At long last we reach the weekend!  This was an extremely busy week with some great news and releases hitting Impulse.  First up, we have Apogee bringing classic titles on Impulse including Duke Nukem 3D, Blake Stone, and more.  I hear Duke Nukem has been occupying the lunch-time LAN games this week also, so come grab some of this classic action.

Another release of note this week is Majesty 2: Kingmaker, which is the expansion to the popular strategy game Majesty 2.  This expansion brings the “Return of Grum-Gog” campaign with 8 new missions, a mission creator toolset, and much more. 

If you are a Twitterer, follow @stardock and re-tweet this to win some Apogee games!

News and Articles:

• Beta 1Z next week…
• Tweak 7/Tweak Vista Updated Today
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun Interviews Brad Wardell on the Future of Impulse
• IGN has an Elemental: War of Magic Preview Up
• Tiny ObjectDock 2 beta video demo

New and Updated Releases on Impulse:

• Seven Kingdoms II
• Majesty 2: Kingmaker
• Bob Came in Pieces v1.30
• Duke Nukem 3D – Atomic Edition
• Gratuitous Space Battles v1.36
• Rise of the Triad
• Blake Stone: Planet Strike
• Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
• Hacker Evolution - Untold w/Flight Zero
• Freight Tycoon Inc.
• Duke Nukem Manhattan Project
• Clover: A Curious Tale
• Tweak7
• The Settlers 7 - Paths to a Kingdom
• CursorFX Plus
• Memory Clinic
• See more…

Weekend Impulse Buys

Welcome to Friday once again my friends!  Well we had a bit of an up and down week as we were hoping to get the new WinCustomize launched, but things happen and it had to be delayed for a bit, but not worries it will be here soon enough. 

Lets get started with this weeks picks!

	Svelte by the AVMAN This is a slick CursorFX theme made to match the Svelte WB skin.
	Hot Ring by Ausvet A fabulous animation for this .dream, and be sure to pair it with a darker WindowBlinds theme.
	Sweet Music of Night by DEVJIT I just love this scene!
	Natal for XP, Vista + 7 by Mrrste We have been getting a lot of dark WB skins lately, and add another great one to the list with this one.
	Intrada by essorant Going from dark to light now with a sleek Master WB skin from essorant.  Colors are perfect.  Nice work!
	En-Gauge by BoXXi Another detailed and creative Xion skin from BoXXi.  Great job!

Here's a Tour of WinCustomize 2010!

The Videos

Part 1

Part 2

 

A review of the new site versus the old site

The Main Page

NEW:

The new main page is much cleaner and yet, provides access to a lot more useful stuff.

From the page you can access with a single click:

1. virtually every gallery,
2. the featured skins,
3. the top skins (today’s favorites, 30 days, all time)
4. top skinners (today’s favorites, 30 days, all time)
5. featured master skins,
6. newest skin,
7. latest news,
8. newest master skins
9. recent forum posts
10. featured articles

By contrast, the current site lets you get:

1. virtually every gallery
2. featured skin
3. today’s favorites
4. top master skins
5. featured articles
6. latest news
7. recent forum posts
8. poll

Of course, to get to those 8 things you need this much space:

OLD:

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s amazing that the old WinCustomize doesn’t even display the newest skins on the home page. It only displays the top 3 most popular skins of the day. You have to scroll down to see what’s new on the forums. If you want to see the most popular skins of the last 30 days you have to go through several steps on the old site.

The Gallery

  

NEW:

What I really like about the new gallery is that it’s now very easy to access context-relevant information like the top skinners in a given gallery and the most popular ones without having to do special sorting options.

 

 

 

 

By contrast, the right side was dominated by a parade of little icons for getting to the other galleries (on the new site, just mouse over explore just like on every page to get elsewhere). As a result, users were bombarded with a LOT of stuff, most of which was not relevant.

 

Skin View

NEW:

When you click on a given skin, you now has quick access to other skins made by that skinner. It’s easy to just go to the next skin in the gallery as well as an intuitive way to get back to the list of skins in that gallery (before you would have to hit the back arrow in your browser every time).

You still get instant access to all the other galleries and forum posts and such because of the universal mouse-over menu at the top.

By contrast…

OLD:

First off, note how much more screen space is needed to present less information. If you want to go to the next skin in the gallery, you have to hit back and then click on the next one.  There’s no info on what other skins this author has done. There’s no easy list to see what’s popular in this skin gallery from here. The thumbnail is blurry and hard to view.  Big walls of text.

SEARCH

NEW:

Click on the drop down to pick a particular gallery or search the entire site.

OLD:

Pray it works.

 

So those are some of the highlights of the new site.  Under the covers, once the server stuff is fully configured, it should be vastly faster too but like with the old site, it will probably take a few weeks to weed out various critical paths that need to be tweaked.

