Alas, Poor Skinning. I knew him… Or so it seemed.  Skinning was huge for awhile. And then it wasn’t.  What happened? I’ll tell you: Windows stopped being so ugly and there was no easy way to simply customize Aero(the default glass look of Windows Vista and Windows 7). Until now. In the years since Windows Vista, if you wanted to have say a metallic version of the Windows Vista UI, a skinner had to spend as much time making that (i.e. many days) as it would ...

It’s been awhile since DesktopX got the kind of love it deserved. And with the new Object Desktop in development, it’s getting some love.  First, DesktopX is going back to its roots – desktop eXtension.  Specifically, adding objects to the desktop that can be made to do interesting and useful things. This will have some consequences and opportunities. On the consequence side, we’re going to pull out features that are rarely used, hard to support, and are just generally...

Vector-Cell is one of my favorite skins of all time. Thanks to WindowBlinds 7, it gets a new lease on life…   Texturing the title bar… Look how good the start menu (this is the Windows 7 start menu) is even though this skin was made back in like 2003.

WindowBlinds 7 (currently in beta on Object Desktop) is the latest version of Stardock’s flag-ship desktop enhancement utility. It is the program that introduced GUI skinning to Windows users back in 1999. With each new version of Windows, the program has been updated to take advantage of the possibilities of that version.  Since the release of Windows Vista with its “Aero” UI, users have found Microsoft’s new user interface motif both beautiful and frustrating.  Beautiful in the ...

What’s that? You got Windows 7 but are wondering how you can skin it? No problem: WindowBlinds 7 can do the job even with skins made all the way back in 2001. WindowBlinds 7 is part of Object Desktop.

Object Desktop has been on the leading edge of desktop technology since its initial release in 1999.  Features that are considered “standard” today showed up on Object Desktop first – often years in advance. Years ahead… Here are a few examples of innovations that showed up first on Object Dekstop: ZIP files behaving like folders alpha-blended shadows under windows desktop widgets and gadgets GUI skinning scripted desktop automation animated wallpaper des...