2010 Preview

What it is

Object Desktop is a suite of desktop enhancement utilities designed to enable users to turbo-charge their Windows experience. It has been described over the years as a “third party upgrade to Windows”.

With Windows 7 arriving on the eve of the 10th anniversary since the initial Windows release of Object Desktop, this year’s version is particularly special.  This article will walk you through the basic elements of Object Desktop, what’s new since last year, and why it has remained so popular with power users.

Anyone who gets Object Desktop today will automatically get Object Desktop 2010 plus everything we release for a year from their purchase.

The Goods

There are many programs that make up Object Desktop but a few of them are the real-stand outs and have gotten the lion’s share of the effort this year. 

The featured programs of Object Desktop 2010

Below are just a few highlights…

WindowBlinds 7

Since its initial launch, WindowBlinds has been the star of Object Desktop and in November, WindowBlinds 7 gets released on its own and is already in late beta on Object Desktop as I write this. Having been involved on WindowBlinds since the start, I can safely say that this version is definitely the most significant update ever.

Here are some highlights:

WindowBlinds 7: Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 users get a massive upgrade.

Native support for Windows 7

WindowBlinds 7 can skin Windows Aero.

The new WindowBlinds configuration screen

Remember all those skins made in the Windows XP era? No problem, they will work natively on Windows Vista and Windows 7 and can now be modified in the program to be better than ever.

 
Apply textures your skins to create your own custom look. You can even create your own textures right from the program.

Aero skinned.

Fences Pro 1

Fences is a brand-new program that lets people organize their desktop icons easily. It can also, with a simple double-click, hide all your icons at once. It’s quickly become one of the most popular programs on the Internet.

Fences makes it easy to organize your desktop.

A fence can hide a lot of clutter.

Double-click on the desktop and all your icons will disappear. Double-click again to bring them back.

Creating a fence is as easy holding the right mouse button down and dragging

Fences Pro goes beyond what is in the free version and allows users to have Fences collect new icons based on type – auto organizing their desktop.

DeskScapes 3

DeskScapes is the world’s most popular animated wallpaper program.

The first version allowed users of Windows Vista to apply a new type of wallpaper called “Dreams” that were either video or rendered animation dynamically.  The second version added support for Windows XP.  The new version, Version 3, adds support for “Hybrid” dreams which allows users to take a static picture and animate it.  In addition, it also supports adding effects to your existing wallpaper gallery.

Here’s an overview in pictures:

DeskScapes gets a new, easy to use configuration screen

Your existing wallpaper library gets a whole new life thanks to effects. All effects are done on the fly without ever effecting the actual wallpaper.

Got a cool photo that is too colorful as a wallpaper? Use the DeskScapes Sepia effect to tone it down.  Doesn’t touch the actual file, just the wallpaper in memory.

Hybrid dreams allow users to integrate animated pieces into static images. As a result, a subtle, interesting animated wallpaper can be made that isn’t distracting and uses virtually no CPU. Users can even pick and choose which animated elements to use.

There are thousands of high quality animated wallpapers (Dreams) available on the net already and with DeskScapes 3, you can apply effects to them as well.

Got a large screen monitor and your wallpapers are a lower resolution? Then you will definitely want DeskScapes 3. It has options to take those wallpapers and apply effects so that they look good at higher resolutions. DeskScapes even provides options for handling wallpaper on multiple monitors.

DesktopX 4

DesktopX is a program that allows users to add true “objects” to their Windows desktop.  DesktopX 4 is the long-awaited update that adds full support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 and streamlines its user interface. Here’s a sample of what it can do:

Now adding an object is as easy as right-clicking on the desktop.

Users can make their desktop objects and size or shape. JavaScript or VB Scripts can optionally be used to give them function.

Users can export their creations as objects (to be used within DesktopX), widgets (programs on a system that has DesktopX), or as a Windows sidebar gadget.

Users can gather their objects together and build desktops and then save them as a .desktop.

IconPackager 5

IconPackager is a program that enables users to apply packages of icons to their Windows system to change all their icons at once or individually.

IconPackager gets support for Windows 7.

Windows 7 specific icons can now be easily changed in one spot.

Right-click on a data file and IconPackager 5 will allow you to change the icon for that file type and can even sort through different icon packages to find just the right icon.

The Impulse Dock

Object Desktop 2010 now automatically includes the Impulse Dock. This simple dock snaps to the taskbar and can be set to auto-hide.

This simple and powerful dock makes it easy to organize the programs you regularly run and complements your existing taskbar.

