July 11, 2005
I have modded and customized things around me forever, from my BMX to my torch lights. Obviously, I wouldn’t leave the thing I use the most in its default form would I? Well, obviously I am talking about my computer(s). So I got into skinning and customizations ever since I bought my first Mac, somewhere in 1994. I remember using this software called Kaleidoscope those days. I still remember, it was, in those days as good as (dare I say better than?) WindowBlinds and Windows XP styles of today. I gave up my Mac and settled for a PC after a couple of years of frustratingly looking for, and not finding enough software to play with. Even on the PC I didn’t stop. Replaced my shell, skinned everything that I could, heck I even used Linux for a while because I wanted to get a feel of the window managers! I had been away from the customization scene for sometime now, until recently when I went back to take a look at the scariest territory in the customization world. Litestep. So I thought it would make a lot of sense to pen down some of the stuff that I do with my PC and its user interface. I am not going to talk about application skinning here as nowadays every second application to hit the Internet is skinnable. I am going to talk about customizing the UI of the entire OS (the shell). So this can be considered as a beginners guide to shell replacements and desktop customization for Windows.
Some may ask, why do all this in the first place? Isn’t the default look and feel good enough? After all Microsoft must have spent millions researching on usability engineering, so it has to be the best way to use your computer. Others argue that all of these skinning apps make the computer slower and prone to more crashes. Both these arguments are not necessarily true. People customize their interfaces for one or more of the following reasons:
Pretty looks and eye candy: I guess this is one of the main reasons people like to customize and skin their applications and shells. I must admit, I started off because of the same reason. Sci-fi movies and Star trek got too much into my head. I am sure, everyone would agree, that if a person is staring at one thing longer than anything else in his or her entire life, it better look good!
Usability and Performance: Power users and (as the new term goes) knowledge workers spend a lot of time on their computers. A lot of people like me spend their entire lives staring at screens. Customizing the way the interface interacts with you, does make working more efficient and less frustrating. So what’s wrong with the way the standard windows UI interacts with you? Nothing wrong, it’s just too generic. It’s designed keeping millions of users in mind. My start menu extends to 4 columns of shortcuts on a high resolution! Finding Photoshop in there every time I want to make some small graphic is not very productive, is it? Dramatically changing the UI or the Shell does take some time to get used to, and even more time to unlearn the old tedious long ways of working. But I think it’s worth the effort. One just needs to be a little patient in the initial learning curve. One thing to keep in mind that there is no ultimately correct usability design. Since the computer is used in so many different ways, it is understandable that how they are used may be different too. Hence the default interface may work for nearly every one on the planet, but definitely won’t be the most efficient for all.
Now that I know all this, where do I start?
Lets start with customizing the interface with the help of a few applications first. We shall save talking about skinning and eye candy for the last. For beginners, I would definitely not suggest starting with replacing the shell, as shell replacements have a learning curve and are definitely not for everyone. Let’s figure out what we do to our UI without altering or replacing the default windows explorer shell. The first obvious focus goes into the huge screen real estate that’s available to you, the desktop. Quite possibly your desktop is currently full of icons that include shortcuts to most applications and games that you have installed on your computer. There is also a possibility that your desktop is full of files and folders that you have downloaded off the Internet, while you were surfing, and never got into organizing them into your downloads folder. Are these icons so important that you need to look at them all the time? Do you need to see all of them the moment you boot your computer? Most definitely not! So get rid of them! Organize the files and folders that are on your desktop into folders in your drive. I would suggest turning off your desktop icons completely. Considering that you are using windows XP, this could be done by right clicking on the desktop, in the ‘arrange icons by’ sub-menu, there should be a menu item called ‘Show Desktop icons’ with a ‘tick’ next to it, click on it to disable it. Suddenly you have so much clear space on your desktop. Suddenly the desktop wallpaper looks so much more interesting!
