| WinCustomize 2005! |
Adventures in Skinning: January |
January Skinning
Highlights |
| CursorXP 1.31 |
Object Desktop 2004 in review |
WindowBlinds 4.5 Preview |
| Orthodox Unorthodox |
The Top Skins of 2004 |
Personal Pages, where's
yours? |
| ObjectDock 1.1! |
Natural Desktop 1.2
Released |
Some Top Lists of
2004 | |
| WinCustomize was whipped out in about
a month or two back in the beginning of 2001 when a bunch of the major
customization sites (skin sites) went down suddenly. And from there it
grew and grew and grew..
We are pleased to announce WinCustomize 2005.
Completely rewritten and redesigned with tons of new features!
Come Visit the all new WinCustomize.com!
www.wincustomize.com
One change we've made to WinCustomize Magazine
- we're not linking to images anymore. Many email programs don't load up images
by default for security reasons and we don't want WC Mag to look bad by default.
Besides, this makes it smaller and cleaner to read. But feel free to let
us know what you think on the forums on WinCustomize. |
| Stardock CursorXP is a freeware
program that enables users to have spectacular mouse cursors. Unlike the basic
Windows mouse cursors, CursorXP mouse cursors can be both alpha blended and
fully animated at the same time. It's also incredibly easy to make your own
mouse cursors with CursorXP as the different cursor states are just "bit strip"
in PNG format (every frame of animation stored in a single .PNG file).
Stardock also makes CursorXP Plus which adds
additional features to CursorXP such as color changing and changing the size of
the cursor on the fly. There are hundreds of Stardock CursorXP mouse
cursors available on most customization websites (including WinCustomize,
deviantART, Skinbase, and elsewhere). You can download it at www.cursorxp.com.
New in version 1.31: Various performance
tweaks along with support for 64bit Windows (for those of you with the
AMD64).
Visit www.cursorxp.com to
download... |
| Last month
we released SkinPlant's Unorthodox skin pack. It was a collection of 5
skins that took on totally unique ideas on how the Windows GUI might be
done. It's been a hit with users. But many users loved the designs
so much that they requested that we provide them with "normal" styles as
well. That is, ones with the standard Windows configuration.
So this month, Unorthodox has been updated to
include Orthodox skins. If you already have Unorthodox, just go here and put in
your email address and it'll send you a link to the updated pack.
[Get Unorthodox
Now!] |
| ObjectDock
& ObjectDock Plus 1.1 are now available! ObjectDock is a freeware program
launcher and task manager that is highly configurable in how they look and feel.
ObjectDock Plus adds tabbed docks, multiple docks, fly-out menus and other
features.
New in ObjectDock / ObjectDock Plus
1.1:
- Zooming tabbed docks (icons in tabbed docks
can now zoom).
- You can now always resize tabbed docks from
corners
- Can now run on limited user accounts
- Supports WinKey+D now (show desktop no longer
hides ObjectDock if it's set to always on bottom or top)
- Unicode support
- Multiple language support (see files in \lang
directory)
- Standard docks adjust themselves properly on
screen resolution change.
- Auto-hide sensitivity options added for
standard docks
- Folder menu items with &'s in them now
supported
- Many other minor tweaks
[Get
ObjectDock] |
| Adventures
in Skinning: January 2005 |
| Object
Desktop: 2004 in review... |
| If you want to get the most out of
Windows, especially Windows XP, then you need Object Desktop. So much cool
stuff happened to this premiere suite of Windows enhancement utilities last
year. And here's an article that walks us through it:
[Article: Object
Desktop 2004 in review] |
| The First annual top skins awards --
"The Skinnies" have been announced. Check out this past year's winners for the
best skins of the year.
[Top Skins of
2004] |
| Natural
Desktop is a program that gives your desktop a natural look, feel, and sound to
it. First, it changes the wallpaper on your desktop based on the time of day and
time of year. The wallpapers were created by Ryan Bliss, founder of Digital
Blasphemy. Mason Fischer created nearly a half hour sound track that is based on
the time of day. Morning doves in the morning, crickets at night, rain when it's
storming. And finally, the most advanced weather visuals available created by
Matt Crockett (Tiggz) are displayed. With tons of settings and the ability
to customize the wallpapers and sounds to your liking, Natural Desktop has
become one of the most popular programs Stardock makes.
Version 1.2 fixes some bugs users have
reported such as saving default sounds, toggling the 12/24 clock, rain and
thunderstorm sound effects being in sync with your current weather, quick mute
not working, and some animation looping at midnight addressed.
If you already have Natural Desktop, use
Stardock Central (www.sdcentral.net) to
update to the latest version. If you don't have Natural Desktop, check it
out!
[ www.naturaldesktop.com
] |
| January
Skinning Highlights.. |
| Here is a sampling of cool skins and
themes and icons and wallpapers that have come out recently..
|
| WindowBlinds
4.5 Preview.. |
| After
months of work, the next significant version of WindowBlinds is nearly ready for
release - version 4.5 which has a host of cool new features that should make
skinners and users alike pleased.
Check out the full article to get a fairly
detailed wrap up and a quick demo of some of the new features in
action.
[WindowBlinds 4.5
Preview] |
| Personal
Pages: Where's yours? |
| One of the big new features of
WinCustomize 2005 is that subscribers and Object Desktop users can now create
personal pages.
These pages allow you to write articles, store
your favorite skins and themes made by others, manage your skins and themes
you've made, and much more!
If you don't have Object Desktop. Or you can
get a WinCustomize Premium subscription by going HERE.
In the meantime, check out the personal
pages:
[Personal Pages on
WinCustomize] |
|
