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WindowBlinds 7 Visual Walkthrough

Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: OS Customization

If you are new to WindowBlinds 7, it’s pretty easy to pickup and start using right away. Although, you might have some questions on what a specific feature is or where to find it, this visual walkthrough should help.

To get WindowBlinds 7 visit www.windowblinds.net.

Impulse Holiday Gift Guide - Day 1 for Casual Gamers

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

The holiday season is here, and as we have mentioned before, it’s very easy to send digital gifts to people next door, or around the globe via the Impulse Store . I decided to create a Gift Guide for Impulse to give people some ideas for gifts, or for themselves.

Day 1 is dedicated to casual gamers. These could be people who aren’t “hardcore” gamers, but still enjoy playing some games on their PC during leisure time.

Games for Casual Gamers:

Kitten Sanctuary This game has been widely popular in the Stardock office. I mean who wouldn’t want to rescue and keep the kittens safe!
World of Goo This award winning puzzle and construction game is a must-have in any gamers’ library, casual or not.
City Rain City Rain is another addicting game where building literally fall from the sky and rely on you to rescue and organize the cities.
Flock This is one of my personal favorites. You pilot a UFO while trying to herd animal life back to the Motherflocker.
Braid Braid is a visual masterpiece. This is a puzzle-platformer with a “painterly” style. Another addictive game that you will spend countless hours on.

I Love DesktopX: December 2009

Saturday, December 5, 2009 by sViz | Discussion: OS Customization

And now we come to the very last edition of I Love DesktopX. I have to thank all of you who’ve read, commented, and featured this series of articles, because I just wouldn’t keep doing it without you guys support.

This being the biggest month for the holidays, below I’ve decided to feature seasonal skins from the past month. But if you’re not feeling the Christmas cheer yet, we’ve also got 3 non-seasonal skins for you to deck the halls with.

Santa Clock by Doubird

I had Doubird’s Anticko clock up all last month, and it looks like I’ve found my new clock of choice for December. It’s a simply designed clock with a lovely Christmas scene that will bring holiday cheer to your desktop. Makes me want to listen to old nostalgic Christmas songs.

Happy Effin' HO HO by happycamper88

I can totally see anyone having a dismal holiday season getting a kick out this. It’s a bit icky for my desktop, but I find it hilarious nonetheless.

Merry Christmas? Bah effin’ humbug!

WC Community Holiday Suite '09 - Countdown Weather by Island Dog

This countdown gadget is made to match the 2009 Wincustomize Community Holiday Suite of skins. Keep track of how many days before Santa arrives, how many days before you find out what presents everyone got you, or how many days you have left to finish your Christmas shopping. Either way, this is a handy gadget to have, and it takes up very little space on your desktop.

Check out the matching DX desktop, weather, and the full community suite here: LINK

Clear View by Richard Mohler

This is an updated version of the popular Clear View widget. It’s extremely minimal in design, and I love that it takes up so little space. For such a small package you get all your basic tools including weather, clock, media, and system info.

As you might expect with a clear widget, it goes well with pretty much everything.

Hanukkah and Friends DX by Redneckdude

I love this beautiful theme. Nice balance of colors, minimalistic design, easy on the eyes and great on the desktop.

You can get the matching weather widget here: LINK

Find the whole suite here: LINK

R 001 by BoXXi

It’s not all that often you find a killer theme in purple, but if anyone can pull it off it’s definitely Master BoXXi. The original theme was by another author, but I’m glad BoXXi recreated it for DX. Simply put, this theme is the awesome sauce. It’s packed full of user and system shortcuts, system info, and a wallpaper changer, all in one striking layout.

Resolution dependant: 1680 x 1050

Digital Clock Using Images

Sometimes fancy font just doesn’t cut it, especially when you want to make your clock 3D. Making a digital clock with images isn’t as complicated as you might think. We just need about dozen images and a small script.

