I'll be honest with you.  I spend a lot of time on Reddit.   

One can see a direct correlation between the rice of Reddit (and to a lesser extent Twitter and Facebook) and the fall of blogs and forums.

And I think that's a shame because the nice thing about forums is that you get to know the regulars and there are many nice features on forums that Reddit doesn't have.

Still, the UI on many forums, including ours, is not as good as I'd like to see.  Which makes me wonder, what would it take to make forums more competitive to Reddit? What would they need for you to come visit more?

One reason I ask is that over the next 18 months Stardock is going to be releasing a lot of stuff and we'd like to get our forums in shape to hopefully offer a fun and useful place to spend time at.  

In 2020, we did a number of behind the scenes updates that regulars might have noticed (for instance, the entire backend got a huge upgrade making everything much faster).  But there's a lot of UX stuff that we don't have a consistent opinion on which shows. 

So we're asking you, what are 5 things you would do to these forums that would make you and other more inclined to visit?

We wanted to send a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all our wonderful members! We hope you have and enjoyable holiday, and we'll see you back in the new year!

Thank you for being part of our great community!

As 2020 draws to a close (I thought it would never end, to be honest!) I thought we would take a look back on Object Desktop and all of the great apps and updates we’ve added this year. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Object Desktop, it’s a suite of desktop enhancement apps that lets you completely customize your Windows experience. It has several award-winning applications - including Fences, Groupy, and Multiplicity - and will completely transform the way you use your PC.

New to Object Desktop this year

SoundPackager 10

Back in February, we released the newest version of SoundPackager and added it into the Object Desktop suite. 

If you’re tired of the Windows default sounds, SoundPackager 10 lets you instantly change them with high quality and cohesive sound packages. It comes already pre-loaded with several high quality packages, or you can download some more on WinCustomize

SoundPackager itself isn’t new, but SoundPackager 10 came with some great updates, not the least of which is full compatibility for Windows 10. It included lots of all-new sound packages and an in-app editor so that you can create your own sound packages.

CursorFX

On April 8th, we released our newest version of CursorFX and added it to Object Desktop. 

With CursorFX, you can create your own cursors, animate cursors using special effects, and add custom mouse click sounds. You can apply skins, shadows, motion trails, and sounds to your cursor easily. 

We released the beta to all Object Desktop users so that they could try it out before anyone else. We made sure that it had support for Windows 10 and high DPI monitors so that your cursors can look the best. CursorFX also supports 144hz or higher refreshes, and includes cursors that take advantage of these features. 

Curtains

We made a big addition to Object Desktop back in July with Curtains, a customization tool that lets you apply new styles to your desktop that are along the lines of Dark and Light Modes to Windows 10.

Using Curtains, you can add new styles to your desktop that enhance and change the entire look and feel of the Windows UI and apps that already support light and dark mode. You can create and share your own styles, browse through and download tons more on WinCustomize, and adjust hundreds of other small elements in Windows. 

One of my favorite things about Curtains is being able to customize the Start button, title bar buttons, and title bar. I can mess with font faces and sizes, pick out more detailed color choices, and so much more. 

Curtains v1.1 added a pretty major feature: blur and transparency effects! Certain Curtains styles already come with blur built in - specifically, most of the Fluent styles that you find in the program integrate this feature automatically. 

In the image above, though, I've taken another style - Cairo Dark - that doesn't have it as the default and changed the option to "Acrylic Blur," which gives the lovely effect you see here. The cool thing about this update and these features is that you can apply them to any of the styles you download from WinCustomize or already have within the app itself. You can also see Groupy in action and how nicely it integrates with Curtains. Which leads us to one of our next major updates we made this year...

Other Object Desktop apps updated this year

Last, but certainly not least, we had several different updates release over the year for various apps in the suite. Some of them were small, community requested updates or quality of life adjustments, but others were fairly substantial.

