Windows Blinds?

[Twarrior]

Will Windows Blinds work with ReactOS to make it look more like XP? Or are ReactOS and Windows 98 / 2000 so incredibly different in structure that theres no way this would work?

Dave

[Ged]

The interface can be designed to look however the designers want, however the interface is being modeled on the windows 2000 theme for a number of reasons.

- so the average windows user immedietley feels at home when using ReactOS
- it's simplicity is relatively simple to implement
- there is a minimal learning curve for current windows users switching to ReactOS

XP hasn't been chosen because it's plain ugly

I don't know anything about Windows blinds, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work at some point. I suppose it depends on how it interacts with explorer.exe and if ours implements the same functionality.
Martin Fuchs or MindFlyer may be able to comment further on this.

[Mike]

Yeah, it'll really depend on how WindowBlinds interfaces with Microsoft Windows and the exploits it uses in order to do what it does.

On the same note (perhaps a bit off-topic), we're working on an open-source OS, so why not implement at least as good as WindowBlinds? Hey, maybe even better!

[Twarrior]

Yeah, it'll really depend on how WindowBlinds interfaces with Microsoft Windows and the exploits it uses in order to do what it does.

On the same note (perhaps a bit off-topic), we're working on an open-source OS, so why not implement at least as good as WindowBlinds? Hey, maybe even better!

I agree however last I checked (and it's been at least a few years since I have so I could be wrong) Windows Blinds is either Pirate or Pay. So unless it's gone open source, and I highly doubt it has -- the ReactOS Developers would need to make their own Clone of Windows Blinds and IMHO cosmetics is low priority over functionality and I'm sure they'd agree with me.

This is why I asked if something that already exists may be aquired and POSSIBLY work on it. I figure either a developer knows or a user running around here someplace may have successfully tired it and neglected to mention it. So I asked

Dave

[Ged]

Windows blinds doesn't need to be cloned. All that need to happen is for themes to be available for our explorer.exe

If a windows manager is configurable, you can alter it to suit your needs.

How much configuration an end user will have access to would depend on how much was implemented.
There is no reason it couldn't be as configurable as something like KDE.

[Mike]

Exactly, the only reason why we'd want to clone WindowBlinds is if we want to similarly skin Microsoft Windows (there's actually one project that's open source and tries to do this, the name escapes me). We could natively implement skinning into ReactOS on a similar level of KDE (which is really kwin (window manager) plus Qt (widgets)).

[steveh]

My guess is that in future versions (maybe >= 0.9 or >=1.0) it will be possible to change the look by skins.

So those (not me! ) who insist to have Reactos look like WinXP, can do it without usiong a shareware like windowblinds.

Some Linux distributions also have KDE skins with a partial "XP look"...

[Ged]

Well we've already ported uxtheme.dll from wine, so the ball is now rolling

[Ged]

btw, you don't have to stick with the horrible XP theme. You can hack your uxtheme.dll allowing you to install other themes.

Here is a screenshot of my XP machine. It's a fairly common theme for XP, but I like it.

[ external image ]

[Mike]

Yes, but you have to re-patch uxtheme every time Microsoft replaces it in a hotfix or service pack.

And I also recognise Watercolor I prefer the "Ergonomic" theme of it, but currently I have the Media Center Royale visual style (like standard Luna but less barf-ish)