Stardock, the world leader in Windows desktop customization, released Deskscapes 3 today. DeskScapes is a unique program that allows users to customize their Windows desktop wallpaper with effects, animation and a variety of other options.  DeskScapes 3 adds support for Windows 7 and includes a host of effects that users can apply to their existing traditional desktop backgrounds.

DeskScapes 3 also includes a new configuration interface that lets users easily mix and match between different types of wallpaper. Natively, DeskScapes supports its own popular DREAM format which lets users use video or dynamically generated animated wallpaper. Version 3 extends this format to support what are called “Hybrid dreams” that let users mix and match static images and animation designed to provide easy to create animated wallpaper that are also practical and visually exciting.

Because DeskScapes uses the new Windows compositor in Windows 7 and has a native 64-bit version, users of Windows 7 are able to make use of animation and effects with no effect on system performance.

DeskScapes 3 can be downloaded at Stardock’s website. It costs $19.95 to register it or can be purchased as part of Stardock’s Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement utilities.

Visit http:// www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes for more information.

As one of the people who talks the most about Fences, I found it a bit funny and ironic that when I turned on my desktop PC this morning, I realized my desktop was cluttered with icons.  I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I downloaded some application files, some content files, then I needed to update a DesktopX gadget, so I needed to grab some of those files.  Before I knew it, the desktop was full of icons.

I fired up Fences Pro, and within just a few minutes I had several Fences put up and all icons placed accordingly. To avoid this problem in the future, I’m going to setup rules in Fences, which is a features in Fences Pro.

 
Setting up rules will allow you to place new or current icons into their own Fence based on a certain criteria.  For example, any image files will have their icons placed into a Fence of your choosing.  The same goes for document types, links, icons by name, etc.  This will pretty much automate your icon organization going forward which could very well prevent the clutter that built up on my desktop.

So now I have a clean desktop again!

Fences is a free download, and you can find more info at https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/.  Fences Pro is currently in beta for Object Desktop subscribers which you can get access to now by subscribing.

Yay, it’s Friday once again!  There were lots of good stuff on Impulse this week, and the big highlight was the release of Dragon Age: Origins .  The reviews of Dragon Age are all spectacular, and this is definitely a game I recommend picking up.  Along with that, we had some other fantastic releases and news this week!

Articles to check out:

• WindowBlinds skin formats: The right tool for the right job
• The WindowBlinds 7 skins start arriving
• Demigod November Q & A
• Video: Creating Textures for WindowBlinds
• Dragon Age Reviews Are Coming In
• Impulse Weekly Top 10
• Fences Pro - Beta 1 Available to Object Desktop Subscribers

New Releases on Impulse:

• Sacraboar
• Gratuitous Space Battles
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
• GUN

This weeks Impulse Buys!

$9.99	$19.99	$12.99
$19.99	$14.99	$7.49

It’s time for another edition of I Love DesktopX, showcasing the outstanding DX skins from the month of October. But this time I thought I’d break up the monotony and ask a fellow DX user what his favorite skins were in the past month. I have to say I pretty much agree with all of them.

Who is this mystery DXer, you ask? None other than Wizard1956, who has been a positive and supportive presence in the skinning community at large. So, I’d like to thank him for his time and contribution to this article.

On to Wiz's picks!

Outstanding General Info

Grim Reaper Time by Fairyy~

For my Halloween desktop I used Grim Reaper Time by Fairyy~ . This widget came in two parts and looked terrific with the Halloween 2008 subscriber theme. I especially liked the clock, which had color options and went really well with the wall.

Most Creative

Star Trek Original CPU/MEM Meter 1.02 by Maraudeur

Worthy of note is the Star Trek Original CPU/MEM Meter 1.02 by Marauder. The graphics may not be for everyone, (although I don't know anyone who isn't a fan of Star Trek,) so other styles would be great. It's a bit large and the drop shadow looks overdone but it is certainly a solid attempt at a widget with quad core support along with RAM usage readings for over 2Gb. I would love to see this developed further as this has true potential.

Theme of the Month

Tinted DX by RedneckDude

Barely squeaking into October was RedneckDude's Tinted DX, based on Mirsguy’s excellent Windowblind of the same name.

It's smooth, polished and shiny black. What's not to like? If you like black and blue, this theme's for you. It has all the usual stuff you expect in a RND theme plus the widget has a slick dropdown media player. The widget doesn't hide but it takes up little space even on my small monitor.

