Product: WindowBlinds 0.95
Company: Stardock Systems
Website: http://www.windowblinds.net
Skins & Addons: http://www.windowblinds.net
Estimated Street Price: $ 19.99 Solo, $49.95 for Object Desktop
Preview By: Dennis Gregory

WindowBlinds 0.95 - Updated

Read the WindowBlinds 0.95 Readme here before this preview to fully understand.

We have decided to just include links to screenshots making this page load a lot faster. The screenshots are all in JPG or GIF format making them small to download.

Update: Just as ActiveWindows reported, WindowBlinds 0.95 was released on July 12th. Download here.

Since its 0.90 release in May, Stardock Systems has been working very hard on getting it ready for 1.0. If you've registered WindowBlinds and have been eying the Stardock newsgroups, you've probably gotten several versions in between .90 and .95. The new configuration utility which has been pulled from the default WindowBlinds installation was featured in 0.92, so this may be old news to you.

The installation is very similar to its predecessor's installation, still using the same setup layout and almost exactly the same text.

See the installation program here.

The old and boring configuration interface is back with .95, to keep WB under 1.44 MB for a floppy disk, Stardock has made the configuration utility and others available for download separate from WindowBlinds 0.95. Some utilities that have been turned into "add-ons" are Skinnable Configuration window, and Display Properties configuration.

See the Skinnable Configuration window here.

See the Display Properties Tab here.

A brand new feature only in WindowBlinds 0.95 is the new lighting technique for personalities. This lets windows use different colors at different places of the screen.

View the lighting technique here.

As you can see with the lighting technique it gives your windows a new look, and you can of course change the colors for different parts of the screen. Once this feature is learned more it will be interesting to see how personality authors will use it.

A new feature that I came across was the new Semi-Transparent Menus. This lets you see things behind the start menu giving it a interesting look. Sadly, this is only available in Windows 2000. More information will be available when Windows 2000 is publicly available. 

See the Semi-Transparent Menu feature in action here.

Finally, Stardock has fixed the window clipping problem, by using a new sizing method, that was just introduced in recent builds, so far the feedback has been positive, and we hope it will be the same for you.

ActiveWindows has decided to not review any other WindowBlinds versions before final. Since the .90 release, Stardock has decided to work more on bugs than new features, since they have added lots of features in previous builds, in fact WindowBlinds 0.95 is essentially feature complete.

This program which you would think would be big is a whopping 1.2 MB, making it easy to put on a disk and share with your friends! If you like WindowBlinds, we recommend paying the $ 20 to register giving you access to internal builds and special features that only registered users can use.

If you're sick of the Windows layout, and want to get a new way to look at Windows instead of waiting for Millennium at the end of 2000, Stardock's WindowBlinds is for you. Getting a whopping 95%, it pretty much aced this preview, how will it ace your opinion? Only one way to find out. ;)

Download WindowBlinds 0.95 here:

http://www.windowblinds.net

Object Desktop Network

Personalities (Skins) and Addons (Skinnable Config Window):

http://www.windowblinds.net

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