What is the difference between WB and Visual Style?

from WinCustomize Forums
Hi, i am curious
What is the difference between Windowblind and Visual Style?
windowblinds
7,490 views 24 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
A windowblind uses the windowblinds program and a visual style generally uses something like stylexp (which is a hack to your system file, uxtheme.dll or whatever it is).
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
To be precise, a visual style is any skin made by any program that replaces the Graphic user interface (GUI).
Windowblinds is stardocks program to change your visual style.
Msstyles is another program similiar to windowblinds that changes your visual style.

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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Msstyles is the filetype Microsoft created. However it was only intened that Microsoft made .msstyle for Windows and so they made a lock for the filetype. StyleXP is a program that hacks some of your Windows files and let you use other .msstyle files, usually a hacked Luna .msstyle.
WindowBlinds doesn't hack, it hooks. It hooks into the messages sent in Windows that is related to painting the GUI and paints it own current skin instead of the standard windows GUI.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks for the correction thomassen. StyleXp is the program, not msstyles.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I see a lot of people at Deviantart use Visual Style and they say WB sucks...
I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS?
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
LoL..Wrong place to ask that question..I think everyone here will have a Biased opinion..
I personally say Windowblinds RULE! stay away from VS and stick with the best!

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Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I see a lot of people at Deviantart use Visual Style and they say WB sucks...
I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS?


Well keep in mind using StyleXP hacks your XP system. Hacking your XP system is never a wise idea.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Windowblinds has many more features and skinned parts than Msstyles.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As Night Train has already said (but it can't be stressed enough) WindowBlinds ARE visual styles. So are msstyles..... get it? If it changes the look of windows, it's a visual style.

I see a lot of people at Deviantart use Visual Style and they say WB sucks... I am currently using windowblind....should i change to VS?

These people are sadly mis-informed. WindowBlinds rules, for so many reasons.
Ask one of those guys at DA to point you to a skin with the titlebar buttons on the left side. Or one with a rollup button, or one with WinAmp controls built into the skin....... etc, etc..

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
well, for starters, the people on DeviantArt who say that don't know what they are talking about.

I know many people don't feel comfortable with hacking system files, but seriously, I've never seen a problem with hacking the uxtheme.dll. So, I don't use windowblinds because I'm afraid of hacking system files, I use it because it simply is a better program. Let's see, windowblinds is MUCH more powerful, capable of using both msstyles and windowblinds skins, and (if you know what you're doing, and disable the themes service), windowblinds runs FASTER on your computer than traditional msstyles. So, you know, the only upside to msstyles are that they're free... and windowblinds is not an expensive program at all.

So yeah, don't listen to those guys on deviantart. alot of people online don't like windowblinds, but the reason they think it sucks is because someone else told them that it sucks, and so on. The original complaints (and only time windowblinds had any real problems) stem back from pre-WindowsXP times, when windowblinds was not as native to the system as it is now. Of course... there was no alternative at the time either, so windowblinds was still the best at what it did.

Yeah, stick with windowblinds, and the let the deviantart guys use inferior methods of theming.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Visual Styles:

A visual style is a partiuclar type of "skin" designed to change the look and feel of the entire user interface of an operating system.

On Windows XP, there are two popular formats for visuals tyles - WindowBlinds and MSStyles.

WindowBlinds visual styles are designed to be more flexible than MSStyles but require the user to use the commercial program, WindowBlinds ($19.95) in order to get the most out of them.

MSStyles are very basic but are also free. They cannot move title bar buttons, cannot change border sizes, cannot add additional buttons to the title bar, cannot change styles on title bar text, cannot control alignment on controls or text.

Advocates for MSStyles will argue that these limitations are a good thing because most msstyles tend to be pretty derivative of the existing Windows XP look and therefore are more "usable".  Proponents for WindowBlinds will argue that WindowBlinds users can use msstyles as well via SkinStudio and that the whole point of "skinning" your GUI is to be able to make it look and feel how you want not just tweak it a little bit. MSStyles cannot change tool bar buttons or progress animations and don't skin as many parts of the Windows XP OS.

The advantage of WindowBlinds (the program) is that in addition to being able to use WindowBlinds visual styles as well as MSStyles via SkinStudio that it can provide hardware acceleration based on graphic card improvements that have been made since Windows XP's release back in 2001.  In addition, WindowBlinds provides features such as color changing on the fly, per application visual style support, mouse button customization, mixing and matching progress animations and toolbar icons, and can skin non-theme aware applications.

For a full list of WindowBlinds features versus the bundled msstyle system, visit http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4

 

 

Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well as most of you know I port a lot of style XP to Windowblinds and use both. but I must say that I would never consider using Style XP over Windowblinds. And as previously stated anybody that thinks that windowblinds is inferior are sadly misinformed.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
With VS you can only get VS skins. (msstyles)
With WB you get VS skins (msstyles) and WB skins (wba).

That alone is a good argument even if you aren't worried about hacking your windows files.

Btw, if anyone claims that VS skins runs without a footprint, they are wrong. It's just "hidden" within one of them scvhost.exe processes running on your system.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Butch: you call your skins ports? I would call them "imcomplete"
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I was under the impression that StyleXP didn't hack your system, it just safely modifies the memory to allow different visual styles, kinda like what BootSkin does with bootscreens. But I could be very wrong.

WindowBlinds>StyleXP anyway though.

And I don't know that hacking your uxtheme.dll file is very risky anyway.
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Also keep in mind hacking your system files violates the MS EULA...
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
was under the impression that StyleXP didn't hack your system, it just safely modifies the memory to allow different visual styles, kinda like what BootSkin does with bootscreens. But I could be very wrong.

WindowBlinds>StyleXP anyway though.

And I don't know that hacking your uxtheme.dll file is very risky anyway.


Also keep in mind hacking your system files violates the MS EULA.



The most importants ....
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top


What exactly does the "Themes" service do? I was reading WB runs much faster if you disable this service. I just disabled it, but I am curious as to what it does exactly.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It provides the overlaying drivers for the msstyles format that microsoft and StyleXP use.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Nope, I always disable it after a re-install/whatever. Its somethin you dont need, and frees up resources on reboot.
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ah, good point. I'll remeber that for when I go back to my computer.
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I was under the impression that StyleXP didn't hack your system, it just safely modifies the memory to allow different visual styles


If by safely you mean circumvents a security measure put in place to keep people from fiddling with something then I guess that's an accurate impression. The folks at TGTSoft want you to think that their product is more than just a hack so they made it *patch* system memory to allow unsigned .msstyle files to be loaded but let's be perfectly honest here, if MS decided at any point to put a stop to their activities I doubt the case would even make it to court because StyleXP is a blatant hack and nothing more.

So, if you want to look at it this way the most obvious reason to use WB is that it's legal..