About WindowBlinds WindowBlinds is a program that gives Windows users an option to customize their windows user interface. Using many skins available on its website at you can change look of you Title bars, borders, task Bar, Start button, Toolbar icons, Windows Explorer and almost every visual change in your computer. WindowBlinds Features. Skins virtually every aspect of the Windows GUI. Clean and easy configuration dialog. Tons of configuration options for users. Animation supported on title bars, buttons, and many other elements.
Change the color of any visual style on the fly. Per-application visual styles Updates.
9 I love customizing my system. It's always the first thing I do when buying a new computer or reinstalling the operating system. This is probably why I love WindowBlinds so much! WindowBlinds is a popular customization tool that's been around for years, but which has been constantly improved and expanded, and has recently hit version 7. With WindowBlinds you can customize your system from top to bottom, including toolbar, start menu, window skins, wallpapers, fonts and other elements, in a really easy way. No system restarts, no dealing with DLL files, no fuss at all! WindowBlinds takes care of everything in just one click.
The program features a nicely designed interface where you can browse different categories (visual styles, colors, textures, wallpapers and more) and select the ones you'd like to apply. WindowBlinds offers an instant preview of the selected element, and also offers extra configuration settings to customize it – like being able to choose the color you want on your window skin. To apply all selected elements, simply click 'Apply changes'.
WindowBlinds is very easy to use and includes lots of customization options. Plus it enables you to download more visual themes from the developer's website. On the downside, I missed having more options in the trial version, which sometimes feels a bit too limited. WindowBlinds is an excellent utility with which you can easily customize almost every detail on your system. Changes. Numerous bug fixes.
Trill is a free new Windowblinds skin that has sub-styles for Windows 7, 8 and 10. There are dark and light sub-styles for each operating system, a rollup button, and the desktop wallpaper shown in the screenshot is called Sands of Time by Richard Mohler, you can find it on WinCustomize, and believe me, it's great! A lot of time went into the design of this skin, so I hope everyone enjoys the look of Trill on their desktop. Thanks again to my good friend RedneckDude for his assistance in the testing of this skin. Much appreciated my friend! 23 downloads.
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10.62 / May 9, 2017; 9 months ago ( 2017-05-09) 54 MB Operating system customization Website WindowBlinds is a computer program that allows users to the. It has been developed by since 1998, and is the most popular component of their flagship software suite,. It is also available separately, and as an component called. Introduced in its sixth version, it supports effects similar to the of, but on. WindowBlinds has been downloaded over 10 million times WindowBlinds 7.0 at and was voted 'Best Vertical Market Program or Utility' in the 2006 People's Choice Awards. As of November 2009 there were 4448 WindowBlinds skins available at, with an average of nine being added per week; another popular repository is. This section needs additional citations for.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008) Despite its name, the 'Basic' skin format can be used to create fully featured skins, and it is still used today. The main limitation is that skin borders may only be 'standard' sizes (four pixels wide for most of the side borders). This restriction was significantly relaxed when skin metrics—adjustments to using the standard Windows methods—were introduced, allowing changes to (among other things) the standard height of the titlebar. It is also only possible to put buttons on the titlebar, and scripting and titlebar background animation are not supported. The advantages of UIS1+ are performance (Stardock has claimed that a UIS1+ version of the Windows XP 'Luna' visual style is twice as fast as the original in repaint and resizing) and compatibility.
Most can be converted to a UIS1+ skin. Advanced (UIS2) The Advanced skin format is provided for when a skin design cannot fit into the above restrictions.
Typically these skins may have wider borders in some places, or none at all. They may also feature titlebar background animation, or the use of scripting features. This format offers maximum flexibility at the cost of slightly reduced performance (as compared to UIS1+), and potentially more chance of incompatibility with applications. Some UIS2 skins include a UIS1+ subskin; if problems occur, this subskin may be substituted as a 'per-app' skin. History WindowBlinds started in 1998 when lead developer Neil Banfield teamed up with.
