Themes VS. WindowBlinds & Custom Skins

[Guest]

I've been trying to research these things and I havent found the answers I've been looking for. I am interested in customizing the gui for XP, and I have seen both the windows themes and the skins for WindowBlinds. What I want to know is: well, first of all, is XP just looking in the registry for image locations to display for the start menu, task bar, menus, etc.? And secondly, are the themes and windowsblinds just an intermediary between the user and those registry keys?

If so, where are those keys located? And is it possible to create your own windows "skin" and simply change those locations to the newer images?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[Guest]

There are no registry keys pointing to individual image files for the startbutton and taskbar. All of the images are apart of a dll file that is set by a registry key

The easiest way to change your gui is to use windowsblinds.

 

[Guest]

Is it possible to mess with that DLL? Where is it?

 

[Kenny S]

Jason take a look at my skinning page that has some information about
themes.
(scroll down to the Windows XP part)

http://www.computerboom.net/download/skinning.html

Window blinds uses its own engine to dislpay its themes,
but you can use XP's built in theme engine that actually only uses a dll
file to hold all the images
needed for the theme. Download and try StyleXP from www.tgtsoft.com
to unleash the themes of xp.

if you go to www.themexp.org and download some of the visual styles (themes)
you will see how they are made...
also you can open and edit a theme with stylebuilder
http://www.tgtsoft.com/prod_sb.php


Hope this information is usfull to you, let me know.


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Hope this helps. Let us know.
_____________
Kenny S
www.computerboom.net
FREE programs and MORE!

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