Ok, so the desktop looks clean and nice, but what about the functionality that I lost by removing the icons from the desktop? How do I now quickly launch Unreal Tournament 2004 or double click on that Winamp play list?
Well, without installing any new applications, you are left with the choice of using the Start menu and your Quick Launch. The problem is, the Start menu – All Programs takes forever to open, and when it does, there are too many items there, so searching for Unreal Tournament 2004 or Microsoft Word takes forever. The quick menu is just as it says it is, quick. But unfortunately you can put only 4 to 8 really important shortcuts there without seriously compromising on your taskbar space. Some people (including me) double the height of the taskbar, just to be able to fit more icons on the quick menu and still have a lot of space in the taskbar to show 10 different windows of running applications. Still dissatisfied with the way you start your applications? Well you should be, as one of the primary jobs of the shell is to allow users to launch applications. What you need now is an application launcher.
Application Launchers:
Application launchers are applications that essentially allow you to categorize and concisely make available the shortcuts of the different applications that you use frequently. Launchers also eliminate the huge clutter from the desktop and serve as a more organized alternative to the Start Menu. Of course you could go on and just organize your start menu and not use any of these applications. I personally prefer to leave the start menu the way it is, as it gives a linear list of everything that I have installed. Also, I do not need to organize and categorize everything that is installed on my box, only the applications and folders that I use often. Hence using a secondary launching mechanism over the start menu helps Launchers come in various shapes, sizes and types. Some concentrate on eye-candy, some focus on being fast and efficient, while others are focused on being customizable. There are a lot of application launchers out there make sure you pick the one that suits your usage pattern the most.
I have listed out a few popular application launchers. In no way is this a definitive list, but is probably enough to elaborate the different possible ways of organizing and launching your application. I have tried and tested most of the applications that I list below, but of course do not guarantee their functioning or even suggest which one is the best. It is upon you to try out and figure out what suits you the best.
ObjectDock: Currently owned by Stardock, my favorite customization company (however I think it was owned by some other company and Stardock bought it over). This is one of the easiest to use and quickest to get started with. Stardock says “ObjectDock is a program that lets you organize your short-cuts and running tasks onto an extremely customizable dock that sits on your desktop.” ObjectDock takes on from the highly popular Mac OSX type of animated ‘flying out’ icon menu. It is also skinnable. There is a free version and a paid ‘plus’ version. The plus version extends the functionality by allowing tabbed categories to the dock. Like all other Stardock products, this one too supports widgets (plugins) which allow you to put more than just shortcuts. You could put clocks mail checkers and even the taskbar and system tray in the dock. This could possibly even replace the entire taskbar and tray from windows explorer. What makes it a good choice for beginners is that it is very easy to configure, looks neat, and supports simple drag-n-drop for adding and removing shortcuts and other items.
The only drawback of this application launcher is that ObjectDock apes the Mac OS completely. I personally hate making one OS look like another, and hence never got around to using ObjectDock.
Screenshots:
WorkShelf: WorkShelf is a part of an application suite called WinStep. WinStep has two applications, NextSTART, which is a menu based shell replacement (that we shall cover later) and WorkShelf. WinStep has a very Linux feel to things, looks and feels a lot like the Linux window managers like Afterstep etc. These in turn have gotten their feel from the NextStep shell of the Next OS. (Looks like Steve Jobs has had his hand in pioneering UI technology from various sides!). There is really nothing much to WorkShelf. Words quoted from the developer: “In the world of Windows, WorkShelf is the Swiss Army knife of User Interface enhancements. Intended as a multi-leveled desktop replacement, it is equally at home functioning as a tabbed program launcher. Like a dock, but better. It enables you to organize your most often used applications and documents into categorized shelves while taking as little screen space as possible: when not in use, WorkShelf automatically collapses into a small strip of tabs. It also gives you access to frequently used system folders like the Windows Control Panel, My Computer, Network Neighborhood and more! Thrown in support for built-in modules such as a speaking Atomic Clock, Recycle Bin, Email Checker, Weather Monitor, CPU, Net and RAM Meters and the amazing 'fortune cookie' Wanda (with more forthcoming) and you have a software marvel you’ll soon find you can’t be without.”
