Let's face it, unless you're playing the latest first-person shooter, spending long periods of time in front of your computer can get pretty monotonous. One way people try to spruce things up a bit is by customizing their PC's background wallpaper, screensaver, or desktop color scheme, but a better way to keep things fresh is by using StarDock's WindowBlinds, a handy utility with the ability to completely alter the Windows user interface.
By letting you apply different "skins" to the Windows UI, WindowBlinds lets you alter not just a handful of visual characteristics but also virtually every facet of the operating system and application appearance. This can include everything from the Start button to dialog boxes and backgrounds, logon and logoff screens, animations (i.e. file copy), and even graphic elements within applications like the scrollbars and title bar (including its minimize, maximize, and restore buttons). Some skins (though relatively few) even offer sound effects and wallpaper images.
Utilities like this that tweak and twist Windows' display fundamentals have a well-earned reputation for being excellent tools to destabilize your system, but WindowBlinds has the advantage of having gone through Microsoft's application compatibility testing process, and the utility has earned Microsoft's "Designed for Windows" logo. According to StarDock, WindowBlinds doesn't modify or replace any system files or DLLs, and the company says the utility consumes fewer system resources than Windows' built-in style engine, which is used for the desktop Themes feature of Microsoft Plus.
A variety of Windows skins are included when you install WindowBlinds, and you can quickly find and easily download your choice of over 2,000 additional skins at Stardock's www.wincustomize.com site. New skins are automatically placed in the appropriate folder, and you can always load the skin you just downloaded by clicking a message balloon that pops up from the Windows tray.
Apart from the obvious visual differences, many skins also change the default operation of the application title bar controls. For example, some skins add a button to "roll up" an application window to its title bar, mimicking MacOS behavior. Many skins let you accomplish the same thing by right-clicking anywhere on the menu bar.
All these skins come from numerous sources — they're either created by StarDock, third-party companies (mostly design firms), or even individuals, and like any artistic product, their aesthetic and functional value can vary widely. Some of the skins bear recognizable themes from television or cinema (such as Star Trek or Terminator 3) or even other operating systems (you can choose skins that make Windows look like a Mac running OS X, for example) but most are seemingly inspired simply by the author's imagination. (Many can only be described as psychedelic.)
There are so many skins to choose from that there's bound to be something for almost everyone, but in the unlikely event that the available choices fail to inspire, you can use a free authoring tool called SkinStudio that's packaged with WindowBlinds to design your own skin or retool an existing one.