![Windowblinds Skins Vista Windowblinds Skins Vista](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123743852/516771010.png)
Stardock was looking for a developer to create a window skinning application, and Banfield had already created an application that he called 'Window Blinds' in 1997. Previous attempts by Stardock had included 'Object Look', a minimal skinning application, and 'WindowFX', an application written in. That name would later be reused for, also created by Banfield. For a short time there was also a scaled-back version of the original Window Blinds called 'WBLiteFX', a name which was still present in WindowBlinds as of May 2006. WindowBlinds (now re-branded as one word) quickly made its way to a 1.0 release, driven by the requests of users to add 'freeform skinning' (customizable window border shapes), sounds, and animation. Scrollbars, the task bar, the start button, menu items, the menu itself, and other GUI elements were added later. WindowBlinds 2 was a major redesign in that added the following features:.
The 'Basic' (UIS1+) format, which offered greater program compatibility in exchange for a restricted feature set. Compound skins (later known as 'subskins') which made it easier to provide alternative versions of a skin.
For example, a skin could now have two subskins to offer control buttons at the left or right of the window. User skin recoloring., though this was not widely used. and color sections for specific controls and states. Support for additional controls. At this time, 'BuilderBlinds'—re-branded as in February 2001—became a popular tool, as it enabled artists to create skins without spending a deal of time learning the intricacies of the UIS format. It also allowed experienced users to avoid trivial errors. WindowBlinds 3 accompanied the release of, which contained its own skinning system called 'visual styles'.
It was thought that visual styles might deal a blow to commercial skinning systems. This proved not to be the case; in fact, sales of WindowBlinds rose, buoyed by a new set of users who had seen the changes offered by visual styles and wanted more. Even after modifications known as 'uxtheme hacks' (named after the file they modified, uxtheme.dll) became available, WindowBlinds remained popular, since it had additional features that visual styles did not.
WindowBlinds skins can be animated;, for example, has falling snowflakes. However, the program still contained flaws. WindowBlinds 3 had many new features, but with new features came new bugs, including compatibility problems. Additionally, performance was suboptimal. Interim releases addressed these issues and provided for those areas of the Windows XP user interface that could not initially be skinned. By the time WindowBlinds 4 arrived, there were fewer problems, due in part to an increased focus on stability for clients. In addition, SkinStudio now provided a method to import the Microsoft msstyles format.
![Windowblinds Windowblinds](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123743852/881573874.jpg)
WindowBlinds 4.6 was released in August 2005, with the addition of mouseover 'translucent glow' effects for the titlebar buttons, push buttons and other controls. Windowblinds 4.6 has now been renamed 'WindowBlinds Classic', and is meant for non-XP Windows versions, which cannot run the new Windowblinds 5. WindowBlinds 5, released in November 2005, extends translucency through per pixel to the entire window frame, including the borders and taskbar. WindowBlinds 6, released end 2007, adds Windows Vista-like blur effects on XP (although Microsoft said that such per-pixel alpha blending with blur is impossible to work on XP ), later also Windows Sidebar skinning and more additional features. The configuration GUI was redesigned to a completely horizontal look. WindowBlinds 7, released in late 2009, added native support for Windows 7. Amongst its new features is the ability to 'skin Aero' by using colors and textures.
Other new features include a new user interface, and various tweaks. WindowBlinds 8, released in June 2013, added native support for Windows 8 while officially dropping support for Windows XP and Vista. The most prominent change was to its user interface, streamlining its layout while portraying a more minimalistic, Metro-like feel.
In addition, version 8 updated the bundled themes and refined the corresponding preview mode. WindowBlinds 10, released in March 2016, added native support for Windows 10 and some minor new features. Competitors WindowBlinds has had many competitors over the years. Initially, it was not clear which skinning program would be the most popular, and there was active competition between the programs from 1999 to early 2001.
Most are still around, but they have generally faded in popularity, since WindowBlinds can alter more GUI elements. EFX eFX was a popular program made by Thirty4 Interactive that claimed to be the first skinning engine to offer freeform skinning. However, development stopped at eFX 0.40 when the program was sold to in 1999. Many eFX skins were hosted at, a very popular skinning website which had been founded for that specific purpose. Illumination was written in, initially released on 1 November 1998 and open-sourced under the in March 1999.