Behaviorally WorkShelf behaves exactly the way ObjectDock behaves. It is very functional if you group our applications into categories and drop the relevant shortcuts into the categories.
Screenshots:
ObjectBar: Another product from Stardock (Trust them to create competition for themselves!) This one is a lot more complex, but a lot more flexible. To start with, it could behave as a pseudo shell replacement, and give a complete windows XP look and feel to the older versions of windows! Here is what Stardock has to say: “ObjectBar allows users to create their own custom Start bars, finders, pop-up menus, program launchers, wharfs, docks, etc. It is completely customizable. Users can download hundreds of themes and bars for it from the theme library.”
ObjectBar has tremendous capabilities and is extremely fast. A well designed ObjectBar theme can greatly increase productivity by putting things that you need often at your finger err… cursor tips. But unfortunately designing a theme from ground up is difficult and most of the themes around the Internet concentrate on replicating the XP start menu and taskbar instead of thinking up innovative new ways to better productivity. Object bar still seems to be one of the most promising applications out there and if you are really serious about customizing your desktop, and a shell replacement is just too much of change for you, ObjectBar may be the right thing to look at.
Screenshots:
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This is what ObjectBar can make a windows 2000 desktop look
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A more radical interface with ObjectBar
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True Launch Bar: A very long time ago, there used to be a popular open source Delphi application called the Fusion Bar. True launch Bar took its inspiration from the Fusion Bar, and extends it further by providing plugins. True launch bar is a quick launch replacements of sorts. Well to start with the default installation even puts the same icons as your quick launch. What makes its cool is that every icon could pop up a menu consisting of more icons (shortcuts to your applications) and / or plugins. There is a wide range of plugins like system meters, weather indicators volume meters etc. This is what Truesoft has to say about True Launch Bar: “True Launch Bar is a Superior replacement for the standard Quick Launch bar. All functions presented in Quick Launch are also in True Launch Bar. However, the True Launch Bar is fully compatible with Quick Launch because it uses the same folder for shortcuts. But there is one huge difference. True Launch Bar allows you to combine your shortcuts into groups. This feature looks like popup menus. This vastly improves the management of your shortcuts and save working space on your desktop. By using True Launch Bar, you speed up the launching of your applications like never before.”
True Launch Bar could be the best place to start for a minimalist, and yet it is powerful enough for ‘non minimalists’ to be happy. The configuration might look confusing to start with. I agree you might take some time to get a hang of it, but once you do, it is definitely something that would enhance your productivity.
Screenshots:
Orbit: Who said menus, bars and launchers have to be boring rectangles? Orbit is a circular menu that can spin and zoom and display a set of buttons. These buttons can be shortcuts to applications, or a button to spin, zoom and open another concentric circular menu. Like object dock Orbit has the capabilities to show the active tasks. Orbit is being developed by one individual, and hence the development is slow. Its pretty beta as of now, but functional enough to be used on a daily basis. This is what the developer has to say about Orbit: “Orbit is a program similar to Apple's dock. But it's different. It is a program that instead of taking up space on screen, it stays hidden and only shows up whenever you call it. Orbit appears around the mouse showing shortcuts, folders, links to web sites, image thumbnails and all the other items that you have added to it.”
Orbit definitely takes the cake in innovative UI, and coming to think of it, a circular menu is probably faster to use than a horizontal or a vertical one, as all buttons are equally distanced from the mouse pointer (considering the menu popped up keeping the mouse in the center, which it does). This means that every menu item is as quickly accessible as the other. A few other applications have tried circular menus like this, and Orbit is definitely one of the most usable.
Screenshots:
There are countless other application launchers out there. PaneKiller, LaunchKaos, Y’z Dock to name a few. Various other applications that I talk about in the following sections, including shell replacements have pretty solid application launching mechanisms built into them as well.