 
Customize the look of your dock with the included high-resolution icons or use your own.

Tweak 7

If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, then the new version of Stardock’s premiere tweaking program (TweakVista and Tweak7) will help you get the most out of Windows. Here’s some of what’s new:

Tweak7’s simplified interface makes it much easier to find out what’s running on your system and help get rid of all the junk that gets loaded safely.

Fine tune the UAC even beyond what Windows 7 can do (even on Windows Vista).

Windows tends to try to force you to put all your “stuff” on the C drive. Tweak7 allows users to safely and seamlessly move those directories to other partitions – without even having to reboot normally.

Theme Manager

Theme Manager helps put it all together. The new version of Theme Manager refocuses on .Suites.  A suite includes everything you need to change your desktop – a WindowBlinds skin, an icon package, a DeskScapes dream, DesktopX objects, etc. all put together and applied from a single UI.

 
The new Theme Manager includes several new suites right within it along with some exclusive animated wallpapers for DeskScapes users.

Conclusions

This is just a quick summary of some of the work Stardock has done on Object Desktop these past few months. There’s a lot more to it than this and there’s a lot of great stuff cooking in our labs for the forthcoming year too.

If you don’t have Object Desktop, you can get it here: www.objectdesktop.com. 

On December 2, 2009, Object Desktop and Object Desktop Ultimate will be merged into Object Desktop. Users with Object Desktop Ultimate will get a full year added to their account (so now is the ideal time to pick up Object Desktop Ultimate). 

Object Desktop: It’s like getting the next version of Windows today!

Skinning Aero!

If you have Object Desktop, you can get it now.  If not, you can purchase Object Desktop here.

IF you have Windows 7 THEN you should definitely get Object Desktop RIGHT NOW (though it’s pretty awesome on XP and Vista as well).

What a fantastic week on Impulse this week.  We had some great releases, some pre-orders go up, and we are ending out the week with are weekly Impulse Buys. 

The new releases for this week have been:

• Tropico 3
• FIFA Soccer 10
• Crysis
• ARMA 2
• The Dracula Files

Updates included:

• AI War to v2.0
• Demigod v1.19

New Pre-orders:

• Sacraboar with 25% off and early beta acccess

This weekends Impulse buys!

$19.99	$6.99	$14.99
$14.99	$14.99	$28.99

You have been hearing a lot about WindowBlinds 7 and textures lately.  We have also introduced a new UIS0 skin format, which will allow users to easily modify Aero with textures, colors, etc.  Using textures is a great way to modify a skin with a texture of your liking, or to just apply a texture to Aero for a simple and subtle change in the default user interface of Windows.

Now I want to show you how to actually do it!

First you need to have a texture image.  You can either create your own, or grab one from images searches from Bing or Google.  Just make sure the graphics are yours or have permissions if distributing them.  It’s hard to say what a good size is for a image file, but one important tip is to make sure the texture file has good seamless edges if you plan on tiling it throughout the skin.

For this tutorial I found a nice texture image of water.  I thought that would be an interesting effect.

Now open the WindowBlinds configuration, select the skin you wish to texture, and click the textures tab at the bottom.

In this window you will see you have three different areas that you can apply a texture to.  The window frame, taskbar, and start menu.  You can apply a different texture to each section, or you can use the same for all. 

Click Create new.  A new window will popup, and you can select a new image file to load, or load a previous image from the File menu.

As you can see, I loaded my water texture image and now you can use the slider to scale the image to your liking.  You can also select whether or not to tile the image by checking the box.  Once you are happy with your image, go back to the File menu and save it.  This will create your new texture and will then be visible in the texture area of WindowBlinds.

I selected the water texture for all three areas, and in the screenshots above you can see my newly created texture along side the rest of them.  All you have to do now is select it.

I have to admit this water texture came out really nice.   If you need to edit the textures or even delete them, those options are available right next to the Create buttons.  A new feature in WindowBlinds 7 will allow you to package textures in a .wba file. All you have to do is place your .texture file and image file into .zip, and rename it as an .wba file.

You should now have a good idea on how to create and apply your own textures with WindowBlinds.

www.windowblinds.net

It’s been several years since WindowBlinds has added a new skinning format.  For those of you who are techies, WindowBlinds has UIS1 and UIS2 (User Interface Specification). 

UIS2 is extremely powerful and lets users go wild with the design. 99% of skins use UIS2.  The downside is that skins are very hard to do (and even harder to do nicely) and there can be compatibility issues with programs that don’t adhere to the GUI conventions of Windows.