Groupy

Groupy isn’t new to Object Desktop, but we implemented a major v1.4 update back in August that introduced full integration with the Curtains app. This update made it so that aspects of Groupy blended seamlessly with whatever style you have set to your PC. 

We made it so that Curtains would automatically select suitable colors anytime you’re using a Style mode without custom Groupy parts. When in dark mode, the tab will remain dark in all apps for the foreground state, and a new “close all” button was added to the far right of the tab.

Start10

We updated Start10 back in August with some UI changes to better accommodate Curtains. We fixed some crashing issues and tweaked how blur is handled in the menu so that we could address a mixed DPI setup issue. We also made sure to correct the missing control panel search entries on the 2004 Windows build.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity's update improved performance for your PC when it's under heavy load from other processes and added messages informing you of potential incompatibilities with Clipboard sharing across devices and VirtualBox. We knew that a lot of our users worked on machines with mixed DPI setups, so we included fixes to account for that. Additionally, we added the ability to Flush DNS right from the Multiplicity UI and fixed some issues for users who had Swap Mouse Buttons enabled.

Thanks for a great year!

We actively listen to community feedback and will often make updates based on what users have requested. We appreciate all of you and how much you’ve used and helped us evaluate and perfect our software over the years.

What’s been one of your favorite updates or additions to the Object Desktop suite? If you’re not an Object Desktop member yet, you can get a membership here. 

Have a safe and happy New Year!

The Christmas and the rest of the holiday season is just about here, and we've been talking about and featuring holiday skins for weeks! So now lets show off those holiday creations and see what beautiful seasonal desktops you have displayed!

Head over to our December screenshot thread and post your holiday desktop!

December Holiday Desktop Thread

Screenshot by Chasbo

Seasons Greetings, everyone! All of us here at Stardock are wrapping up our work for 2020 as we prepare to go on our holiday break next week, but that doesn't mean we haven't made sure to fit some festivity into our days. 

Normally, we'd be a'wassailing at our holiday party together right now, but for obvious reasons, we're skipping that this year. Instead, we decided to share some cheer from our home offices by displaying our merriment in the form of ugly sweaters. Here are the results:

I'll just start off by saying that I bought this sweater and skirt getup last year right after Christmas and have been waiting all year for this moment. The tinsel-laden mask I found at Five Below was, I thought, an entertaining touch.

Debbie, from our operations team, went all-in with this festive sweater and adorable Christmas leggings! I love the fun tree glasses and the elf hat, too.

William from the games team sports a fantastic sweater depicting an epic battle! Honestly, I love how the "ugly sweater" design has taken off in all sorts of fandoms and hobbies over the years.

Jillian, my partner-in-crime from the marketing team, found this "cool Santa" sweater and I am digging it! The matching stuffed Santa and over-the-top Christmas tree hat make this a pretty fantastic ensemble. 

Raeann, another critical member of our operations team, is feline fine (I'm not sorry about the pun) in this adorable cat sweater, complete with actual shoulder cat! I'm jealous both of the sweater itself and the fact that she can get her cat to sit like that. Mine would beat me up.

We had some great sweaters, but in the end someone had to win, and it was Jillian! Raeann came in a respectable second place, followed by me netting the third place victory. I'm excited about the really cute Ugly Sweater ornaments that Alex from our games team printed up for us!

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year! Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll see you all in 2021!

I have seen quite a lot of desktop backgrounds over the years from all manner of friends and family. Heck, I remember as far back as one of my family’s first PCs, a Packard Bell, that we excitedly bought a screensaver and background software for so that we could have aquarium fishes swimming around when we idled.

I mention the above mostly to point out a pretty obvious fact: everyone has different tastes. There’s no right or wrong way to customize your desktop - and, whether you’re looking for something fancy or a little more simplistic, DeskScapes will have something for everyone.

Recently, I talked a little bit about Fences and how I use it - combined with DeskScapes - to segment my two monitors during my stint working from home. One of the most important elements to that mental separation of “work monitor” and “play monitor” for me was having two different desktop backgrounds, something that is made possible thanks to DeskScapes.