Desktop Widgets:
Now that I have emptied my desktop, you surely have a plan for using it for something more productive than just giving a clean view of the wallpaper, don’t you?
Yes, let’s use this space for something that’s more interesting to look at than icons, and provide much more relevant information. Enter the world of desktop widgets. Widgets are by definition mini applications that live on your desktop. What makes widgets different is that they tend to use less overhead by relying on an existing set of libraries that handle the drawing and other key activities. As a result, widget developers don't tend to have to worry much about drawing their content. This means that widgets are usually irregularly shaped and very cool looking. You can have small eye candy toys on your desktop that also show you important information like CPU usage, a calendar, or maybe your Wi-Fi status. To have widgets on your desktop, you need to choose and install a widgets application.
Currently there are five very popular desktop widget applications that are fighting for supremacy. There may be more as I have not really finished assimilating the whole of the Internet, some may have escaped my sight. Each of these have their own pros and cons, have a look at them and figure out which one(s)’ best for you.
DesktopX: Another product from the almighty Stardock. Desktop X probably pioneered the widgets revolution. Stardock says: “DesktopX is a revolutionary program that allows users to enhance their Windows desktop by adding widgets and objects to it. With DesktopX, you can literally create your own personalized Windows desktop environment.” Desktop X also probably has the biggest public database of widgets. The new version of DesktopX even allows creators of widgets to create stand alone applications out of their widgets. Another advantage that DesktopX has over the other widgeting tools is that you can download complete desktops or themes. These themes may contain multiple widgets with specific skins and placements. This allows you to quickly make your desktop look just like what you see on the screenshots.
Konfabulator: A widget application originating from the beautiful Mac, Konfabulator widgets inherently are the best looking around. While the application does not have anything to do with how the widgets look, Konfabulator just happens to have the feel of the Mac and probably hence has a very smooth feel to the widgets that are developed. Konfabulator is available for both Windows and Mac OS, but its future with the Mac is not so bright, as Apple decided to incorporate desktop widgets functionality in its latest offering (Mac OSX: Tiger), and moreover, heavily publicized and marketed the feature. A lot of market experts say that Apple shamelessly copied Konfabulator. What ever the case, Konfabulator has to look at the windows environment as its primary market now. Considering the fact that there are others in this space in Windows that are absolutely free, Konfabulator might have to work its way up. Another down side of Konfabulator (A lot of people might disagree in this being a downside) is that it is written in Java. Java desktop applications do not have a good history with Windows and are certainly not the most memory efficient. Konfabulator however does not fee like any of the old Java applications I have used, but is still not very humble in terms of its memory usage.
AveDesk: AveDesk is best described as docklets on the desktop. In fact, AveDesk doesn't call its widgets, widgets but instead "Desklets" A docklet is typically a plugin for a dock program such as ObjectDock. Imagine in a dock sitting at the bottom edge of your desktop that launches applications and also has a CPU meter or weather monitor or clock. AveDesk's author, Andreas, is one of the leading docklet developers out there. So taking these docklets and making them free-floating on the desktop is a fairly natural move. And best of all, it's compatible with ObjectDock docklets so all those ObjectDock docklets on WinCustomize.com can be used as widgets on your desktop as well. And so ObjectDock's popularity actually feeds into AveDesk's popularity (which is ironic since ObjectDock is made by Stardock who makes DesktopX and DesktopX can't use ObjectDock docklets as widgets at this time). Widgets or Desklets, the functionality
Kapsules: Kapsules is the new kid on the block and it makes no bones about being similar to Konfabulator. It is, essentially, Konfabulator for Windows already in terms of functionality. Kapsules does require users to download and install the .NET framework which does limit some users from using it. But the .NET libraries allow Kapsules to have more functionality out of the box
Samurize: Samurize is slightly different from the other applications. While the other applications concentrate on standalone widgets, Samurize concentrates on meters. Samurize is meant for the geekier people, and has a lot of features that the others lack, for example, it can put a widget on the taskbar, or even the screensaver! Samurize by far has the best designing environment, where any one could design their own themes. On the flip side, exchanging Samurize themes is not as easy as in the other widget apps, as it consists of using and import export tool and in my experience a lot of the times the downloaded themes just don’t work.
