WindowBlinds 7 Review

One of the neatest features of Windows XP was the ability to customize the interface to any theme you could conceive.  You could even do this without special software if you performed a few simple tasks.

When Windows Vista was introduced, it touted a new hardware-accelerated desktop, called Aero (which stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open).  This new desktop revolutionized how the desktop was drawn as it used your 3D card to render windows, meaning that transparency, textures, shadows and other “bling” came with almost no performance hit.

Unfortunately Aero could not be customized beyond simple color changes.  While I missed being able to use custom skins, I stuck with Aero simply because of its buttery smoothness.  I hate window jaggies and slow refreshes with what is left of my soul.

Vista was quickly replaced by the new Windows 7, which has the same Aero desktop, but a much improved usability.  One of the few things that Windows 7 lacks is the ability to customize the desktop to the extent that Windows XP had.

Desktop transitions change depending on the skin applied

Stardock Software has offered WindowBlinds as a way to customize your desktop, but their new release supports Windows 7, which means that hard-core tweakers can finally have the desktop their way again.

On the next page we look at the interface and how easy it is to change your desktop…

You don’t need to go to the Control Panel or look through buried options in Display settings: WindowBlinds is a standalone application.  Once you launch WindowBlinds 7, you are met with the interface, which is a little different than standard Windows applications.

You can change your desktop settings by browsing through a set of tabs, which are displayed at the bottom, rather than the top where most people expect to see them.  All items are laid out horizontally, so you must scroll left to right rather than up and down.  The scrollbar is hidden and appears when your mouse cursor is in the window section, although you can scroll through by using your mouse’s scrollwheel.  Above the tabs is an area that shows you a quick preview of your selected options.

Visual Style alternates

The main category tabs are:

• Visual Styles
• Alternate Styles
• Colours (yes, they pretentiously left in the extra “u” for the American audience)
• Textures
• Wallpapers
• Fonts
• Transparency
• Explorer Backgrounds

On the top of the window are several actionable items: Apply changes, Skin Options, Settings, About WindowBlinds, and Get More Skins.  The Skin Options pretty much mirrors all of the other functions, such as applying a new skin, downloading a skin, etc.  The Settings button is where most of the advanced features are located, and where most advanced tweakers will spend their time.  Some of the advanced options include how fast you want mouseover animations, pulsing buttons, forcing certain options, using plugins, and special skins for certain applications.

Visual Styles tab

On the Visual Styles tab, you can browse through the category of skins you have installed.  All you need to do to change your theme is just double-click on it (or select and then click on “Apply Changes”).  Once you have highlighted a particular theme, the “Alternate Styles” tab changes to show how many alternates are available.  By default, WindowBlinds 7 comes with the following skins pre-installed:

	Skin Notes Windows Classic no skin applied (a la Windows 2000) Windows Aero back to Windows default Aero Colors customizable Aero colors Aero Clay Earthy textures Aero Metals Lots of metal textures Aero Woods Lots and lots of wood grain textures Corporate A very nice clean skin Diamond Another very nice clean skin Sabertooth emulates the look of Mac OS-X Sublime A nice onyx-like skin

The Colors tab allows you to select a predefined color, or use a rainbow slider to customize your own.  There are also sliders to adjust the brightness and saturation of the selected color.  On the bottom right of this area is a “Change skin system colors” button which opens a window that allows you to customize every aspect of your desktop windows, such as the Active Title, Button Highlight, Active Window Gradient and so forth.

All the pretty colo(u)rs

The Textures tab allows you to augment your skin with a set of textures, and 20 are installed by default.  You can also create your own effect by clicking the Create Effect button on the bottom right, which allows you to select (or create a new) textures for Window Frames, Taskbar, and Start Menu.  You can also edit an existing texture and apply different ones to these different desktop elements.  All textures are Targa (.tga) files, so if you’re a Photoshop junkie then know that you’ll have to save in that format.  Honestly this is the first time I’ve encountered a use for Targa files, and I’ve been doing computer graphics for many years.

Textures tab and cusomization window

The Wallpapers tab is pretty straightforward.  By default, all Windows wallpapers are listed, as well as the images you have installed in your “My Pictures” directory.  Be aware of this when you’re showing off your desktop to your girlfriend or co-worker (they might even be the same thing), as you may have some *ahem* inappropriate content in those folders.

