We've been focusing our efforts so much on making WindowBlinds 3 faster than Luna on XP that we've not really talked about all the new features in it.

Here's a link to the guide which goes over tons of things that are new in 3.0:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb3/wb3_guide_final.htm

A few goodies include:
1) An inclusion list. You can now say "I only want these apps skinned, leave everything else untouched."

2) Ability to use the Start bar from one skin in all your other skins.

3) Can now change the fonts in your title bars as well as modify colors on the fly on the system.

4) SmartBars. Instead of the skin author saying "This is a roll-up button" they put "This is a Smart button" where the user decides what type of button it is.

5) Hyperpaint. We can now use unused video memory to accelerate windows painting. If you have XP, try this, on reasonably small windows it completely eliminates repainting which makes moving windows much faster (something very important to us software developers where in WB2, its performance hits over classic were always a big negative when you wanted to use its extra features like always on top and such).

6) Auto-theme aware. If you use Windows XP, Luna (and all other visual styles) only does title bars on non-theme aware apps. WindowBlinds 3 can skin them all completely (full version anyway).


7) Ability to change the painting method. In WB1/WB2 you were stuck with a single paint method which might be fast or slow or buggy dpeending on yoru video card. Now you can choose DDB or DIB paint.

8) Cleartype font support in controls on XP.

9) Native Vector Format. This isn't documented in 3.0 but it'll be documented as soon as we can. Basically vector based skins. I don't think one needs to talk about too much what the advantages of vectors over bitmaps is.

Coming in 3.x soon:

More stuff in on the way:

a) Skincast. A quasi-peer file sharing thing where people set up their own skin stations that people can subscribe to.

Tons of new skin controls. You know the cool stuff DesktopX does right? Well, not only will you get to have mouse overs on all sorts of new controls but ANIMATED mouse overs. Remaining controls, even obscure ones, will be able to be skinned.

c) More sound support and tying it into mouse events (so when you click on that radio button you can hear a click if you want).

d) UIS1++. UIS2 is already faster than Luna but it is slower than just runnign classic. UIS1++ isnt' as powerful as UIS2 but it can handle many of the most popular skins and its speeds should be more closely related to Windows classic. Our goal is for WindowBlinds to be more than just a skinning program but a GUI acceleration program.

Speaking of GUI acceleration, take Hyperpaint for example. Right now, there is a limitation on memory bandwidth. The size of the window it can accelerate is dependent on the # of bits (so a 16bit color window can be much bigger). But as video cards advance, eventually full screen windows will be accelerated.

Imagine that - complete elimination of repaints. Similarly, DirectX features (DirectX 8 and later) can be used more easily in 2D which we plan to do for increased performance.

The goal is to provide for a completely customizeable skinnable user interface that is as fast or faster than a system without WindowBlinds. With WB3 we've worked to make it slightly faster than Luna (msstyles) but over the coming year the gulf in speed between WB should increase as more acceleration is put in.

Some people may not be aware of this but Litestep.net returned under new management and it's doing really well. With one of (if not THE largest) collections of Litestep themes, Litestep.net offers users a vast number of choices in shell environments.

The first all version of WindowBlinds 3 (Release candidate, still a beta) that runs on all versions of Windows is now available at www.windowblinds.net.

Let us know if you have ANY PROBLEMS.

Specifically:

1) WindowBlinds 3 should feel significantly faster than WindowBlinds 2.2
2) WindowBlinds 3 should work a lot better on Windows 98/ME/2000 than 2.2
3) WindowBlinds 3 should use significantly less memory than 2.2

Additionally, it is much more closely integrated with Windows 98/ME/2000. On Windows XP, it's totally integrated (it's native on XP) and should be faster and FEEL faster than Luna (Windows XP style). It already uses less memory (about a megabyte and that's with the theme service still on which is not necessary if you stick with WB skins).

There are also a ton of cool new features in version 3. This is definitely the biggest upgrade we've ever done. We want to run RC2 through its paces and assuming all goes well, release v3 next week officially.

Here is a link to the new WB3 guide:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb3/wb3_guide_final.htm

WindowBlinds 3, like Quicktime and other programs comes in its "free" shareware form where it'll work forever and it's enhanced form which has a ton of additional features.

