A silly little blog for me to drop the excrement of my mind.
-or- no need to argue
Published on October 17, 2004 By BlueDev In Skinning
If you move around the OS customization circles on the net it isn't too infrequent to come across what are often heated arguments about customization programs. Each program has its own group of fans. And these fans can often become very heated in their support of their program of choice.

Seems sort of silly if you ask me.

Certainly we all have favorites. Favorite teams, foods, music, programs, etc. But one of the most heated debates I have stumbled across again and again (though admittedly it has cooled off recently) is the debate between skinning your desktop with MSStyles or Windowblinds. What a ridiculous argument.

Me, I just enjoy them both.

And what I find even more ridiculous about the debate is just how simple it is to use both styles. The reasons behind the argument are many. Some people prefer the look of visual styles to Windowblinds skins. They are generally (though certainly not always) more streamlined, more minimalistic, more simple. Windowblinds skins are often more extravagant, more detailed and have added functionality. Of course, there are an increasing number of amazingly useful and good looking minimalistic WB skins that appeal to both camps.

Another reason is good old cost. If you want the full version of Windowblinds it is going to cost you. Not a lot if you ask me, but even $20 for high quality, professional grade software (Windowblinds is now being used by numerous corporations such as Nvidia, ATI, and Alienware) seems to be too much for some folks. Style XP (for using visual styles) isn't free either (though my experience with it left a lot to be desired), but there is the Neowin uxtheme.dll patch. This is free, and so many of the fanboys jump behind the banner of "why pay for something that is free" and bash Windowblinds (ignoring that the demo version of Windowblinds is very functional and does not expire). But I don't want to reopen old wounds that have been healing over in the "truce" I have noticed on the net lately, so I won't belabor the point.

The truth of the matter is you can have the best of both worlds. There are wonderful WB skins that get ported over to visual styles, and elegant visual styles that get ported over to WB. So users can have both. Also, there isn't any law that prevents you from using the uxtheme.dll patch and Windowblinds on the same machine. You may have to tweak things a bit, but I know from many sources that this is possible. However, if, like me, you aren't entirely comfortable with using system file hacks (which is what the uxtheme.dll patch is) you can just use Skin Studio.

I browse the completed visual styles forum over at Neowin.net almost daily. I check out Deviantart as well. I see nice visual styles, download them and then let Skin Studio convert them over to WB skins for me. At times the conversion isn't perfect, so I go into Skin Studio and play around with things and get them the way I like them. Plus, I can then use the added capabilities of Windowblinds to make the visual styles more complete and more powerful (toolbar buttons, progress animations, skinning the Shutdown dialog, roll ups, transparencies, etc.). There, I get to use the best of both worlds. Sounds like a plan to me.

So, once again, I don't understand the argument. When it comes to system resources you can pretty much say, at the very least, it is a wash and there isn't going to be any sort of performance hit between the two. So it all comes down to aesthetics. And no one is stopping you from using both styles. So just use what you want.

Comments
on Oct 17, 2004
Well Said! I have never udnerstood all the fighting....
on Oct 17, 2004

I remember the moment the fighting got started - because it was totally unnecessary -- a start-up company that got into the business of selling a uxtheme patching program went around trashing WindowBlinds and trying to make it sound like it was an inferior product. It then used fake users on message boards to attack WindowBlinds on a regular basis. Eventually they were caught doing this and (to my knowledge) stopped doing that.

But the damage had been done. The "saying stuff sucks makes me sound cool" teen crowd then regurgitated. Only when WindowBlinds became so much better than uxtheme.dll that no sane person could deny it did it start to calm down and get back to what it should have been in the first place -GUI customization.

As a point of reference - there were never WIndowBlinds vs. efX wars or WindowBlinds vs. Chroma wars (two popular programs in the Win95/98/ME/2000 days). 

I use whatever skins I like. In fact, I'm currently running a b0se skin that was originally an msstyle. Except I have it running grayscaled and its gamma turned down which makes it look very nice and easy on the eyes -- a feature of WindowBlinds.

on Oct 18, 2004
Except I have it running grayscaled and its gamma turned down which makes it look very nice and easy on the eyes -- a feature of WindowBlinds.


That is exactly the reason I prefer to "port" visual styles over to WB format. There is just so much more I can do with them that way. And I absolutely love the custom color feature. I am using the G-Pod WB skin right now, but colored to blue since I was in the mood for a blue theme.