Select your wallpaper

The Fonts tab allows you to change the font size and other options.  There is a slider that changes the skin’s font size, and you can choose to override the default system fonts and use your own.  There are two checkboxes that let you toggle the shadow and outline text effects and the use of system-wide fonts.  The font face is also previewed on the right, and appears to use all installed fonts, even if they aren’t TrueType.

The Transparency tab lets you customize the transparency and blur used on certain desktop elements.  You can specify custom settings for the Start menu window, taskbar, active and inactive windows and context-menus.  You can also ckick the “Vista-ize me” button which enables blur on all elements and overrides the transparency to 5%.

Set transparency for different desktop elements

The Explorer Backgrounds is greyed out for many of the pre-installed themes, but is available for a few.  This allows you to apply a texture to the background of your windows.  You can have a different setting for your Active and Inactive windows.  You can also link the opacity of the Explorer texture to the default window texture, and you can choose to fade the texture out.  Again, all textures are in Targa format.   Too bad there’s not a way to change the background of other windows, like the Command Prompt.

Does it slow down your system?  We answer that on the next page…

All of these settings are well and good, but one thing you probably want to know is how well the software performs. A few years ago it was my experience that skinning software slowed things down noticably, but that was also during the Windows XP days and software was an additional layer to the Windows GDI.  Brad Wardell (President of Stardock Software) spoke with me and mentioned that WindowBlinds overrides Microsoft’s GDI layer, and is actually four times more efficient at rendering hardware-accelerated windows.  Regardless of the technology mumbo-jumbo, there was no noticable slowdown when using WindowBlinds 7 on Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Sabertooth and Aero Woods skins

When you change a theme, your desktop blurs and greys out while the new skin is deployed.  This can take anywhere from just a few seconds to as many as 30 or more, depending on the skin chosen.  You can double-click on a Visual Style to change the entire desktop, but you cannot double-click an option to enable it… you must click the “Apply changes” button in the top left to apply your changes.  The usability dynamic is not what most people are used to, and it took me a while to figure this out… and I analyze and test usability for a living.

Aero Metals and RPM (a user-generated skin)

When I spoke with Brad Wardell last year, I was excited that WindowBlinds worked on Vista, but at the time only worked on the 32-bit version.  I moved over to 64-bit a long time ago, primarially to enable more than 4 gigabytes of RAM.  I am happy to report that WindowBlinds 7 works just fine on the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

Not everything plays nice with WindowBlinds, however.  We take a look on the next page…

There are a few caveats to using this software, however.  Windows 7 has a feature that lets you easily find a particular window by making all other windows “invisible” but keeping their outline.  This can be easily demonstrated by hovering your mouse over the bottom right of the taskbar to “show desktop”.  When using a skin that has textures, all of these windows show the texture rather than becoming invisible.

An example of what happens when textured windows don’t play nice.

Additionally, there are a few applications that just do not play nice with WindowBlinds 7.  I noticed that Microsoft Excel’s window disappeared.  Once I switched back to Windows Aero then Excel worked just fine.  Other applications already have their own skin, such as Steam and iTunes, which is just fine and probably wouldn’t work well with a custom skin anyway.

These caveats are really small, and really aren’t deterrents from using WindowBlinds 7.  Like the Excel issue, you may find some applications that just do not work well with being skinned.  There are hundreds of user-generated skins at Win-Customize.com, so any compatibility issues you encounter may be due to an immature skin.  Stardock also makes some professional-looking addon skins, and they cost about $5 each.  If you want to create your own skin (or edit existing ones), then it will cost you an extra $20 to purchase Stardock’s SkinStudio.

Microsoft Office doesn’t like being ‘Blinded.

It appears that the WindowBlinds 7 technology has finally matured enough to truly enhance your desktop experience.  You can finally make Windows your own without sacrificing performance.  There are a few minor issues that still need to be worked out, but this is the best version of skinning software I’ve seen, as it works with Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and finally supports 64-bit Operating Systems.  If you’re a customization junkie, then hop on over to Impulse (Stardock’s online software and game distribution platform) and download it now.

	REPORT CARD : Stardock Software’s WindowBlinds 7. category rating comments Quality 4 Included skins are rather good, but there are still a few minor bugs to work out. Innovation 5 Finally skinning software that works in every modern Windows OS. Performance 5 Bypasses Microsoft’s GDI to ensure buttery-smoothness. Installation 4 Interface design has new usability that may throw off users at first. Value 4 Costs $20, but it opens up a whole world of new skinning options.  You will be spending several hours getting your desktop just right.  Lots of free skins, but the really good ones cost $5 a pop. FINAL VERDICT: 4 out of 5 stars