Skinnable Aero

Is it possible at all to skin Aero? But I heard the graphics for the windows are generated procedurally (like it was in Windows 9x days) instead of the bitmapped window frames seen in XP) so I guess not.

Stardock must be chomping at the bit to be able to mod Aero, can anyone from the GUI team comment?

Yeah and I doubt Stardock could come with anything better anyway.

Windowblinds has support for Vista, they are also working on new version that would support aero like effects

RoyalSchrubber wrote:

Windowblinds has support for Vista, they are also working on new version that would support aero like effects

Yes, but it doesn't use the DWM.

I've seen similar programs that implement glass on themselves (in software), they're really slow. If Stardock did implement anything it would be horrendously performant.

W3bbo wrote:



RoyalSchrubber wrote: Windowblinds has support for Vista, they are also working on new version that would support aero like effects

Yes, but it doesn't use the DWM.

I've seen similar programs that implement glass on themselves (in software), they're really slow. If Stardock did implement anything it would be horrendously performant.

WindowBlinds 5.5 only support "basic" skinning without DWM but version 6 will have full DWM support. In that case I might actually try it, 5.5 feels to "hackish" for my taste.

Edit: Turns out WindowBlinds already have DWM support, just not the shader part. I must've gotten those two mixed up.

WindowBlinds 5.5 was recently released and it supports Windows Vista.  It also has technology that will allow you to use existing XP skins on Vista and the ability to convert XP .msstyles using SkinStudio.

This is a video tour I did showing the features of WB.  Be sure to check it out.

Link




Also: WindowBlinds uses DWM.