DeskScapes offers plenty of other desktop customization options beyond just changing backgrounds on each of your monitors. Let’s take a look at a few of our most popular desktop backgrounds on WinCustomize and see how we can tweak additional effects to make them just right.

Currently, this is how my two monitors look:

I am using two different static image backgrounds - one of them is a screenshot from Final Fantasy XIV, a favorite game of mine, and the other is a cool image I got from the Windows Backgrounds gallery. I headed over to WinCustomize.com and took a look through some of the most popular Dream downloads there and selected a couple of them to play around with.

Now, these backgrounds happen to be animated, so please know that I can’t fully do them justice with just a static image. I chose the Dream in the #1 spot of “most popular downloads of all time,”  “Big Blue Sea HD” by sntXrrr, and applied it to my first monitor.

This works just fine on its own, of course, but I did say we would be playing around with effects, didn’t I? I scrolled through the options and eventually settled on trying out the rainbow filter because, I admit it, I like lots of color. 

There are options for sepia, textured, static noise, and so much more. You can also combine multiple effects in most circumstances, creating a truly custom look that’s perfect for you.

People have said to me in the past that DeskScapes wouldn’t be useful to them because they don’t really like the idea of having animated wallpapers because they prefer something simpler. That’s all well and good, but DeskScapes can actually be just as useful for customizing static backgrounds as it is for applying and altering animated ones.

As an example here (again - it’s tough to show animation with a screenshot), I’ve taken a screenshot from my game and applied it to my desktop background. Then, using deskscapes, I applied a couple of different effects - snow, which is animated overtop the image, and textured, to give it a different look. 

There are tons of different effects you can layer on your own images in order to create something truly unique! As I mentioned above, there are thousands of options on WinCustomize.com - you can always look there for both animated and static backgrounds. Below, I’ve linked a couple of our most popular downloads so you can see them for yourself.

What do you keep on your desktop’s background? Share with me!

Top WinCustomize Dreams for DeskScapes

#1 - Big Blue Sea HD by sntXrrr

#2 - Future World by zonester

#3 - Wasserfall by peter22

#4 - Aquarium II by amitsaran

#5 - Waterfall by stephenvw

Just a couple of weeks until Christmas! Today I wanted to feature some of the fantastic holiday WindowBlinds skins we have here on WinCustomize. We have quite a few with a variety of styles and colors, so I'm sure you'll be able to find one you like!

Christmas Joy by LightStar

Snoopy Xmas by don5318

Plastic Fantastic Christmas Edition

GingerBreadHouse by DaveBax

Christmas Holidays v2 by adni18

Happy December! The holiday season is here, and we've been talking about holiday skins for the past couple of months. Now that many of us have our holiday desktops in order, let's find out what the favorite holiday skins of our community are!

What's my favorite? There are many wonderful holiday WindowBlinds skin out there, but I always appreciate the design of Christmas Holidays by adni18. 

Post a link or image of your favorite holiday skin or theme in the comments below and lets share our favorites!

Sometimes, my blog writing has me diving back through years of Stardock’s history from the development and evolution of WindowBlinds, to the evolution of the Drengin in Galactic Civilizations III, and even all the way to a history of desktop icons. This time, I’m taking a look at one of our old products, one that was here long before me: IconX.

A screenshot of IconX on Windows XP, pulled from the program's original website.

First, let’s talk a little bit about what IconX is. 

IconX is a program that enhances your Windows desktop icons by giving them shadows, making them any size you like, and more. With IconX, you could make it so that your icons would zoom-up on mouseover, re-label your icons, and make your icons smoother and more attractive thanks to the addition of anti-aliasing.

Other options included the ability to alter the font, size, and color of icon labels. You could also trigger sounds and special effects on mouse over, click, and double-click events.

Once I had an idea of what IconX was and what its history was, I had one big question: would this program, which was originally released in 2004 for Windows XP, still work on Windows 10?

The answer: Yes! Sort of.

