WindowBlinds by StarDock Systems - Part of the
Object Desktop
WindowBlinds is a program for
Windows 95, 98, NT4 and 2000 that allows the user to change the appearance of various
GUI elements (called '
widgets'). It does this by creating an
overlay composed of images that represent the widgets, and maps the standard windows controls to these. The layout of the images is controlled by a text file called
theme.uis and, packaged together with the images and usually a
readme file, is called a
skin, or
theme.
WindowBlinds is distributed as shareware, and can be used as such, but unless you obtain a
serial number for it you don't get to skin scrollbars and certain other widgets.
Skins for WindowBlinds are created with another app called
BuilderBlinds, which is a
graphical program that creates a .uis file based on the layout you choose for your images. I foud it very cumbersome to work with, but that's perhaps because I'm so used to
step.rc editing.
Note, WindowBlinds isn't the only app that does this. Some others are
eFX,
Illumination,
Daya,
CustomEyes and
Chroma.
http://www.windowblinds.net
http://www.stardock.com
http://www.stardock.com/products/builderblinds
http://www.deskmod.com
http://www.skinz.org
http://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/odnt-diagram.jpg
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb-apr00.jpg
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb-mar00a.jpg
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb-apr00c.jpg
http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/mac.jpg
ftp://ftp.download.com/pub/win95/utilities/wblind13.exe
ftp://ftp2.zdnet.com/pub/private/sWlIB/utilities/system_utilities/winblind.exe