First you’ll create your images, the digits 0 through 9. You will also need a colon, AM, and PM image. Here are some of the ones I used.

The first object we’ll create in DesktopX is the first digit—the ‘1’ in 12:00.

Create a new object. Then add 4 states: “none”, 0, 1, 2. (Why 0 or 2? Because you might want to do a 24 hour clock, in which case you’ll need them for 0600 hours or 2100 hours.)

Apply your images to each state. For the “none” state, leave the image field blank. You can delete the Mouse Away or Default state if you like.

Create another object for the second digit. Add the states: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Apply your images to each state.

To save time and energy, clone digit 2 twice for the third and fourth digits. Then, create another object for the am/pm sign. Add the states: “am” and “pm” and apply your images.

Lastly, create your colon object and Group all.

On to the script.

Code: vbscript
    Dim timefrmt : timefrmt = 3         'Called when the script is executed
Sub Object_OnScriptEnter
 Object.SetTimer 1,1000
End Sub      

Code: vbscript
      Sub Object_OnTimer1
 t = FormatDateTime(Now(), timefrmt) 'get the time
 tparts = split(t,":") 'parse the time
 
 If timefrmt = 3 Then
  phr = tparts(0) 'parse hours
  pmin = tparts(1) 'parse minutes
  psec = tparts(2) 'parse seconds
  psecparts = split(psec, " ")
  ampm = LCase(psecparts(1)) 'parse am/pm from the seconds
 
  '>>>>  Set States
  If Len(phr) = 2 Then DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").state = Left(phr,1) Else DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").state = "none"
  If Len(phr) = 2 Then DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").state = Right(phr,1) Else DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").state = phr
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").state = Left(pmin,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit4").state = Right(pmin,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_ampm").state = ampm '<<<<
 
 ElseIf timefrmt = 4 Then
  phr = tparts(0) 'parse hours
  pmin = tparts(1) 'parse minutes
  If phr => 12 Then ampm = "pm" Else ampm = "am"
 
  '>>>>  Set States
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").state = Left(phr,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").state = Right(phr,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").state = Left(pmin,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit4").state = Right(pmin,1)
  DesktopX.Object("clock_ampm").comments = ampm '<<<<
 End If     alignText
End Sub      

Code: vbscript
     Function alignText
 textalign = "center"
 
 If textalign = "center" Then
 
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").right
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit4").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").right
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").left
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").left
 
 ElseIf textalign = "left" Then
 
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").right
  DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").right 
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").right
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit4").left = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").right
 
 ElseIf textalign = "right" Then
 
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit4").left  
  DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit3").left  
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_colon").left
  DesktopX.Object("clock_digit1").right = DesktopX.Object("clock_digit2").Left
 
 End If
End Function     

The script consists of three simple functions. The first thing is to get it to show the correct time. As always, we use FormatDateTime to get the current system time. To show 24 hour, change the timefrmt value at the top to 4. To show 12 hour, change the timefrmt value to 3.

On the 1-second timer, we splice up the time and set each corresponding object’s state to the correct digit.

Unlike with a text clock, we have to line up the objects manually. So we create an alignText function. I’ll spare you the details, but you can align left, right, or center by changing the textalign value. Obviously, you would need to make adjustments to positioning depending on the images you use.

That's all there is to it. The example dxpack is here: LINK

Thanks for reading and happy DXing!

Impulse Weekly Roundup – December 4th

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

Wow, it’s already December? The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and if you missed out on any of the recent Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals or just want more, Impulse will be having more big holiday sales coming soon.

I wanted to remind you that it’s very easy to purchase gifts for others on Impulse. The best part is there is no need to worry about shipping as their digital gifts are sent nearly instantly. It’s a great way to give gifts to friends and family. I wrote a quick guide on how to do it here .

Articles to check out:

New Releases on Impulse:

Updates on Impulse:

Evochron Legends v1.188

This weeks Impulse Weekend Buys!

