Aero-Soft.com

Your home for Longhorn-specific customization/news

Published on March 6, 2005 By Frogboy In WinCustomize News

For those of you who are interested in customizing Windows XP to look like the next generation version of Longhorn or simply want the latest news and information on Microsoft's next generation version of Windows, be sure to visit www.aero-soft.com.

Comments

werewolf

on Mar 06, 2005

OMG!! Does that 'aeroshell' beta thing work?? that's awesome looking.

Big Doug

on Mar 07, 2005

Yes, AeroShell works. It uses Samurize.

The author (who is a good friend of mine) tried it first using DesktopX and had problems with transparency or something. Don't remember exactly what the problem was beyond that.

Thomas Thomassen

on Mar 07, 2005

Hmm.. It'd be nice to port this into DesktopX. Is there much more than on the screenshot? Don't see why everything has to be named Aero or Longhorn these days, but this is actually one of the few I really find good.
Imagine how it's features could be extended by the comming DesktopX 3.

BetaguyGZT

on Mar 07, 2005

Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster lol...

Yes, I tried to do it with Desktop X. The first few releases of it's prototypes were my SlickWin project. Basically I was trying some new things, some worked and some didn't.

Some of the things I tried were a little beyond DX's abilities, like using .png for the taskbar and systray components. I'd end up with transparent text and bad stretching/tiling of the images underneath. Nothing I did could fix it, except going back to .bmp (which I wasn't willing to do -- no alpha channel...). Same problem with the systray -- and the tiling/stretching issues were just as annoying.

Then there was an issue with the text clock plugin not antialiasing text. Fonts came out looking HORRIBLE. No font looked good.

I tried running DX as my shell. Saving my objects and whatnot proved impossible since changes wouldn't take. Everything would revert back to what it was, and DX would crash.

I tried again with (if I remember correctly) a early DX 2.3 build, and nothing had improved. So I gave up trying it with DX for a while. Maybe DX3 will be different, maybe not. But I DO know that Stardock will ALWAYS have my respect -- honestly, who makes the things that they do? NO ONE. But Desktop X really didn't treat me well, and I hope that things change in DX3. Maybe I'll try to port AeroShell over to it again.

Thanks for the rant space.

iloop iloop

on Mar 07, 2005

Couple of questions:
1. Will it live with Stardock's products? (namely, WindowBlinds and CursorXP)
2. Any chance for a better installer?

Woodbridge

on Mar 07, 2005

...Nothing I did could fix it, except going back to .bmp (which I wasn't willing to do -- no alpha channel...)...

This is from the DX3 build, which might interest you...

Thomas Thomassen

on Mar 07, 2005

I checked the latest DX 2.40f[a].002 with transparent png files and I noticed the issues you mentioned.

Can anyone with DesktopX 3 try this out? If it turns out to be the same I want to send a bug report. (BetaguyGZT: did you send a bugreport when you ran into the problem?) Othervise I'll just leave it and wait for DX3. I uploaded the objects I used for my test at my website here: http://www.thomthom.net/xfiles/alphatest.dxpack

BetaguyGZT

on Mar 07, 2005

@thomassen: That's EXACTLY what I ran into. I attempted to fill a bug report, but had no idea where to do that at. Maybe at the newsgroup place(s) thru Stardock Central? *shrug*

@Woodbridge: yes, that DOES interest me.

Next question, will changes take hold when DX3 is running as shell?

Thomas Thomassen

on Mar 07, 2005

The official support channel for any Stardock product is [email protected]. I'll file a bug report if it turns out this exists in DX3 as well.

When you say running DX as a shell, do you mean running it instead of explorer.exe? DX is not meant as a shell replacement as it does not have many of the features programs rely on from explorer.exe. DX is a desktop enhancement and is best run on top of the native explorer shell.

BetaguyGZT

on Mar 07, 2005

Yes, it was intended as a shell replacement.

And my goal is (and has always been) COMPLETE replacement, down to the window management itself. If DX can't do it (or has been purposely made NOT to, as I suspect) then it's not the framework for the job.

And I keep hearing a LOT about stuff not being meant as shell replacements, but that's never stopped me yet

werewolf

on Mar 08, 2005

Well, I've got the 'Aeroshell' running now. I have never used Samurize and it's fun to try to tweak all this stuff. I'll have to RTFM at some point because some of this is not self-evident... oh, no explorer process

Thomas Thomassen

on Mar 13, 2005

BetaguyGZT: You might find this interesting:

It's a screenshot of the same objects I had earlier, only on the DX3 beta version.

werewolf

on Mar 13, 2005

thomassen: Do those two things work when the explorer process is killed? I've been running in litestep and have done the aerosoft/samurize thing and I love not having the ex process running, everything is so much faster. I would do a DX environment if it was not dependant on explorer.

Thomas Thomassen

on Mar 13, 2005

I haven't tried. I might try later. Can't restart at the moment because I'm working.

werewolf

on Mar 22, 2005

Hmmm, I had a lot of problems in the DX environment when I killed explorer. Most of the problems seemed to be cause by the enhanced dialog app. I can't find anyway to turn that off, so for now, I'm just hiding the task bar...not the same thing at all.

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