I had some trouble getting it to load properly on my PC, so I enlisted the aid of our resident expert, Matt. With some finagling - he actually had to change the properties of the download to initiate the compatibility mode and set it to XP - he managed to get it to run.

Although all of the features aren't in tact and there are some bugs, the program does run on Windows 10. You can see on the left side of the image above how it has adjusted the icons slightly, but it did kill the background image on the desktop and would occasionally make the taskbar blink.

Above, you can kind of see here the kinds of options and customizations that were available in the original program. Some of the icons still worked(ish) and hovering over them would change the color/size.

Installing this older program onto a modern PC came with quite a few side-effects, like messing up the right click menu by making it the wrong size and just straight up making some icons go missing. But, in IconX's heyday it had all sorts of perfectly compatible options for changing your icons, like sliders for adjusting brightness and contrast. You could also be very specific with your shadows, adjusting things like sharpness, darkness, height, and angle.

Although IconX isn't fully compatible with Windows 10, we have a much more current program that works wonderfully: IconPackager. You can replace all of the default Windows icons at one time using custom icon packages that come with the app or that you download from WinCustomize. If you’re into making your own icons, you can also have some fun with IconDeveloper.

Since IconX and IconPackager technically serve different purposes, in theory they could work side-by-side to offer you even more customization for your icons. Not only could you change all the default Icons with IconPackager, but you could then adjust shadows, font size, and interactions with IconX. 

Did you use IconX back in the XP days? Is it something you'd want to see updated for Windows 10 someday? Share with me!

An image taken from Wonder's website showing off their new app

There is no substitute for organic mingling and in-person interaction. Planned calls on Zoom or Teams isn't the same as mingling with your friends or coworkers at a social event, no matter which way you slice it, but Wonder, a Berlin startup, has built a platform for people to come together in video-based groups.

How is this any different from Zoom, Teams, or the multitude of other video chat options there are out there now? This new program replaces the traditional video conference with something a little more unique. With it, users can meet up, network, and collaborate, all while maintaining a "bird's eye" view of a larger space where they can more intentionally interact with others, somewhat similar to an office or business venue.

While other conference apps dominate the market right now as many of us turn to remote work, Wonder's new program fills a gap that is sorely lacking in the other apps' overall experiences. Particularly, it addresses what's missing from being in physical spaces with other people. 

Wonder is built around the idea of a "shared space" that you enter. You get a single window where you can "see" from an aerial view all of the other people whoa re in the same space and in areas of that space where they might cluster together. The clusters can be designed around a specific interest relevant to the people gathering (for example, if it's a company, you can have separate clusters for marketing and for HR). If the product is being used at a career fair, each "cluster" can represent a different organization participating in recruiting and interviewing. 

Users can move around all of the clusters - or start their own - or sit in the margins with another person. When you come together to interact, you can join in a video chat. You can move your icon around the room by clicking and dragging, which will let you join into groups that are already chatting or having discussions. If you need to have a private meeting, you can make your cluster private, as if you were in a physical meeting room. The overall intended effect is that, without actually being in a physical space, you get this sense of a collective group of people in motion.

Wonder announced on Monday that it has raised $11 million for this endeavor in a substantial seed round. The funding was led by European VC EQT Ventures, with BlueYard Capital also participating. Wonder has seen some impressive traction this year with over 200,000 monthly users from a diverse set of organizations, including Deloitte, NASA, Harvard, and others. The organizations are using Wonder's program for a variety of purposes anywhere from team collaboration to career fairs. 

According to co-founder Stephane Roux, Wonder will use their funding to add in more user-requested features and to hire more people for its team. Some of the features they are planning to implement includes sharing files and other technical services. Wonder is currently free to use, and will be until sometime in 2021.

What do you think of this? Does it sound like something you'd prefer to use either at work or to mingle and communicate with larger groups of friends who don't live nearby? As someone who personally has lots of friends who live all over, I'll admit that I'm rather intrigued.

Share your thoughts with me!