10 Windows Vista Customization topics

Vista is just about here and you might wonder what we can and can't customize and how it's going to be done.

If you have Windows Vista (or XP for that matter) you should make sure you have Object Desktop.  I'm biased for Object Desktop becuase I work at Stardock. But as a practical matter, if you want to customize Vista, you'll want this.

Here is a qiuck list of what's going on:

1) Icons.

IconPackager is being updated to work on Windows Vista. It's been more challenging to do on Vista than previous versions because of the Live folder icon updating. In Vista, the folder icon shows thumbnails of what's inside the folder as part of the folder icon.  That means the folder is literally hard coded to a specific image.

We've gotten past the first part -- we can now make it so you can customize the Live folder icon. The next step, for sometime in the future, is to make it so that icon authors can create their own live folder icons where they decide where the folder content images will appear. But that's going to take some doing. 

Object Desktop users will see the beta of this shortly.

2) Logons.

We've got logons working and Object Desktop users will get the beta this week and we'll be creating a Vista logons section.

But we don't have the flexibility we had on XP yet. The logon part is in the middle so it's basically image replacement at this point. This should change as we ge tmore time.

3) Boot screens

We've got this working but it's not as easy to do right as we hoped.  Well, part of it is, part of it isn't. It' not as easy to do LEGALLY as we hoped because Microsoft is using a weird image format that requires a special program to create that isn't legal to distribute.  This won't stop people from warezing the utility around probably but we cna't go around doing it. 

What we are currently looking at doing is providing a free service where you submit the images in say JPG for BMP format and we convert them into the special graphics format needed.

4) GUI Skinning

WindowBlinds is working on Windows Vista pretty well at this point.  WindowBlinds 5.5 (due out in a couple weeks) is designed to basicaly let XP skins work on Vista.  SkinStudio 5.5 is in internal beta and lets people make Vista skins as well. 

But we won't get into doing really fancy stuff with Vista until WindowBlinds 6 which is due out this Spring. That's when we'll be doing blur effects and other effects in the skin.

Other people are trying to make msstyles. It's a doomed effort. Here's why: The Vista title bar buttons are hard-coded in their position. And the Aero look is pretty unique.  So other than replacing PNG images, don't expect much.  For people who just want to change the start orb or replace button images, it'll do fine. But you won't be making Leopard-like msstyles for Vista.

5) Wallpapers

You may have heard of Windows DreamScene. That's Microsoft's animated wallpaper program that we worked on with them that's for Windows Vista Ultimate. It lets you play video loops as your animated wallpaper.

We're releasing Stardock DeskScapes on Object Desktop shortly which extends DreamScene to support dynamic content. We've got some really interesting content in the works internally.

Dynamic content has the advantage that it scales to any resolution and uses almost no CPU (video has to use a little bit of CPU for decoding the video). Dynamic content also had the advantage in that it's well, dynamic. It's not just a repeating 12 second video.

That said, Windows DreamScene is pretty awesome.  I realize some..people on the net have said "Oh, you could do this since <insert ridiculous claim here>." Let's be real, if animated wallpaper was remotely practical before it would have been done.  What's technically possible is irrelevant. What's practically useful is what matters. Vista lets you have animated wallpaper without it sucking down your CPU and that's really the whole discussion. (I saw some thread where they got screensavers working as your wallpaper and sure, it used 50% of the CPU and screwed up the icons but hey it's neat right? No. It's not).

6) Gadgets

Well, there's a ton of gadget technologies. And Stardock has good news for the platform developers -- if you want your widgets/gadgets to work on the Vista sidebar, contact Stardock. We've developed a technology that can make third-party technologies work as native Sidebar gadgets.

Our first use of it, not surprisingly, is with DesktopX.  You'll be able to export your DesktopX content as Sidebar gadgets. Same dialog as you use to export your creations as widgets.

DesktopX 3.5 should go into beta very soon for Object Desktop users.

7) Desktops

This is an area we're going to spend a lot of energy in now that the desktop is hardware accelerated. Remember the Heavy Equipment DesktopX theme? Imagine that taken to the Nth degree. 

8) Mouse Cursors

CursorVista is in development and we hope to have a beta out pretty soon. (i.e. a few weeks I hope).

9) Super Gadgets

If this term takes off, I want credit in the Wiki!   Super Gadgets are gadgets that have far more functionality than the gadgets and widgets of today.  They're not just a few hundred lines of scripting code and PNGs thrown together but are in actuality full blown programs that have been made into the gadget form-factor.

The Windows Sidebar creates a new potential state for software. Right now, there's minimized windows and active windows.   But the Sidebar creates a potential third state -- Gadget state. That's where the Sidebar displays a given program in an intermediate state where it's displaying active information about the program but it's in a smaller form factor.

So that PIM you're using might be displaying all kinds of information and when you click on it, it opens up to being the full blown personal information manager (as one example).  Any program that deals in information could be treated in this way.

What Stardock has been working on is making it so that you can create gadgets and such using .NET, WPF, and other technologies so that we and other developers can create much more sophisticated things (and use a real debugger when making this stuff).

10) Misc.

Because Windows Vista's desktop is composited -- it's a 3D surface, it's really hard to predict what kinds of new things people will create.  But I can tell you that because of the flexibility in Microsoft's underlying platform design, the possibilities are endless.  Next time some Mac zealot says "we had X on the Mac for years before" ask them how many third-party innovations are occurring on the Mac these days when it comes to enhancing the user experience.  By contrast, Microsoft has a very well defined brand that they vigorously protect and still embrace third parties being able to build on top of their platform to create new and exciting things.