$7.49	$4.99	$29.99
$14.99	$9.95

This Week in Skinning – December 4th

Skin Roundup for 12-4-09

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: OS Customization

The first week of December is upon us! The holiday skins are pouring in, and the WC Holiday Community Suite is just about complete, and that turned out great! Don’t forget we have a contest going on where the grand prize winner will receive an ATI video card courtesy of AMD. This contest is for Winter animated wallpapers, and you don’t have to be a 3D expert now that DeskScapes 3 support hybrid static .dreams.

More info about the contest can be found here: https://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=370464

Now for this weeks picks!

	Krim Iron Man by jalentorn You don’t have to be an Iron Man to enjoy this slick CursorFX theme.
	Snowman Sweeper by Ausvet Another beautiful holiday animated wallpaper.
	lantern by B2R This is a very creative set of dock backgrounds for ObjectDock.
	Trawling by Gammeldansk This wallpaper is very colorful, with a great design. Nice work!
	Where Christmas Gifts Are Born by vlad A perfect Christmas wallpaper!
	Christmas 09 by LightStar This Christmas WindowBlinds skin definitely makes my top holiday skins list. Great job!

Object Desktop 2010: Live Video Demo

Thursday, December 3, 2009 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing

Taking Windows 7 to the next level.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Object Desktop is Stardock’s premiere suite of desktop enhancement utilities. While Windows itself is made for “everyone” Object Desktop is designed specifically for “power users” who want to get more out of their PCs.

This video demo goes over the basics of what Object Desktop can do.

Visit www.objectdesktop.com to get it.

Object Desktop: DeskScapes 3 Quick Demo

Thursday, December 3, 2009 by Frogboy | Discussion: Object Desktop blogs

DeskScapes 3 demo.

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

Object Desktop 2010 Overview

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 by Frogboy | Discussion: OS Customization

Object Desktop is a suite of desktop enhancement utilities designed to let users turbo-charge Windows.

The core programs of Object Desktop 2010 include:

WindowBlinds. A program that can customize the look and feel of the entire Windows graphical user interface by applying new “skins” that change title bars, taskbars, scrollbars, and nearly every other part of Windows.

DeskScapes. A program that lets users customize their wallpapers or even apply animated wallpapers (there are hundreds of free animated wallpapers available to choose from).

Fences PRO. A program that lets users organize the icons on their desktops into groups of easily manageable “fences”.

Tweak. A program designed to make it easy to modify various hard to find Windows settings and control what gets loaded (or not loaded) onto your system.

IconPackager. A program that can apply new icons themes by loading up a package of icons.

SkinStudio. A program that makes it easy for users to create their own user interfaces to apply to Windows.

Theme Manager. A program that ties it all together. Get your desktop just the way you want and save it or apply themes created by others that include WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DeskScapes and other customization program content.

In addition Object Desktop users get a host of other programs to enhance Windows such as DesktopX, WindowFX, IconDeveloper, SoundPackager, Keyboard LaunchPad, RightClick, and more.

Users of Object Desktop don’t just get what is in Object Desktop today but also everything released or updated for it in the year after purchase. Even now, Stardock’s developers are working on programs that can give new options to Windows 7 users, get the most out of Windows XP, and more.

Object Desktop is only $49.95. For users who want to keep getting updates to the programs after the first year, they can renew their access for only $34.95!

Impulse Cyber Monday Sale!

Monday, November 30, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

The long holiday weekend is over, and whether you missed the Black Friday sales or not no worries, this is one Monday which you don’t want to miss! Today we have the Impulse Cyber Monda y sale with many PC games and applications on sale starting at just $1.99!

The Impulse Cyber Monday Sale:

Impulse Thanksgiving Sale!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

The long holiday weekend is ready to be kicked off, and to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday we are having a HUGE sale on Impulse! Since the holiday season is approaching, don’t forget you can easily make a purchase on Impulse for a friend or family member.

Lets check out the Impulse Thanksgiving Sale!