WindowBlinds is the engine.
The skins are the content.
UIS1 and UIS2 were the two skin formats WindowBlinds has supported. UIS1 for “simple” skins and UIS2 for complex skins.
Both were designed in an age where few people wanted their systems to resemble Windows classic let alone Luna (the Windows XP look) .
Windows Vista’s Aero changed that. Because (like me) think Aero looks good. But Microsoft severely limited the customization options of Aero for reasons most of us can’t fathom.
But we skinners only has UIS1 and UIS2 skin formats.
If making an Aero like skin required lots of work, then skinners might as well spend that same amount of time to make something truly original right?
Therefore:
As a result, nearly all the Aero-like skins were designed by Stardock because skinners didn’t want to spend a ton of hours to make a skin that simply looked slightly different from Aero.
Unfortunately for skinning, LOTS of users wanted looks that were just a bit different from Aero.
This is why the new skin format in WindowBlinds 7 is such a big deal.
Of course, there are color options in Aero but you have no choice but to deal with the default weird texture and other behaviors that you’re still stuck with regardless of the transparency.
But because of all the effort involved in making a traditional WindowBlinds skin, that meant that previously, no one would make simple Aero skins like the one below that can now be done in seconds from within the WindowBlinds configuration interface that are obviously not possible with what’s built into Windows.
WindowBlinds 7 comes out in early November. Object Desktop users can do this now though.