Widget applications can host a variety of applications or widgets in them. Apart from these generic tools, there are quite a few applications that can be used on the desktop for specific tasks. Rainlendar is one of them. Rainlendar is the most popular calendar tool for your desktop. It is extremely robust and lightweight. Rainlendar puts a skinnable calendar on your desktop, which can optionally get your outlook appointments and show them to you. Another great skinnable application for the desktop is SysMetrix, which is a system monitoring tool similar to Samurize.
Shell Replacements:
Welcome to the mother of desktop customization: Alt Shells or in common man’s terms, shell replacements. Shell replacements allow ultimate customization to the user interface of your computer, but be forewarned that replacing shells, customizing them and then getting used to using the new interface is an uphill task for most. But the payoff at the end of it all may allow you to be much more productive and have a desktop which becomes the envy of whoever looks at it. So lets get started in understanding the basics.
What is a shell?
A shell is the interface between you and the system, which shows you stuff and lets you do things and interact with the Operating system. By default, Explorer is the shell that window uses. A lot of people get confused between the Explorer as the shell and Explorer as the File manager, and thus feel that the shell needs to have a build in file manager. This is incorrect. A file manager is just an application to mange and use files. Windows has an integrated file manager in the shell (or is it that the shell is integrated to the file manager?), just like nowadays Internet Explorer is also integrated to the shell. This does not mean that if you replace the shell, you have replaced the file manager as well. Explorer as the file manager can be well used while using a replacement shell. Also, the shell is not an integral part of the operating system core. It is merely an application which is executed at the end of the boot sequence.
Explorer provides us with the following features:
The Desktop (with its icons and what happens when you right click on, or drag-drop to, the desktop).
The Taskbar
The Start menu
The system tray
A few DDE functions which only seem to be called by some apps' setup programs when they create desktop and/or Start menu shortcuts.
Other gimmicks may also be added (for example when you upgrade Internet Explorer) such as Active Desktop features.
Some (but not all) of those jobs are inessential. All of them can be replaced and even improved upon by a good replacement shell. The most essential shell jobs are application launching and task switching. Explorer.exe provides these with its Start menu and the Taskbar.
So what is a replacement shell?
The default shell can safely be replaced because it is not the core of the system, just part of the user interface. Your applications don't know or care what you are using as a shell.
Replacement shells (or Alt Shells as the geeks like to call it) do the same basic jobs as explorer.exe, but they don't necessarily try to mimic the usual Taskbar and Start Menu with merely cosmetic changes. Instead they usually provide one or more toolbars, popup menus, hotkeys, an alternative Desktop, and maybe a "wharf" (like a big toolbar in which you can dock special wharf plugins such as a clock or a resource meter).
Their basic structure usually differs from the explorer shell which is installed as "all or nothing". Many alt shells, such as LiteStep and BBLean, have a tiny main exe file, written by a core development team. You add optional plugins (usually dll's) which may be written by other people. So you can make it as complicated or as simple as you like.
There are a large number of replacement shells around. Some are meant for geeks who do not mind editing configuration files by hand to customize the shell. These kinds of shells are probably the most configurable and rank the highest in performance benchmarks and speed. A few other shells which are relatively newer offer very easy point and click customization. Choosing a shell could be very tricky, for example, at times I have picked up a shell, spend 7 days customizing it and then realized that it’s not working for me. So before you start working on replacing your shell, it helps to read as much as possible, compare a few of them and pick up the one that best suits you. Another thing to keep in mind is that you have to beware of overkills. If it takes too much of an effort to set up your shell, it just may not be worth it.
