I remember this thing from wayyy back, it was the bet way to skin your desktop.. What do people use these days? DeviantART was the shit back in the day, maybe they are still around who knows.

 

Wallpaperer Cave, has very good free wallpapers: https://wallpapercave.com

 

Windowblinds is still available for sale, btw.
https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

I bought it and also "Fences", which is a nice desktop organizer, for like desktop icons and folders.
Also, I own " Start 10", where you can customize your Windows start menu.

 

I used to use https://github.com/namazso/SecureUxTheme for a while. Wouldn't know where to get UxThemes these days though. Probably still DeviantArt.

 

Microsoft pretty much killed Windows customisation with Windows 7 onwards for some reason (security...), and it's one of the many reasons why I went Linux way. I missed more freedom to make my OS look any way I want. Theming and general customisation was still a thing with Windows 7, though, even 8, but it seems not to be so popular these days with W10 onwards. I used a cute program similar to "WinPalleter" to change colours in XP and it worked in W7, too. Can't remember what it was called... but WindowsBlinds was far more than just about changing the colours.

I wonder if it's even possible to change the whole looks of W10 and up, at all?

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2025 at 4:50 PM

I bought the suite ages ago on sale, and it's been worth it for me.

Start 10/11 is the only one of the WB suite that I use, and it's great for making the start menu usable, and the task bar workable. Groupy is pretty good as well if you have lots of related windows open a lot, creating tabbed windows out of anything.

Fences while good is only a choice if you use the Desktop icons a lot, I don't really so I don't install it. The wallpaper switcher (can't remember the name now) is also solid, but it's nice to have but not necessary by any means.

I mostly don't care for window themes as a lot of app have their own decorations anyway, but it should still work with 10/11, right?

 

Besides windowblinds, there were a whole stable of shell replacements for windows. Blackbox, Xoblite, Litestep.. (to name a few) I spend hours configuring menus, layouts etc..

 

Window Blinds is still around, part of their Object Desktop suite.
I am a very old customer, i bought Icon Packager and Object Dock+ some 20 years ago. I used to love customizing UI, i still have in my backup drives hundreds of custom icon packs/sets and a lot of different docks, also i'm sure somewhere there i have hoarded a ton of window blinds themes. I remember they had a Disney inspired theme along with a hi res icon pack, animations and matching dock and it was kinda funky, i dug that a lot.

 

I use the most common unofficial dark theme for Win 10 -- Penumbra 10 by Scope10. There are other themes as well on DeviantArt and GitHub, but I find Penumbra 10 to work perfectly, and most importantly -- it makes Reaper dark. I use SecureUXThemeTool to install it. It's very straightforward and easy, unlike the older methods. I've never had any issues arising from using these unofficial themes that needs to mess with system files to work.

Aside from these themes, there are also software like Rainmeter and xoblite Blackbox that places a customizable skin on-top of your desktop. I find them to use too much resources and don't have the best integration with stuff like File Explorer and other Windows applications. Some people love them, but I'm not one of them.

 

Sure, you can even install a complete different desktop, like Cairo. However, there's always a chance something might break with the next Windows update.

 

I still use windowblinds, they updated it for windows 11, and you can get all kinds of skins off wincustomize, so it definitely isn't dead yet

 

Windowblinds and Winstep are both around. A lot of products that were GUI oriented had major features destroyed as of Win 10 and Win 11 even more so as mentioned above.
Stardock worked around it but it's not quite the same. Other products like Curtains will never work properly again post Win 10 unfortunately, like many third party applications Microsoft could not care less about. Cairo looks good but as most people know as stated by Olaf, any windows update or new O/S can potentially change more applications.
I remember a long time ago when a user asked what the definition of a virus was. The answer they got being that is took over your computer and stopped applications from working or crashed your computer. The user then said So Windows is a virus?

 

Last edited: Jan 2, 2025 at 7:41 PM

Happy new year
If you have the Win7 compatible suite you will probably have to purchase an upgrade. As far as i see now the relevant apps in their suite are all Win11 compatible. They go slow but do upgrade the suite with every new windows version.

Happy new year
Yeah, some old stuff from the Object Desktop suite should be either completely broken or malfunctioning, due to MS bullcrap. Mainly this though has to do with GUI animations and certain customized behavior of GUI aspects. The basic stuff like themes and icons etc., should be working fine.
Cheers

 

Been running classic menu since windows 7 and still run it on win10. Couldn't be bothered with win10 if I couldn't get rid of the whole metro clusterfuck. I need simple, mellow, and functional. Have no interest in making finding/running stuff any harder than it needs to be.

 

Last edited: Jan 3, 2025 at 1:10 AM

Thanks, man back in the day had the most "L337" desktop lol

 

Oh wow they are still around? Is devaintART still around too? Demonoid is dead now . I used to have the coolest desktop themes back then

 

The guy up above said that Windowblind is stll around I'm surprised. Man every who was "L337" had bad ass themed desktops haha

 

Dude that's fucking bad ass, You make that wallpaper? I always made my own themes back then or mixed and matched I think there was another program called somethinbg Desk if I'm not mistaken.

 

Dude that's fuckign awsome, you've definetly been around a while for sure. I used to have hella themes. I was trying to remember that program Object Desktop I had all that crap. Anyone who was tech savy cool did lol. we were "elite" LOL