This UI was made by AI.   So was this:   We are not quite at the point where AI can make the actual WindowBlinds skins themselves. Certainly not in real time. But I think we are getting close to where skinners will be able to make skins much more easily.

How does WindowBlinds 10 handle older skins on the latest version of Windows 10? The answer: Inconsistently.  There are some apps, like Notepad, where it always works fine.  Others, like an Explorer window it sometimes works fine.  And then there’s Edge where it rarely works fine.  Look at the results yourselves. For the next version of Win...

Lots of exciting things happening this year.   Stardock is actively hiring software developers to begin revamping all of Object Desktop.  You will begin to see the changes starting in mid November as new and old things alike start being added. A few things on our plate include: Updating SoundPackager.  The sounds in Windows 10 are a bit annoying.  Stardock has a lot of audio talent here that we plan to use to revamp the sound packages that it includes as well ...

  WindowBlinds 1.0 was released in November 1998! Since then, it’s gotten over 100 MILLION downloads!  Over on CNET’s Download.com version 8 has received over 18 million downloads.  It was the first program to enable users to customize the look and feel of the Windows GUI.  15 years later it is still going strong. Let’s take a look at its evolution in pictures. Version 1 Changed window frames, menu bars.   Yea, ...

This week DeskScapes 8 was released and while it is most famous for its ability to display animated wallpapers, I personally think of the animated wallpapers as an additional perk on top of the fact that it’s a really awesome way to manage and enhance normal Windows desktop backgrounds. Its home page is https://www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes . Multi-monitor support If you look at DeskScapes 8’s main UI, you’ll notice a few things instantly. First, if yo...

Was trying to figure out why my windows are resizing so slow and then I realized that my new PC, with a state of the art video card, is not running WindowBlinds yet.  Most people think of WindowBlinds as eye candy and that’s really a shame. For me, these days, the fact it turns things over to DirectX and double buffers so everything is crazy smooth is key. I was hoping that Windows Vista, then Windows 7 would catch up in this area. The fact Microsoft hasn’t fixed this year make...

The beta begins this month…really!

The decade is just about over. In that time, we’ve seen skinning rise from being a power user niche to being mainstream and now returning to being a power user niche again. Let’s take a look at some of the highs and lows of skinning for the past decade. The rise of WindowBlinds No discussion of skinning would be complete without WindowBlinds . WindowBlinds demonstrated both the marvels of skinning and its occasional depravity by letting users completely change the loo...

WindowBlinds 7 is really coming along.  If you have Object Desktop , which is our flag ship suite of programs to turbo-charge your Windows experience, you’ll be getting beta drops of WindowBlinds 7 which adds Windows 7 support along with a ton of new features designed to make customizing Windows a snap.

WindowBlinds 7 internal alpha on Windows 7 beta Unmodified WindowBlinds skin (i.e. skinners won't have to necessarily make any changes to support Windows 7). WindowBlinds 7 betas will probably show up on Object Desktop this Spring.

So there I am, doing an all nighter at Stardock, minding my own business as I logon to people's machines to read their private email when lo and behold, I find a mother lode of secretly stashed work in progress skins from Stardock Design.

Now, I don't even know the names for some of these skins. I don't know when they're coming out or in what form. But there's some cool stuff here. And this is just the tip of the iceberg (I'm too lazy to take screenshots of all of them).

 

 

The new WinCustomize is going to be a radical departure from what we have today. In the web 2.0 age, we can do a lot of interesting things that should greatly improve the navigation of the site. The days of clicking, waiting for the page to load, clicking, waiting for the page to load and so forth will go away. Instead, the site will feel more akin to a desktop application. Want to see the most popular skinners, click on tab and it'll expand to show it. The site will end u...

Object Desktop 2009, which is due out on November 19, will be including some pretty cool stuff.  For Vista users, they finally get BootSkin.  For XP users, they get animated wallpaper with DeskScapes.