Most of the alt shells have some of the launching and widgeting features built into them, or have plugins to do so. Hence you may choose to not use any of the above discussed launchers or widget tools once you have implemented a shell replacement. Alternatively you could use them in tandem too. Note that some applications like the True Launch Bar rely on explorer bars to function, and will not work with other shells.
There is a huge variety of shells around. Two families of shells, Litestep and Blackbox are popular among the hardcore geeks. Others are simpler to use but may not be as powerful as the ones derived from LS and BB. Following is a small list of shells that are probably the most popular and commonly used. This list is in the ascending order of ease of use and deployment.
Litestep: The father of them all. Is probably one of the most difficult to implement and get a hang of but definitely the most powerful and flexible. You can make the shell do anything using plugins. Litestep has a base of over 400 active plugins around. Litestep is the longest living replacement shell for Windows, and offers the largest support community. Source is GPL. It is completely freeform skinnable and even has some basic scripting capabilities.
Screenshots:
PureLS: A Litestep family shell, based on Litestep 24.5 code, the aim is to write it in straight ANSI-C for those who don't have MS Visual C++. It concentrates on speed more than anything else.
Cost: Free (Open source)
BB4Win: The original BlackBox for windows. It is a port of the highly popular Linux BlackBox window manager. Originally developed by some people from the Litestep team. You can grab any theme from the Linux BlackBox site and it will work under Windows. BlackBox focuses on minimalism and is not for the eye candy people. All I can say about the BlackBox family is that, all BlackBox shells are real fast and use less than 7 to 8 MB of memory foot print.
BBLean: Lean version of Blackbox for Windows, again concentrating on speed, as if BlackBox wasn’t fast enough! The reason all BlackBox related shells are so fast, is that unlike any other shell replacement, BlackBox does not use images and graphics for its skins. It has some crazy gradient drawing technology and actually draws the skins. This is true for any of the BlackBox shells mentioned here. BBlean has a few small tweaks and features over and above the other BlackBox shells which I really like, making this my preferred BlackBox shell.
Xoblite: Xoblite feels somewhat more polished as compared to the others. Easy to get started with. If you are a beginner and want to get started with an advanced shell, and like minimalism, I suggest this one. Even though BlackBox plugins are supposed to work on any of the BlackBox shells, there are a few plugins that do not work with Xoblite.
Sharp-E: Sharp Environment is one shell which for some reason is not as popular as the biggies I mentioned above, but is really powerful. Its development used to be very slow and didn’t even have a site for some time. Sharp-E used to disappear and appear time to time and hence probably lost its fan following. Now however it has a great site and a community around it as it has become open source. Sharp-E is a minimalist’s shell again, and the look and feel can’t be customized as much as Litestep. But its one of the powerful shells which are easy to use and start off with. I have used Sharp-E for some time now and it proved to be a pretty stable even though its still beta.
Talisman 2: Talisman is one of the shells I started with. I even designed a theme that got popular. It is easy to use and customize (well relatively). Most themes are very graphic intensive. If you do not know much about shells and want to just point and click and get started, Talisman may be a good choice.
HoverDesk: A relatively new entrant, HoverDesk feels like it started being a launcher and moved on to being a shell. It is again a very graphical shell and with Dangeruss (a very well known skinner) being a part of the team, HoverDesk has some great skins.
Aston Shell: Another easy to use and graphical shell, Similar to Talisman 2. I haven’t tried this one but it seems to be popular among newbies.
Screenshots:
There is a lot to read and understand in the world of shell replacements. Taking the instance of Litestep, there are skinning standards like the OTS1 and OTS2 which you might want to read about and understand, then there are themes of Litestep which have evolved to become their own identities, such as NonStep and LDE(X). I am writing about all this just to portray the vast expanse of the shell replacement world. Need I remind you, this is just a beginner’s guide. If shells interest you, follow the links that I have provided at the end of the document and read on!