The matching weather widget can be found here: Tinted Weather

DX Fans Rejoice

As you may have gathered by now, I love DesktopX, and I want to see it do well. I want to see new users jump in, and the veterans more active again. I want to see new and exciting skins in the galleries. These are refrains I’ve read on the forums over and over again from DX’s loyal fanbase.

Well, at long last there’s some great (official) news for DesktopX! The much anticipated DX4 is coming down the pike along with other upgrades in the Object Desktop suite of programs.

You can usually count on a major update to rekindle some lost enthusiasm. So far we’ve learned the systray is going bye-bye, and we can now r-click on the desktop to create a new object…

Yay? Okay, not exactly ZOMG!!1! worthy news, but here’s hoping, right? While I can’t say I’m not eager to see what’s in store, I am reserving all celebratory dancing until I see the final product…or a beta…or more previews...*nudge* *nudge*

As evidenced by the What Would You Like to See in DesktopX 4.x thread, there are a lot of issues with the program that need to be addressed—what’s borked needs to be unborked, what’s currently unavailable needs to be made available, and what’s cumbersome needs to be made easier to use.

I don’t know if all that’s gonna get taken care of in the new version, but I’m sure there should be some major bug fixes going on. So, I’m looking forward to a more stable DX that functions as it should. And hey, at the very least, we should get half a dozen different posts showing us all the cool new tricks DX4 can do. The more buzz the better, I say.

The one thing I am crossing my fingers for is a significant improvement in the ‘Getting Started’ area—that means including more sample/template objects and integrated help (anyone notice those  help buttons at the upper-right corner of DX windows do absolutely nothing?)  Simply, the more people we can get started in DX, the more people we'll have creating those new and interesting skins, and the more the community will benefit.

So, are you excited for DX4 and what do you hope to see in the new version? What do you make of the news you’ve read so far? Sound off below.

Thanks for reading. Thanks again to Wiz for his picks. Until next month, Happy DXing!

After a brief hiatus we are back with TWiS, the best and only weekly guide to the most awesome desktop skins and themes available.  The Halloween rush is obviously over, and now we look forward to the biggest skinning “holiday” of the year which is the Christmas and Winter holidays.  There are holiday skins already starting to roll in, and there are plenty in the gallery from years past which are still fantastic to use.  We also have a big community holiday suite in the works which is looking great.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Parisienne 2 by BoXXi BoXXi has been cranking out the CursorFX themes lately, and here is another one to add to your collection.
	Santa Clock by Doubird Santa can let you know what time of the day it is with this widget.
	Advent Candle This is a great animated wallpaper for the upcoming holiday season.
	BlackOPs by MikeB314 Here is a matching set of ObjectDock icons for the latest WinCustomize subscriber skin.
	the indifference of Passion by PoSmedley Unique as always, and I really enjoy the design.
	Redempire (Vista) by Sc4rfy This WindowBlinds skin has a great use of colors, along with a beautiful design.  Great job!

For you subscribers of Object Desktop, check Impulse because Beta 1 of Fences Pro has been released.  This is an early beta version, and Fences Pro introduces a few new features in this release.

Fences Pro features:

• Icon sorting
• Advanced sorting (date, name, etc.)
• Rules to move/sort icons

As mentioned, this is a beta so if you do run this and encounter any issues, please report them to this thread so they may be investigated.

One of the areas that got optimized that is hard to demo is the speed of skin changing.  While not a huge deal for most people, being able to change skins quickly is something that we’ve been working on quite a bit for WindowBlinds 7.

This video is of the beta that will be going up this week for Object Desktop users. There is no editing. This is how fast it really is.

[Watch Screencast Video]

It’s no secret I was a bit disappointed with Windows Vista. It was an incredibly ambitious project that delivered a massive, under-the-hood update to Windows. Where it failed was that it was released just a bit too early.  Too early means not enough polish on things that could have dramatically improved the first impression of the new OS.

Here is what I said back in 2006 prior to Vista’s launch:

What will happen if they ship Windows Vista if it comes out in 1Q2007? I predict it will be a disaster. Driver compatibility, rough edges in software working, weird and unpolished UI design, etc.  The acronymn UAC will come to haunt Microsoft and they will rue the day they didn't wait just a few more months to get driver compatibility together.

