Best skinning program Thread last updated on 2003-03-18 10:21:09

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-02-28 02:25:37

What do you think? What's the best skinning program which uses a reasonable amount of resources, is stable enough and has very few bugs?

Posted by member 333 on 2003-02-28 03:42:33 link

I haven't tried Windowblinds, and I'm not too concerned with skinning windows, but from what I've tried ShellWM, http://shellwm.sf.net, does the job nicely and doesn't use many resources. It seems pretty stable, too...

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-02-28 05:32:59 link

I have tried them both. Windowblinds is actually very stable and it has many features so it makes windows look pretty cool :) It has only one problem: it's a huge resource-eater.
ShellWM is much resource-friendlier, but it doesn't work with many programs :(
I'm interested in is there any other skinning programs?

Posted by member 333 on 2003-02-28 06:59:16 link

eFX, but that's quite old and not very stable AFAIK

Posted by member 44 on 2003-02-28 07:23:44 link

what OS are you using?

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-02-28 07:34:05 link

i have win98.

Posted by member 44 on 2003-02-28 08:12:47 link

eFX is very buggy and it does not have inactive and click states. maybe have a look at Illumination. it´s definately resource friendlier than WindowBlinds: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/6797/illumination.html

if you have a halfways powerful system, you should think about getting XP. it comes with it´s own windows skinning, so there´s no need to waste money for WindowBlinds. if you have more than 258 MB RAM it´s worth it. memory is more important than the CPU for running XP.

Posted by member 35 on 2003-02-28 11:01:14 link

i use eppie ( http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/eppie.html ), it skins a window's controls: the min/max/close buttons - normal, pushed and disabled version. also does the scrollbar arrows, and is open source!

Posted by member 35 on 2003-02-28 11:02:02 link

but it doesn´t work on 2000/xp

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-02-28 11:44:53 link

illumination seems to be quite reasonable, but it's more buggy than ShellWM.
i like eppie and it could be a pretty good solution for now, but it doesn't work with ls :( with explorer everything's perfect, but in ls all the settings go back to default. i read that there may be some problems with other shells than explorer, but can it be fixed?

Posted by member 44 on 2003-03-01 07:55:00 link

Eppie is Open Source, so if you have programming skills give it a try. i doubt that somebody else will do it as Windows98 is pretty much dead.

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-03-01 09:07:01 link

i would if i had the skills, but i guess i'm gonna buy a new computer this year anyway so i'll try to put up with the default windows skin for couple of months.
btw is there a module like which can change the windows appearance settings on the startup or sth like that?

Posted by member 44 on 2003-03-01 15:49:02 link

there´s syscolor.dll. the default Simplicity theme uses it.

Posted by member 417 on 2003-03-02 12:59:14 link

Memory usage by WindowBlinds gets better and better each day. Plus, there are a ton of themes out there for it. That's one of the downsides of StyleXP: the themes aren't all thate creative and the site from which you download them moves at a snail's pace.

Posted by member 44 on 2003-03-02 13:34:51 link

flipdoubt: i never visit themexp. Deskmod and Custo are rhe place to go for msstyles :)

Posted by member 111 on 2003-03-02 19:44:47 link

But is it technically possible to replace the standard Windows' windows manager (gggg, sorry for tautology)? Anybody knows?

Posted by member 6902 on 2003-03-02 20:27:32 link

themeXP works again now and moves at a more than correct pace (check it). Anyway, StyleXP only add skins to WinXP at the same level as WinXP itself, and if you don't want to get StyleX, you can go there: http://www.lightstar1.com/install.htm, and get a dll which allows you to install many XP styles without to buy StyleXP (and it's legal and not a hacker product)

Posted by member 99 on 2003-03-02 23:20:54 link

inform-sega: no.

Well, you might be able to get pretty close by writing a replacement for user32.dll (and maybe some other things), but it would be a very major effort, even if you only consider the difficulty of debugging it. The original stuff would still be running in the background tho, even if nothing much really used it.

Posted by member 6902 on 2003-03-02 23:37:42 link

Saddly, RabidCow is awfully right, I tried to replace explorer by something else, it took me 24 years just to replace all the entries in the registry and, like the cat, explorer was still there after that... The only way to get rid of it must be the ax or the dynamite, maybe TNT, and yet, I'm not sure...
Plastic maybe?

Posted by member 111 on 2003-03-03 02:53:37 link

RabidCow: Thanks... :((

Posted by member 11445 on 2003-03-03 11:28:30 link

Umm... I know it's a stupid question, but how do I use the skins with shellwm? I downloaded the standard pack but the skins don't show up in the list.

Posted by member 11445 on 2003-03-03 11:59:00 link

They didn't tell me in the docs I have to put the skins in the .\Skins\ folder... Sorry

Posted by member 417 on 2003-03-06 06:38:06 link

So ... let's say I use the UxThemePatcher to install UXTHEME.DLL. Where do I put my themes?

Posted by member 35 on 2003-03-06 08:03:32 link

windows\resources\themes

Posted by member 417 on 2003-03-06 12:54:49 link

Yup, I dug and found that one out. So ... as far as those .theme files go, do you just start with an existing one, save it as another file, and then edit the MSSTYLE entry to point to the new theme?

I thought editting text files is what was supposed to do Litestep, er, Windows in. ;)

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-03-18 05:14:14 link

now i finally have xp :)
i installed the StyleX patch and tried out some themes from customize.org
but i started thinking: what's the best way to create your own xp styles?

Posted by member 35 on 2003-03-18 06:47:11 link

stylebuilder, or maybe reshacker.

Posted by member 1783 on 2003-03-18 09:34:52 link

do i have to install stylexp to use stylebuilder?

Posted by member 35 on 2003-03-18 10:21:09 link

nope