Here is a link to the benefits:
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/benefits/benefits.html

Note to shareware users:
Because WindowBlinds is designed based on the framework in Windows XP, you'll find that on Windows 98/ME/2000 that things are a little different than they were with 2.2. Not quite as mnay things are skinned. We designated specific applications as "Theme aware" apps (XP users know what I mean but suffice to say, most apps are not theme aware). These apps are fully skinned other than the scrollbar which we don't skin on any platform in the shareware version (the enhanced version does). Non theme aware apps still have their title bars skinned (like on XP). The enhanced version will skin everything. And even on Windows XP, the enhanced version will skin non-theme aware apps fully. Which is a bit ironic because if you want Windows XP to look like Windows XP completely you need WindowBlinds 3 with a Windows XP skin .

Again though, if you run into ANY problems, please let us know. If you don't find this version to be faster on XP than XP style itself, let us know (obviously on a complex skin it won't be as fast, we do not violate the laws of thermaldynamics at this company - presently). If you run 32bit color, be wary of overdoing it with Hyperpaint because it can actually be a major hog on performance because the overhead in transferring data to your video card memory exceeds any potential benefit.

But for Win98/ME/2000 this version SHOULD be the best, most stable, more relaible, fastest, easiest to use version of WindowBlinds ever made. Let us know if you aren't finding this to be the case.

Information we'll need:
CPU speed
Color depth
Video card and driver version if possible
Apps being used
Skin used

And as much specifics as you can get. We need your help on this. Screenshots in the .binaries are are a godsend. Mephisto's screenshot of a problem he had with AOL's IM allowed us to quickly address this issue.

Mian and co. have returned in a big way. Skinz.org has returned with dozens of sections of skins and themes and icons! Check it out!

Depending on your religon (or lack there of) you probably have a belief of how we humans got to be on this earth.

What's your view on it?

Here's mine (based on a collection of reading over the years):

About 4 million years ago in East Africa a particular type of ape lived in the jungle. This ape was the prececessor of what we now call humans and chimps. The climate was changing in that part of Africa to be a lot dryer forcing some of these apes to begin leaving the trees. The ones that stayed became chimps. The ones that went out there mostly died.

They died because they couldn't see the lions and other nasties out there. But a handful of them figured out that if you stood on your hind legs that you could see further. Hence those lived and passed their genes on. As time went on, more and more of these surviors were walking up right. This was important not just because they could see further but they could walk further.

This freed their hands up to do other things and most of them were still dying to lions and other nasties. But some of them were bright enough to throw rocks and they lived, to pass on their genes. Repeat this cycle for 3.9 million years and you have homosapiens. Add some other birth defects in that pushed us alon gin having to obtain a variety of food that chimps don't (humans can't produce Vitamin C, we have to consume foods that have it) and only the smarter ones survived.

Around 60,000 years ago these homosapiens, for reasons I don't know, figured out how to communicate verbally. Perhaps it was a mutation (all humans have a birth defect that causes us to be unable to drink and breath at the same time, this allows us to make a lot more sounds than any other mammal - while we're not choking anyway). Once we were able to start communicating like this, ideas could be passed along and within 60,000 years we went from hunting and gathering to farming (around 8000 years ago) to where we are now.

So what's your view?

Back when I was around 17, I really enjoyed getting into intellectual discussions with my friends (very important to do so because at 17 I knew everything and it was important to figure everything out before I stopped knowing it all).

My favorite discussion at the time was whether humans would figure out a way to go beyond the speed of light. What do you guys think?

I refuse to be an enabler...I refuse to be an enabler!

Anyone seen some good movies lately? We went to see "The one" last week. Not bad..not great. Kind of like Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles meets Time Cop meets The Hidden.

I'm looking forward to Harry Pottery (I confess!) and of course Lord of the Rings.

When you create skins, icons, themes, what are the tools you use?

What effects do you find are very useful in those tools?

For those of you who aren't familiar with this awesome website, DailyRotation gives a summary of interesting topics from around the customization community. It is integrated into most of the news front ends on most of the sites involved in it.

With working taking up a lot of my time recently, it's been much more stressful to spend my few bits of free time (like 1:20am on a weekday) hanging out here on WC.

So I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from the skin community until WB3 is completed and I get the GalCiv beta out the door.

Try to stay out of trouble.