![]() ![]() Windows XP also made things easier by including its own "Skinning" engine that is remarkably similar in implementation to WindowBlinds. Where WindowBlinds was previously a fun hobbiest program before, now it became something any user could use on a day to day basis. No practical GDI resource limits, the end of daily crashes and other system flakeyness. The mainstream version of Windows that was no longer DOS based. It was the day skinners had long awaited. But Windows 2000's release started moving skinning (in all its forms, not just WindowBlinds) out of the "hacker" arena and make it more mainstream since desktop enhancement software was finally able to run better. Still though, even in WindowBlinds version 3, Stardock has to make some compromises in order for it to work still on Windows 95 / 98 / ME since that is where the bulk of the market was. Users who ran Windows 2000 suddenly, almost by magic, discovered that WindowBlinds wasn't slowing down their computers much or making their systems unstable. When users began to move to Windows 2000, Stardock began being able to separate Windows 2000 from the DOS based versions of Windows (Win95 / 98 / ME). No matter how much RAM someone had installed, 128K was the pool of memory that mattered. WindowBlinds never used very much memory, but it didn't have to. But at the same time, it gained a bad reputation with some people because it slowed down their computers and in some cases made them unstable. When WindowBlinds 1.0 came out in 1999, it was instantly very popular. And in Windows, if you ran low on those resources, programs would crash, the system could hang, and the system would slow down. And every button, every control, every checkbox, ever "skinned" things came right out of that GDI pool. Which was a real problem for WindowBlinds because Windows 95 and Windows 98 (And later Windows ME) are restricted to having only 128K (that's Kilobytes) of GDI memory. In year 1998, Windows 95 and soon Windows 98 would rule the Windows world. The decisions made at the time would have a long lasting affect on what would become WindowBlinds. But changing the look and feel on Windows would be a real challenge. When Stardock began working on Object Desktop for Windows in mid 1997, having a feature that would change the look and feel of Windows was considered a very high priority. The term "Skinning" hadn't been coined yet. One of the features in Object Desktop allowed users to add new looks to the OS. It added features and new functionality to OS/2 as well as made it look nicer. Object Desktop filled in the gaps in the OS. If you bought a machine pre-loaded with OS/2, there was a good chance you had Object Desktop on it. Chief amongst those products was Object Desktop for OS/2. Stardock used to be the world's leading independent developer of IBM's OS/2 software for the horizontal market. Wikis Immerse yourself in game lore, tutorials, and more. Metaverse See how you rank against other players in your favorite games. Community Stay up-to-date with game news and dev journals. All Games Check out our complete catalog of award-winning games. Ashes of the Singularity Massive-scale warfare in an epic RTS. The Political Machine 2024 Win the hearts and minds of America's voters. Star Control The space action/adventure classic returns. Sins of a Solar Empire II Real-time strategy. Games Galactic Civilizations Discover new adventures and rule the galaxy your way in this 4X space strategy game. Corporate Software Solutions Increase productivity, design intelligent controls and reinforce branding with our enterprise products. View All Software Products Discover our productivity and customization tools. WindowBlinds 11 Customize the look and feel of your taskbar, window frames, and more. SpaceMonger Quickly free up storage space on PCs and shared-networks. CursorFX Customize your Windows cursor and create your own. Groupy 2 Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop. Multiplicity Connect multiple PCs with one keyboard and mouse. DeskScapes Personalize your desktop wallpaper with animated pictures and video. Fences 5 Automatically organize your desktop apps, files, and folders on Windows 10 and 11. ![]() ![]() Start11 Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11. Software Object Desktop Your complete Windows customization suite. ![]()
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