Ok erase the fact that with window blinds you have to have yet another program running, strickly visuals which is better in your opinion? I have yet to use windowblinds but am considering it.
If you think windowblinds is better could you point out a link or two to some good OSX style skins?
thanks
Well, I will have to say I prefver to use less system resources, so Visual Styles are better, plus they're native to XP- hence, more stable
I also have yet to theme that doesnt make my IE buttons look like they're in separate blocks, which I hate
You know something though I kinda figured out how things work. Visual styles use a svhost.exe to communicate with uxtheme.dll. Windowblinds uses wbload.exe instead. So either way you are running something. They both work in the same fashion in order to draw the widgets on the windows.
My wbload.exe takes under 1mb when one of my skins is loaded. If you can't afford 1mb then are you sure you can afford windowsXP? For comparison.. IE takes up 20mb. You can't tell me that a visual style takes up less memory than it takes up on the disk can you.
The reason why visual styles generally have worked with more programs is because if they are not theme aware then it only skins the titlebar. You can set WB to be that way if you want or you can make an exclusion which does that.
This is my opinion but:
The question is which gives you more flexibility in recreating the style that you want to have?
The question is would you rather use a bundled program that was created with just luna in mind. Or do you want to use one that was created with the themer in mind.
Also WB is still being developed and improved where visual styles are the same now as they where when they came out and no one but microsoft can work on it. Which will have to wait until longhorn. But no one knows their plans for that stuff in Longhorn really.
P.S. I have worked on and I'm improving upon and working on new themes for WB. You can check out what I have at tetsudust.net.
I think visual styles are better because they offer better compatibility and skin more things.
i have not found a WB skin that bests Iceman's Jaguar .MSTYLES
Visual Style...
With ShellWM you can get like...I'd say 98% accuracy with it...but, then that is just another program running...I dunno actually...I do visual style.
What I am suprised about...
Is that no one knows that msstyles uses the same themeing engine as windowblinds...
Thats right MS liscenced the WB engine and incorperated it into XP...
"In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP. Windows XP, unlike previous incarnations of Windows, was designed with skinning in mind. Windows XP actually allows users to switch between "Classic" Windows and "Windows XP Style". While Microsoft did not intend for third parties to create their own visual styles to use with their built in engine (for compatibility reasons), the newer versions of WindowBlinds were able to tap into that new skinning engine and extend it to support WindowBlinds visual styles - thanks in large part to Stardock and Microsoft working together to do so." - Stardock.com
Other tidbits...
http://www.winptk.com/Thirdparty_pages/Sta...indowBlinds.htm
http://msdnisv.microsoft.com/newsdetail.as...asp?newsid=1260
The one fact, that everyone ceases to confront, is that WindowsBlinds is obviously the slower way to go. It may not take up that much more resources, but when push comes to shove, you will see for yourself (like I did) that windowblinds is just more sluggish than msstyles. Msstyles is built into the operating system and is always running. Even with the default windows skin, msstyles is applying every skin and look to the borders and windows and buttons of windows. So since it is already doing this with the default theme, why not just change the default theme to whatever you want it to look like. There will be no extra resources hogged up.
You guys can say whatever you want. But I have used windowblinds a lot and it is blatenly slower than using the built in skinner that Windows provides us with. You will see for yourself. 
Now, until windowblinds comes up with a program that will not slow up the performance of the operating system, I am not going to use it. We will see what comes of wb 4. 
lately I've been messing with Visual Style. The reason why I did not mess with Windowblinds is because StyleXP reverse engineered the uxtheme.dll so that they could apply the skins in the same way the ones that come with xp are applied thus less resources are used. But even at that I didn't want any extra resources to be used that wasn't needed to be used so I found a uxtheme.dll patcher program that would patch my uxtheme.dll without me having to do it in dos or safe mode. By the way does anybody know where I can download the mario sunshine theme for Windowblinds I'd like to see if I can convert it to Visual Styles.
One thing that nobody seems to have "confronted" is that painting a bitmap on a window always takes more memory and resources than using the classic style.
That being said. There is a way that the window gets drawn which appears to be a bit slower in WB because visual styles does it in a fast yet ugly way. WB4 adresses this with it's "smart painting".
Also I don't really like the "you can say whatever you want" thing because it is an attempt to discredit me without giving anything to back it up.
Fact 1: Visual Styles are native so more stable and uses lee resources but let's face it...
Fact 2: Window Blinds looks better and it can background skin menues.
Judge, I'm making my Jaguar theme.. but I did not get your skin and mod it.
as much as I hate to say this but I may actually convert to windowblinds when v4 comes out cuz if it is supose to be faster than the skinning engine of winxp then why not? I don't see any down sides to it.
With it's smart painting it's supposed to be comparable to the classic appearance.
if it is as good as it claims I bet microsoft would probably want to buy them or sue them and then steal their source code.......one of the two. It would be cool to see microsoft update their Visual Styles to compete with Windowblinds though.
Microsoft gave them a seal of approval though and even made skins for WB.
They actually put signing on visual styles because they don't want to have to support third party themes.
Actually I don't think it would be a good thing for MS to wipe out all the little guys. I find it suprising that someone would suggest that it would be a good thing. Microsoft is still the big "evil" fish that has an anti-trust case after all..
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