Tweak 7 has been updated to v1.01, and Tweak Vista updated to v2.01.  Both applications provide enhancements for their respected Operating System by helping configure it to meet your personal need by improving performance and behavior of Windows.  They were designed for both the casual user users as well as power users to get get the most out of Windows Vista or Windows 7.

These latest updates bring:

• Added viewing details and integration for clearing cache/temp locations.
• Improved handling for process identification
• Fixes including service start/stop images and auto-logons on x64.

Existing users can download the updates via Stardock’s Impulse.  Please visit the links below to get more information about Tweak 7 and Tweak Vista, along with links to free trial versions.

https://www.stardock.com/products/tweak7/

https://www.stardock.com/products/tweakvista/

We have been waiting a while to hear about “official” news about the release of CS5, especially in regards to Adobe Photoshop.  This week Adobe has announced a countdown for the first look at the upcoming CS5.

http://cs5launch.adobe.com/

On that page you can signup to take part in the introduction. 

Adobe Labs have also released a video showing the new content-aware fill.

An update to the popular CursorFX has been released today.  CursorFX is an application that allows Windows users to change and create cool looking cursors for their desktop.  CursorFX can also apply additional features like effect, animations, resizing of cursors, and more.  Thousands of custom cursors are available for download from sites like WinCustomize.com that feature cursors from simple to cursors with wild animations.

This update includes:

• Improved Windows 7 compatibility.
• Many tweaks and fixes.

More information can be found at www.cursorfx.com.  There is a free and Plus version available with additional advanced features for $19.95. 

The beta begins this month…really!

Well hello there Friday, haven’t seen you in a week, but welcome back!  I hope you had a great week, and it’s getting exciting around here that the launch of the new WinCustomize is coming up very soon.  This week we also launched the latest contest where anyone can submit a cool Spring wallpaper.  Check out the details here.  We are also have a super sale on WindowBlinds 7, where you can pick it up for just $10 this weekend.  Be sure to tell your friends about that one!

Now for this weeks picks!

	MRX4 Reloaded by Murex This DesktopX Theme caught my eye with the darker look and great design.
	Huts by CarGuy1 This  animated wallpaper is beautiful and subtle, and as one commenter said, it’s paradise.
	Alluminate Tabbed/Side Docks by WebGizmos A perfect set of matching docks for the new Master WB skin, Alluminate.
	Burren Equinox by Gammeldansk The color really grabbed my attention, and it’s a great wallpaper overall.
	ZiG ZaG II by jazzymjr A sweet, clean WindowBlinds skin that everyone should enjoy.  Nice work!
	WC Community, Leprechaun Majik by Philly0381 This is the .suite file for the latest WC Community project.  Great job to the community once again!

If there is one thing I can say about my desktop, is that I try my hardest to keep it organized and productive.  ObjectDock and Fences are the two apps I rely on, and they work well with other as I keep ObjectDock for application shortcuts, and Fences for keeping my icons sorted.  After someone in my household somehow erased my dock settings, I had to create another from scratch, which was fine since it gave me the opportunity to start fresh.

Using ObjectDock Plus, I organize my apps into their function and group them by using separators.  For instance, I have tabs setup for Office apps, Games, Stardock apps, etc.

My Office tab:

The first set of icons have Office 2010 plus Visio and OneNote.  Next I have the Expression applications which I separate with a separator just to keep it grouped for quick access.

My Graphics tab:

Here is where I keep all the applications somehow related to graphic work and design.  Photoshop, Vue 8, SnagIt, etc. are all here.

My General Tab:

This is where I keep the most commonly used applications.  Items like media players, some docklets, WHS and Remote Desktop access, etc.

How do you keep your dock organized?  Lets see a screenshot!

This weeks Feature Friday I thought we would focus on the transparency features in WindowBlinds .  Having a skin with transparency was all the rage a few years ago, but now virtually any skin can have their opacity adjusted in real-time.  That also includes .msstyles which have been imported into WindowBlinds via the importer tool.

Now make note that much of this is only supported on Vista and Windows 7, and you must have an Aero-capable PC to use these features as well.  So with that being said, open up the WindowBlinds configuration and select Transparency from the bottom tabs.

Here you are presented with three sliders when dealing with Aero modifications.  One for adjusting the start menu, one for the taskbar, and the last for the window frames.  Each also has its own reset button that when pressed, will reset the slider to its default skin setting.  From this point on it’s pretty easy, just slide the slider control left and right to achieve the desired transparency.  You will see your actions in the preview window, and when you are done just hit Apply changes to set the configuration.

Once you have selected a WindowBlinds skin, you will get a few more options such as a slider for the right-click menu, and the option to have a forced blur effect on the skin.  Although you have a few more options, it works the same way as mentioned above.

Without Transparency Applied	With Transparency Applied

You can see the comparison in the above screenshots.  Of course as with other customization aspects, you can apply as much or as little as you please.  The choice is all yours and that is one of the fun parts about desktop customization.

For more information about WindowBlinds, visit www.windowblinds.net .