It was notable for supporting early themes, specifically those created for E13; later, support was added for early themes. The most recent release was in January 2001.
Chroma was a technically sophisticated skinning program. First released 15 May 1999, it quickly proved to be flexible; later versions used a skin definition language called. However, it was perceived as difficult to use, resulting in a low number of skins. The last release was in August 2000, possibly due to a in September, or perhaps in fear of competition from the impending release of Windows XP.
CustomEyes and ShellWM , first released in December 1999, was a skinning program that progressed slowly, only reaching a 0.3 beta. It was effectively abandoned in late 2000 but open-sourced in October 2001. This led to the of a project called in 2002, which was intended to be the window-skinning sidekick to a variety of replacements. It was therefore restricted to titlebar skinning, although skinned menu backgrounds have also been shown in screenshots. In late 2004, ShellWM was itself forked into BB4WinSkin after a period of inactivity. As the fork had not been previously discussed, this resulted in a further loss of interest on the part of the main developer. Msstyles and StyleXP With the release of Windows XP, a new option for skinning was made available: msstyles, the format used by the XP skinning engine.
These were not intended to be usable by end-users; themes were checked for a to prevent unsigned msstyles from being loaded at all, though this restriction was broken before release. Initially, only patched were available, but eventually a company called TGT Soft created a product called to perform the patching. Early versions simply applied the patch; later versions employed a to do the same. TuneUp Utilities supports this too, however, they're both a little slower than a patched DLL due to the additional process. Skin design The popularity of various designs has changed along with the skinning community. Initially, remakes (or 'ports') of older like and were very popular. Users then began to explore the potential of such features as freeform skinning, titlebar animation, and scripting, resulting in a number of unique skins.
SkinStudio is a popular software tool by used to create for WindowBlinds, as well as programs such as, and. It is a component of, but is also sold separately, and a version is available as a free download. SkinStudio uses a Universal Skin Format (USF) that can be used to create one skin and export it to multiple skin formats. In practice, skins often need further editing after being created from this template, but it can be of use when developing a suite of skins. Msstyle files are imported into USF before being converted to one of the WindowBlinds skin formats. Legal actions When was announced, its visual style was the subject of numerous ports, some of a high quality. This undermined Apple's marketing and they felt it infringed on their.
Several skins were taken down at the company's request. Notably the skin 'WinAqua' by Dangeruss. Similarly, the run-up to the release of Windows XP resulted in many skins. Skins with 'XP' in the title were very popular that year. Prior to the release of, numerous skins were created that replicated Vista's GUI. Options homeschool program fort collins.
![Vista Vista](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123743852/667741372.jpg)
Microsoft has sent a letter to the creator of at least one of these themes. References.
Was wondering if anybody can help me with this one i am interested in changing the default C: Users Public Documents Stardock WindowBlinds directory to my second drive say like E: Software Graphics Stardock WindowBlinds I moved the whole contents to new directory including the system files that are there also,i also changed the path in the registry in all 4 places to reflect the new directory but something is a little screwy with the graphics i know its just not right!! I do not see where in settings it has a place to move the directory like iconpackager does. So i was was trying to cheat (LOL) but it didnt work. My intent was to keep my icons, dreams, tiles, windowblinds, and cursorfx, in one spot on second drive and point all the programs to that directory. I am using a multi boot system win 8.1 pro win 7 ultimate win vista ultimate win XP professional ( i know your thinking what the hell is wrong with this guy) i want to use these op systems in real time cause i have win 3.1 for workgroups win95 and win98 win millennium and win 2000 running in virtual machine 2004.was just hoping someone got this to work any help is much appreciated. Thanks for listening to this rant.
Windowblinds Skins Downloads
I couldn't see asking anybody else but you guys and girls here cause this place is the BEST. Thanks again Ed.(jaroepz).