skin is one of my new favorites.  The color and design are both great.  Download this!
	DARKSION by oAREAo This Xion skin is very nice, and has some great details.  Nice work.

Windows has come a long way in the GUI department, but it is still limited, and it’s hard to fully express your personal taste with the default themes in Windows.  Windows 7 offers way more choices than it's predecessors, but if you want more than changing colors you are going to have to look beyond the default themes.  In comes WindowBlinds 7.

WB7 is still in beta at this time, but it already supports Windows 7, and there are skinners out there who are already creating new themes, or updating previous themes/skins to support Windows 7.  We will be showing off some of the cool features of WB7 in the coming weeks, but I wanted to show some themes I’m currently using on Windows 7.

The first theme is Leo, which can be found included with WindowBlinds, and the second is Carbon Fibre GTV which can be found in the WinCustomize gallery.

Yes, it is Friday!  Another summer month is just about over, but don’t forget about our Summer wallpaper contest we  have going on right now.  Anybody can enter, and it’s a chance to win some great prizes including a subscription to Object Desktop Ultimate.

Now for this weeks picks!

	DX Timer by RomanDA This is a simple DX gadget, but once again I’m impressed on how quickly something can be put together with DesktopX.
	Silky Sheets by Ausvet These types of .dreams are my favorite.  They just look fantastic on any desktop.
	Ambar Messenger by Libardo Is this the coolest Messenger icon or what?
	Cypress Lookout by boss0190 A beautiful scene, perfect for this time of year.
	FishW by ferdelli This is a very creative wallpaper.  Great work on this.
	INFINITY Ultimate by 1MrPaul1 This is his first Master WindowBlinds skin, and it’s definitely in the Master category.  Slick lines with clean transparency.  Grab this one.

As many of you know from reading the forums over the past couple of days, that weather feeds being pulled in from DesktopX created widgets/objects have stopped working.  To make a short story even shorter, TWC has shown a requirement put upon all widget creators and users, and anyone else accessing their data to abide by new and quite specific demands/rules.  This goes for anyone using the feeds, not just WinCustomize users.

If you want to continue to use TWC weather feeds you will need to abide by their new rules, which includes a requirement to place a logo and links back to them.  Several DX coders including sViz and Vad_M have been posting new feeds, and some code fixes to help others fix their weather objects. 

An ongoing thread from sViz can be found here:

• https://forums.wincustomize.com/358753

Which ever new weather feeds creators decide to use, they need to make sure they also abide by any rules or guideline imposed by the originating feed provider.

Starting Monday, July 20th, we will start removing broken weather widgets from the WinCustomize galleries that have not been updated and/or violate any ToS/ToU in regards to weather feeds. The WC moderators are going to keep a close eye on the DesktopX queues so that updates will be pushed through as soon as possible.  When updating a current skin, please be sure to make a note in the description that it has been updated with a new weather feed.  If authors are do not have a copy of their widgets and are not able to retrieve them from Wincustomize, they are available by request to an admin.

We understand this has caused quite a stir, but this is nothing that can be easily fixed as it’s an issue that is not in Stardock’s nor WinCustomize’s hands.  Please keep an eye on the forums for updates from DX coders who are looking at alternative solutions.

Regards,

Spencer
WC Admin

It seems Friday has snuck up on me without much warning.  The time just flew by this week.  We are in the middle of summer, and it seems quite a few of you are on vacation, but that is usual for this time of year.  I hope you enjoy it, and look forward to your works when you get back.

But not everyone is taking a break, we still have some skinners out there that take no breaks!

Now for this weeks picks!

	Cubik by B2R A very cool idea for a cursor.  It has some cool animations, and any Rubiks fan should love it.
	Blue Flow by CarGuy1 Dreams like this are some of my personal favorites.  Nice blue color with smooth animations.
	Beach by Iconshock_web_icons It’s summer, so why not show it off with some “cool” icons from the beach.
	Lazy Days 3 by boss0190 This is a just an nice and relaxing wallpaper to have on the desktop.  Great job.
	Confusion by Vervi59 Beautiful design with a great mix of colors.
	Rock Angel by Vampothika You can expect a beautiful and creative skins from Vampothika.  Once again, she delivers another fantastic WindowBlinds skin.