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.

Here’s my desktop.

Right now running very clean. Windows 7 64-bit, WindowBlinds 7 running a textured Vector-Cell skin, DeskScapes running with a texturized wallpaper, and Fences simply hiding all my desktop clutter for a nice clean desktop.

What’s that? You got Windows 7 but are wondering how you can skin it?

No problem: WindowBlinds 7 can do the job even with skins made all the way back in 2001.

WindowBlinds 7 is part of Object Desktop.

Object Desktop has been on the leading edge of desktop technology since its initial release in 1999.  Features that are considered “standard” today showed up on Object Desktop first – often years in advance.

Years ahead…

Here are a few examples of innovations that showed up first on Object Dekstop:

• ZIP files behaving like folders
• alpha-blended shadows under windows
• desktop widgets and gadgets
• GUI skinning
• scripted desktop automation
• animated wallpaper
• desktop icon organizing
• digital distribution clients
• changing all the windows icons
• and much more

Some of the things mentioned above probably seem impossible that one program suite could be where so many common technologies first showed up.

Example 1: digital distribution clients

For example, digitral distribution clients.  Today, with programs like Steam and Impulse, not counting all the other programs these days that update themselves (Windows Live updating, Windows update, Adobe updater, etc.) that the first program suite to do this was Object Desktop back in 1999 with “Component Manager”.  It led the way in showing how you could release software that could be continually enhanced seamlessly.

Example 2: Shadows, Widgets, and more

While Macintosh users were claiming Microsoft “stole” the idea of gadgets from Apple or MacOS developers, it was Object Desktop that first introduced users to user-created scripted objects (widgets) back in 2000 – 3 years before it showed up elsewhere. In addition, such basic cosmetics as shadows under windows first became available to Object Desktop users back in late 1999 – years before it was available elsewhere.

Example 3: GUI Skinning

Windows has come a long way since the look of “Windows classic” but even on Windows 7, the mechanism for “skinning” the Windows GUI was modeled after Object Desktop’s WindowBlinds technology.

…And much more…

Of course, there are also plenty of technologies that remain exclusive to Object Desktop users.  For instance, the ability to change all your Windows icons on Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 remains exclusive to IconPackager (part of Object Desktop).

The ability to have animated wallpapers on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 remains something that only DeskScapes can do (part of Object Desktop).

And of course, the recently released “Fences” program (part of Object Desktop) is the first and only program for Windows that enables users to organize their windows icons conveniently or simply hide them all in a quick double-click on the desktop.

Seeing is believing

To see why power users have made Object Desktop the first thing they install on their PCs you have to look at some of the things it does today:

With WindowBlinds 7, you finally gain full control over the Windows GUI.  There are literally thousands of free skins available for download online that can customize Windows a bit or completely transform the GUI to look like another OS or something completely different.

DeskScapes 3 isn’t just about animated wallpaper anymore. Now, you can take your existing wallpaper and apply a variety of effects for it. This kind of obvious enhancement to Windows is why Object Desktop has remained so popular. Object Desktop isn’t simply about doing cool stuff to your computer but extending Windows in ways that seem obvious in hindsight.

The Tweak series of utilities (TweakVista and Tweak7) give users streamlined access to underlying capabilities of Windows that normally would require scouring the net for registry secrets.  For example, Object Desktop users were able to alter their UAC behavior on Windows Vista in ways that are now only now coming to Windows in Windows 7 (which means in Tweak7 we’ve upped the features further).

Impulse is the descendent of Component Manager (right image).  While most people were updating programs by sifting through websites looking for “patches” Object Desktop users simply loaded up Component Manager to see what new cool stuff Stardock had developed.  Impulse has been steadily building on to these possibilities (which we’ll talk about more at the end of this document).

Fences, possibly the hottest new desktop utility to be released in the last couple of years.  Screenshots don’t do it justice.  Fences Pro, available only for Object Desktop users right now, has an additional set of amazing features such as auto-fences and more.

IconPackager is another program that seems so obvious that one wonders why there aren’t dozens of programs like it.  But it remains the only program that can take a package of icons and apply them to any version of Windows.  The IconPackager format has become the defacto standard for users to pass around sets of icons.

The latest version of IconPackager (always on Object Desktop) lets users change their Windows 7 icons and modify live folders.

WindowBlinds can apply skins that were made for one version of Windows onto Windows 7 and it will automatically adapt the skin on the fly.

The latest version of WindowBlinds can also add textures to the UI.  Aero never had so many possibilities.

WindowBlinds also lets you have explorer backgrounds

SkinStudio is the only program available that lets users create their own GUIs for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

The Future…

Meanwhile, with the release of Windows 7, Stardock’s labs are full of new features to be added to Object Desktop to take it even further into the future.  Power users will soon be able to greatly extend their windows experience in all kinds of ways that will extend their capabilities.  With more and more users having high end 3D hardware, multiple PCs they have access to, higher resolution monitors, the possibilities are endless and you will find them on Object Desktop.

To learn more about Object Desktop visit www.objectdesktop.com.