Shell Switchers:
Trying different shells on your computer may be a risky task especially if you have just one computer. For example you may be stuck right in between configuring a new shell and suddenly some work comes up, and your computer is still unusable. Even though most shells can run over explorer, some of them behave erratically and it is advisable not to do so. Shell switchers come to the rescue. A shell switcher or shell swapper is an application that allows one to easily switch shells. Shell switchers actually set the shell to be themselves and launch other shells on top of it. They also have features like crash protection. If your shell crashes, the switcher will detect it and prompt you to choose another shell to load. If you are into gaming or using applications that require a lot of power, you could even set the switcher to launch the game or application directly after boot without loading any shell, maximizing the resources given to the game or the application.
ShellOn: The most popular shell switcher out there. ShellOn has ever feature you can possibly think of. Version 2 is a stable release. Version 3 is going to be skinnable and is currently in beta.
Carapace: Carapace is pure eye candy. It does not have all the options that ShellOn has, but does have all basic shell swapper features including crash protection. Carapace is skinnable and some skins even have flash animations playing!
Skinning
Now that we have really worked hard on customizing the usability of the desktop, its time to make it look good! Most of the applications that we have explored above are skinnable or themable. For newbies, skinning means customizing the appearance of an application using specially designed graphics. Themable applications are those in which you could just change a set of colors to change the appearance of the app. Themable applications that just rely on a set of colors may not look as great as some of the other skinnable applications but are much more resource efficient. Shells like Sharp-E and all of the BlackBox shells are themable. SyncNotes is a great example of a themable note taking application.
There are two ways to skinning the windows of applications. The first way is by applying a skin to an application that is specifically designed for that app only. This is only possible with applications that have built in skins support, for example Winamp. For applications that do not inherently support skinning, the default windows of all applications can be skinned. This is done externally, by either using an external application or using the built in Visual Style Themes in Windows XP. This kind of skinning essentially skins the default ‘controls’ such as the title bar, toolbars, scrollbars and buttons of Windows. It is important to remember, that this kind of skinning does not affect applications that have built in skinning capabilities. Following is a list of applications that help you skin all these default controls in Windows.
WindowBlinds: Stardock’s flagship product, WindowBlinds has been the unmatched, unbeaten king of Windows skinning. WindowBlinds is by far the most feature rich application in its class and probably has the largest collection of skins on the Internet. This application has evolved over time, and now is extremely stable. Stardock even claims that it is faster than the native Windows XP visual styles. The new versions of WindowBlinds even changes the file copy or file download animations.
StyleXP: StyleXP relies on the Windows XP skinning engine, and hence works only with Windows XP. Microsoft has built skinning capabilities to windows, but did not allow un-signed themes to be applied to the system. This means that only themes released by Microsoft can be used. Since Microsoft doesn’t do a good job rolling out skins, StyleXP comes to the rescue. StyleXP allows you to apply themes designed by other users. There are quite a few Themes available for use but not as many as WindowBlinds.
UX Patcher: UX Patcher is a free hack that can be applied to Windows XP so that you can use un-signed themes with XP. The concept is similar to StyleXP but the application does not have any other feature except hacking the system. On the flip side, its free.
3D Color Changer: If you are a minimalist, and don’t like skinning your windows and wasting those extra 4 MB of memory, but still would like to at least color coordinate your desktop, this tool is for you. This makes Windows themable, by allowing users to apply color themes (which can be created within the application itself or downloaded from various sites). Think of it as the Classic look and feel in Windows of which every color could be changed. This is especially popular among people who are into customizing their desktops for extreme performance.