UIS1 is a lot less powerful but faster.  The borders and title bar are a fixed size and the title bar buttons can’t be moved. They’re a bit easier to make but still involve quite a bit of work. They have essentially perfect compatibility but most skinners don’t do UIS1 because they’re nearly as hard as UIS2 and and lack the power.

With WindowBlinds 7, a new skinning format gets introduced: UIS0.  The idea here is to make it very very easy to make skins and the skins only apply to Aero (which means for XP users this won’t apply since there’s no Aero to apply to).  Since the Aero design can’t be “touched” skinners can’t really easily hang themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, you CAN make an ugly Aero skin with UIS0.

Besides being easier to create UIS0 skins, UIS0 skins are Aero which means that any weird program that makes the assumption that Aero is running will be fine.

  vs.

The biggest goal, however is to make it a lot easier to make skins again.  Terrific skins like Aero Metal and Aero Midnight (by Vstyler for Stardock Design) are designed to look just like Aero but with metal textures or be pitch black.  It’s just as hard to make those skins (actually even harder since people are going to be comparing it to the default Aero) as any “original” skin.

Now, people who like the Windows Vista/Windows 7 default look but simply want to enhance it in some way can do so with a minimal of fuss.  Textures, colorization, and other new WindowBlinds 7 effects can be applied to Aero just like any other skin.

The beta of this is due out this week for Object Desktop users.

With ObjectDock 2.0 on the horizon, I wanted to take a fresh look back at the current version of ObjectDock Plus, as it is still an invaluable tool for any desktop.

I have been sitting here downloading images and applying them to my favorite WindowBlinds skins, just to see how they look.  The results have been fantastic, and staying true to the Fall season and Halloween, I wanted to make some “festive” textures.

You can also preview WindowBlinds 7 by becoming an Object Desktop subscriber.  Head over to www.objectdesktop.com for more info!

Windows 7 has greatly improved its own theme capabilities, which are far better than you found in Windows XP or Vista.  With Windows 7 you can now change the colors of theme, background, sounds, screensaver, etc. and even package those themes for sharing. 

I have seen some nice combinations of themes, and it’s such a far departure from the Luna days most of us should remember.  Even though the integrated Personalization options have widely grown over time, there are still limitations to be had.  If you want to truly customize your desktop, third-party software is what you will need.

Being that the Windows 7 launch is in October, it’s also very close to the release of Object Desktop 2010, which includes huge updates like WindowBlinds 7.  If you want to extend your personalization and customization needs beyond what Windows offers, this is what you want. 

With WindowBlinds 7 you have many more options and features available for Windows 7.

Some of these include:

• Advanced skinning options
• Adjustable transparency
• Textures
• Re-coloring of skins in real-time
• Changing of Explorer backgrounds
• and much more!

Take a look at my current Windows 7 desktop using a skin created by a community member of WinCustomize.com.

Here is the same desktop with a texture applied to the skin.  The customization options are nearly endless!

It’s been awhile since DesktopX got the kind of love it deserved. And with the new Object Desktop in development, it’s getting some love. 

First, DesktopX is going back to its roots – desktop eXtension.  Specifically, adding objects to the desktop that can be made to do interesting and useful things.

This will have some consequences and opportunities.

On the consequence side, we’re going to pull out features that are rarely used, hard to support, and are just generally not part of the core product.  For example, creating system trays. That was something we hacked in years ago that really shouldn’t have been in there.  In the early days when there was ObjectBar vs. DesktopX there was the desire to have these two programs be all things to all people.  In an age of Windows 2000/XP, we could get away with that.  But with XP/Vista/7, you really can’t, particularly in a world populated with the UAC where many many battles take place that users never see.

On the opportunity side, it sets up DesktopX to support new technologies like WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Picture being able to take an object and apply 3D effects to it even if the object itself is static.  There’s a lot of “good stuff” in Windows 7 that we want to make sure DesktopX is positioned to take advantage of.

A big area of change that most people, sadly, won’t notice (though power users might) is the under the cover work to make DesktopX not just work on Windows 7 but actually make use of the “plumbing” of Windows to do things faster, more robustly, and use less memory while doing it.

The target is to have a beta of DesktopX 4 in the next 2 weeks.

The folks over at the PC World blogs grabbed a copy of Fences from Stardock, and gave it a run through on their desktop.  The quote below sums up everything pretty well.

“It wasn't five minutes after installing this program that I realized I'll be using it for the rest of my computing life. It's that good.”

PC World

Business Hacks on Bnet.com, also has a quick video demo showing Fences in action.

See the video here.