Maybe on your computer they do, but they don't on mine. Actually, with
only a 1Ghz Athlon CPU w/512M of RAM, and an old 64M GeForce4 vid card,
I'm was actually shocked initially by how well the very few transitions
and effects I have set work. Stardock's WinFX is not even usable on that
PC.
Most likely not as many as are available for the every other desktop
environment.
And certainly not from MS.
Themeing a UI is nothing new. And certainly was not provided by MS prior
to WindowsXP. It took a third party app to 'theme' earlier Windows
versions, Stardock's WindowBlinds, which may or may not have been buggy
depending on your h/w and s/w configuration. The early version's of that
sucked.
Being able to 'theme' your UI was initially available on for Unix
variants under the name of NextStep developed by NeXT.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP)
Then AfterStep (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterstep), which was based
on NextStep. Granted, to edit a theme you had to manually edit the
step.rc file, but a themeing engine none the less.
LiteStep, a windows port of AfterStep, was released to the public in 1998
as a (complete) Windows shell replacement which allows you to completely
change the look and feel of the OS. LiteStep was the first to offer
multiple desktops for Windows also.
There is even a LiteStep section @ WinCustomize.com..if you can take a
minute to look:
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=6
Hmmmm.....seems to be a commercial version of *step called WinStep.
Yet *another* third party that offers a very much improved and flexible
theming engine for Windows.
Yes....have a look here:
Maybe, when a third-party piece of s/w is involved.