Skin packs, skin suites and the art of coordinated theming:
As I mentioned before, Window skinning tools do not apply skins to applications that have built in skinning or theming like Winamp or SyncNotes. Considering the number of different applications that take your desktop space, it is very important that they all look good together. You could achieve a consistent look and feel by picking and choosing skins for all your applications in a way that they match each other in terms of feel or color scheme or you could download (or even buy) a skin pack. Skin packs or skin suites are collections of skins, icons wallpapers etc that are completely consistent. I for one do not use a skin that does not come in a skin pack. Finding skin packs that contain skins to all your skinnable applications could be tricky or even impossible. In a case where you are in love with a skin and do not have matching skins for the other applications, you might want to try browsing other users’ screenshots that they have submitted to the various skinning sites and find out how they have used your favorite skin along with similar kind of skins for the other applications. There are various artists who dedicatedly make skin suites. You will find links to them at the end of this document.
Screenshots of some suites:
Is replacing a shell and adding these few applications all that it takes to customize the UI of a computer?
Customization doesn’t stop anywhere. One can start with the shell and go on to customize and replace most default applications. For example, not only have I replaced the explorer shell on my desktop with a much faster and quicker BBLean shell, I have also replaced explorer as a file manager by Directory Opus. This guide does not detail (yet) everything you can possibly do to customize your computing experience, it just helps to get you started.
How do I choose one from all of these?
It is advisable to embrace one or few of the lot, as you are going to take some time to get used to using the applications. I suggest you have a good look at most of them you come across and weigh them based on a few basic principles. Just like every other software, these apps have tradeoffs. Following are a few that I can think of
Eye-candy and good looks Vs. Performance and low resource utilization: The most obvious tradeoff. However hard the new age companies making customization products may want you to believe otherwise, eye-candy does take away some of your system resources. That animation, which happens when you hover your mouse over an icon in ObjectDock, does not come free. To some people this is an acceptable loss, as both RAM and CPU come in abundance nowadays, and if a few MBs of RAM get used into making ones daily computer usage a little more pleasing to look at, it’s fine. To others, every drop of memory and processing power needs to be conserved so that they can play their games at the highest FPS possible or have their more important applications work much faster. You have to decide where to draw the line. But whichever side you belong to, keep in mind that application launchers, widgets or shells need to be always-on applications. This means that they will be running when you are working on Photoshop or playing the game. If the launcher is great to look at but you have to exit it before you start to do anything serious on your computer, then it’s really counter productive. Thankfully most of the applications that I have listed do not fall into this category. At least not on any moderately new computer.
Ease of initial use Vs. Customizability: Taking the example of launchers here, when I say ease of use, I do not mean ease in using it to launch other applications; I mean ease of setting it up and getting started. Some of these apps work out of the box. Install it, drag a few icons onto the bars, and voila! you have your application launcher ready. Others my just be very unusable or non-intuitive to use out of the box. You may need to toil with the configurations dialogs for some time, or maybe download a few plugins for the launcher to make sense to you. But on spending all of this effort, what you land up with may be much more efficient in the long run than the out-of-the-box solution. Again in this case, keep in mind that adding on to the application, in terms of adding shortcuts or plugins or changing the appearance should not be so difficult that you land up procrastinating on updating your application. A launcher which is not up to date with the shortcuts to your most recently installed applications, may rather be uninstalled.
Over and above all these criteria, is complete personal choice. Every person has different tastes and should choose the ones that he or she feels comfortable working with. Remember, it’s your desktop and all this customization is for yourself only. You are not going to go around asking 10 other people to use your desktop. So make sure you pick what you finally like using and not necessarily what the forums ask you to use. Then there are these small things that catch your eye, and soon you realize you can not live without them. For example, I am so much in love with BBLean because of the fact that long menus have a very handy scrollbar.
Links:
I have avoided putting links through out the guide, so that you could uninterruptedly read the whole thing and not go into a clicking spree. Here are all the links relevant to the guide. Will keep updating these often. Let me know if any of these are broken.
Application Launchers:
Widget Applications:
Shells:
Window Skinning Applications:
Other Skinnable / Themable applications:
Skinning Links:
Community Links:
Other helpful guides and resources:
Hope this guide has been helpful to you. If you think you have any inputs, additions or even brickbats, let be know by posting in the forums. I will be updating this guide from time to time, so check back some time.
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