Caster - X's blog

WindowBlinds 6.0

Overview

Customize the look & feel of Windows

Tired of your computer having the same old look as every other computer? Want to give your Windows PC its own unique style? Stardock WindowBlinds will let you apply thousands of different skins (visual styles) to change the look and feel of your entire desktop. WindowBlinds is so flexible that users can create skins that mimic the look and feel of other operating systems.

Not Just Eye Candy

WindowBlinds doesn’t just make Windows look better, it can make it more functional. You can create your own skins that add additional buttons to the title bar that provide additional functionality such as roll-up buttons, link buttons, program short cuts, even media player controls. Moreover, because WindowBlinds uses the latest features of your graphics card, it can make Windows even faster than the default Windows XP or “Aero” style.

You are in control

Even with thousands of different visual styles to choose from, you can customize those visual styles as well. WindowBlinds gives you total control over your graphical user interface. WindowBlinds will let you change the color of your Windows GUI, change your wallpaper, give different windows their own specific look, choose a new Windows taskbar and Start button.

Improve your productivity

WindowBlinds has features that significantly enhance a user’s productivity when it comes to interacting with windows. For example, you set WindowBlinds to minimize windows just by right-clicking on the title bar, a great feature for minimizing several windows quickly without having to resort to “minimize all”.

(Click to enlarge)

Features

WindowBlinds has hundreds of different features for enabling users to customize the look and feel of Windows. For this guide, we’ll stick to the primary features:

• New start menu animation support
• Category filtering on skins in wbconfig
• Tag filtering on wallpapers in wbconfig
• Random skin support
• The ability to save a re-coloring of a skin as a preset
• Advanced HSL re-coloring where you pick a single color and a range in a skin and you can just change that color instead of the entire skin
• Ability to edit the system colors from wbconfig
• Ability to change skin fonts from wbconfig
• Ability to control transparency and blur on start menu, menus, taskbar & window frames.
• Ability to save such changes as a preset
• Vista-Ize me function which sets some defaults to have a more vista like look
• Ability to skin the sidebar
• Ability to edit a sidebar skin from within wbconfig
• Improved WB skin install when handling upgrades of skins
• Ability to alter the mouse over animation speed
• Ability to alter the default button pulsing speed
• Support for explorer background bitmaps
• Ability to use the Aero frames with the rest of the skin
• Blur support in title bars (and menus on vista)
• Lots of new sections for new Vista specific parts
• Including IE navigation arrows, IE tabs, start menu shutdown/lock buttons
• Skins virtually every aspect of the Windows GUI
• Clean and easy configuration dialog.
• Tons of configuration options for users
• Animation supported on titlebars, buttons, and many other elements.
• Change the color of any visual style on the fly
• Per-application visual styles
• Doesn’t alter any system files
• Safe, reliable way to change the look and feel of Windows

System Requirements:

• Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows XP (32-bit)
• Windows 2003 (32-bit)
• 1GHz or faster processor recommended
• 120MB free drive space
• 256MB RAM
• Note: A 16MB DirectX 8 or later compatible video card with appropriate driver support is required for per-pixel alpha-blended skins. Some integrated graphics solutions and lower-end cards from before 2004 may not be able to use per-pixel skins.
• On Windows Vista a DWM capable video card is required for per pixel skinning

Homepage : http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds
WindowBlinds Skins : http://www.wincustomize.com

Stardock WindowBlinds Enhanced 6.0.zip (15.4 MB)

(Register to login, it’s free !)