Windows 7, by contrast, is all about polish. It fixes the mistakes made with Windows Vista.

Unfortunately, I still have to deal with Windows Vista. And now, even issues I hadn’t noticed before in Windows Vista become painfully obvious now that I’m used to Windows 7.

Below are 10 things that are driving me crazy about Windows Vista now that I’ve got Windows 7.

Reason #1: Nothing is ever responding

In Windows Vista, it seems like the OS is just waiting to declare a window isn’t responding. This is particularly obnoxious when it comes to network windows.  The Windows 7 GUI is much more responsive and it’s far less likely to have that annoying “not responding” behavior occur.

Reason #2: The UAC

I still can’t believe Microsoft hasn’t updated UAC in Windows Vista so to make it less annoying.  Every time I go back to a Windows Vista machine, it’s one of the first things that comes up. Prompts. Prompts. Prompts over the silliest of things.

On Windows 7, there’s a lot more control of these annoyances. Windows is still the “are you sure” OS but it’s a lot less annoying.

Programs like Tweak 7 make it easy to further refine this. For instance, the delay/darkening of the screen theoretically can add more security but it’s just annoying. On Windows 7, I can turn that off.

Reason #3: Basic Usability

In Windows Vista, if you want to change the resolution, you either use the video card’s built in add-on (seen at the top) or you have to jump through menus. It’s ridiculous.

in Windows 7, you can get to screen resolution quickly by default. A very nice touch.

Reason #4: The System Tray

I had no idea how annoying the system tray system of Windows Vista (and before) was until I started using Windows 7.  Going back to Windows Vista is like going back to system tray hell.

No comparison. On Windows 7, it’s clean and nice.

Reason #5: Explorer Usability

Windows Vista (above) is just a lot less useful with explorer even though it seems more cluttered (to me anyway).

By contrast, Windows 7 (above) has common sense options up above and the navigation pane on the left is much more useful as well.

Reason #6: Customization – Vista sucks at it.

For reasons unknown, Microsoft insisted on putting lots of hard-coded colored images in the Vista UI. 

Windows 7 still has the problem somewhat (baby blue) but it’s a lot easier for programs to customize a color than it is to deal with an image.  So if you run a program like WindowBlinds that lets you customize Windows, Windows 7 makes life even better.

Reason #7: Cyan borders.

This goes with Microsoft’s love affair with various blue-like colors being baked in. Vista had cyan borders on the edges.

On Windows 7, the colors are neutral.  I should also add that Aero doesn’t have that annoying reflection texture in it anymore.

Reason #8: Useless network object

How often are you going to want to sift through all the computers on your network?  Windows 7 cleans up (it could still be better) the network experience.

Reason #9: Devices

This is something that seems obvious in hindsight but Windows Vista does not have it. A nice, simple screen for dealing with the real world stuff that people use.

Reason #10: Windows XP mode

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate include “Windows XP mode”. For most people, it’s not a big deal. But it’s a handy tool that one would have thought Vista would have included for programs that had compatibility problems.

You can install things from within the environment and then they will run seamlessly on your desktop.

So if you have programs that don’t like Vista (or Windows 7) you can run them within Windows XP on the desktop.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well with games very well.

But imagine how things might have gone with Windows Vista if it had had something like this. 

There you have it…

Well look here, I just got handed a Windows 7 Professional DVD.  Goodbye Windows Vista.

WindowBlinds 7 quickie demo: http://screencast.com/t/HM3IdyykvJxJ

 
DeskScapes 3 quickie demo: http://screencast.com/t/wwhSKh7x

Do you have Windows 7? Do you have a 64-bit system? Then you should have Object Desktop which not only supports 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 64-bit but has native engines for them.

Object Desktop: Windows: XP/Vista/7

I was playing around with DeskScapes 3 today, and I found myself downloading a bunch of .dreams and applying effects to them just to see how they look.

It’s hard to tell by just a screenshot, but the Motion Blur effect changes the animation of the Christmas Lights to a really neat effect.  Try it out!

Applying the Sepia effect makes a big change to this .dream.

Putting the Alien World effect on this already slick .dream really tops it off. 

Let me know which effects are your favorites, and which .dreams you like to apply them to.  You can get DeskScapes 3 now by subscribing to Object Desktop .