custom styles / themes win7 ?

Hi everyone,

I wanna hear what people favorite way / application or what ever you do or use to customize the look and feel of your windows 7 ?

do you use things like windowsblinds or do you have recommendations?

I used to have tons of awesome styles for xp but since windows7 is a bit harder to just first of all mod for but also find good themes for I just wanna know what people here are doing?

thanks

 

I just grabbed the Japanese official Windows 7 Nanami Madobe theme ._.

 

just installed this and it rocks:
Browsing Windows 7 Utilities on deviantART

 

WIndowsblind 7 + rain meter + rocketdock

 

Big fan of Rainmeter

Here's my setup:
Winamp | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

I don't use much apart from a different shellstyle and some windows desktop gadgets, although I did use Windowblinds back when XP was King. Stopped using it because I prefer Aero by itself these days.

 

Rocketdock with stacks docklet
Wallpapers changes every 6 hours
No icons on desktop
Standard Aero stuff


and thats pretty much about it

EDIT:
BTW, is there a performance hit from using WindowBlinds?

 

deviantart, windows live gallery, the stardock payware pages.....

 

What kind of theme are u using?

 

My windows theme is Aero with color intensity at less than 10% (highly transparent). My rainmeter theme is Enigma with a few skins from other things to make me happy. Oh, the 2 gadgets on the mid left are the GPU and Intel Core Series from OrbLog

Oh, and the swanky window in the middle is my Winamp with the Rainify theme. I've got the library placed directly over the visualizer. So, I can browse it with pretty things moving in the background. That little blue line in the GPU gadget shows that doing that in Winamp (having visualization on) almost maxes out my GPU.

 

Awesome!! I wanna do something quite similar, thanks for the tips!

EDIT: Can u change the theme of windows 7 dock bar with rainmeter?

 

Rainmeter doesn't actually change things. It's just a group of .ini files that read this's and that's on your machine or from the web and then reports it on your desktop. So, it doesn't make any changes to your system and cannot change your taskbar. What a lot of people do is hide the task bar and have a dock bar style look of rainmeter icons. On the left of my image there are 5 sets of words. Those launch 5 of my most used programs.

 

Got it! I actually made a nice desktop yesterday, it took me a while, but it's awesome and easy to use. I love rainmeter!
Just one more question, How can I tell to rainmeter how to open a certain program? I have a skin call "dark black" which doesn't open any bookmarks or any gmail..

 

Can you provide me a link to the skin you're talking about so I can take a look at it?

Rainmeter is endlessly customizable once you get the hang of what you're doing. Soon, you'll be making all kinds of changes to the .ini files.

Anyway, let me know and I'll see if I can give you ideas for launching programs.

 

Here's the link where I took it from:

Browsing deviantART

And here my PC screenshot




Thanks a lot for your help! Is it possible to create a shortcut on the desktop with a personal folder in rainmeter style?

 

Wow that's a really nice desktop! I use to use rainmeter but uninstalled it because I couldn't figure out how to make changes and stuff to it. Just looking at it makes me want to reinstall it!

 

Wish I could see your screenshot, but my internet connection (tethering through cellphone) has never loaded imageshack successfully.

Anyway, I've downloaded dark_glass and will look at it tonight to see if there are changes you can make.

What exactly would you like to do? I'm slightly skilled at rainmeter, but there are people WAY better.

 

Oh I got that, but the sounds are pretty annoying so I stopped using it. Diiinnngg! Cha chan!!!

 

Thanks!!

It's all because of anseio! His desktop made with rainmeter really freaked me out!! lol..
I found a lots of good stuff here!!

Rainmeter Skins - Customize.org

You download it? Awesome! let me know what you think and if this theme is any good for his interface, cause I couldn't figured out how to make gmail, winamp .ini to work...
What I would like to do is to create a shortcuts with a rainmeter.ini, like my gmail shortcut (above the clock on the right inside of the screen), but that allowes me to open a folder that I personally choose (like the folder "MASSIMO" that you can see on the right side of my desktop).

Is it possible?

Can you see my screenshot with this link?

http://img857.imageshack.us/i/captureqb.png/

 

Yeah, it's a really pretty skin. I really like the CPU meter, but can't find a way to fit it into my current scheme. I did integrate the shutdown skin after modifying it to remove the icon, username, and background.

If there's any part of a .ini that you don't want rainmenter to read, just put a semicolon ";" in front of that line. If you do that in front of every line in a group of text, that entire block won't be read. It can be very helpful to disable things without deleting them.

Ok, your gmail .ini doesn't work because it's pointing to firefox as your browser. Do you use FF? Regardless, you need to find the correct path into program files and update that into the .ini file. You also need to do that for the winamp plugin to update the winamp folder location. Actually, a lot of the .ini's won't launch things until you've updated the correct locations for the programs. It's very easy to do.

Regarding a personal folder opening... well, it's very easy to do. You have to have an icon, or you can redirect an existing icon. I did that with the shutdown .ini. I didn't want the "logoff" option, so I edited it to to Standby instead.

Let's take the bookmark.ini as an example. Say, you don't want the DeviantArt link. All you have to do is right click over the skin and "edit skin". Look for this section:

This section tells rainmeter what icon/image to load and then what to do when you run your mouse over it.
MouseOverAction tells RM to show the information from the section below into the text field on the right of the skin, as well as a few other details.
MouseLeaveAction tells RM to change from the DeviantARt text back to the Bookmarks text on the right side
LeftMouseDownAction means "left click" and it's telling RM to launch firefox (if the location is correct) and the URL to visit

This segment is solely for the text that appears on the right side of the skin when you bring your mouse over the DeviantArt icon.

So... if you want to change this particular link to open up "My Computer" the two segments should be changed to this:

I didn't change the icon. I'm too lazy. That's for you to struggle with.

 

Oh, after all of that typing, I finally got your screenshot to show. You use the Enigma theme too? That's my favorite.

Right now... with your clock right below the gmail skin, your new messages should be overlapping the clock. Or are you not able to get the gmail.ini for Enigma to work?

How do you want your folders to appear? And what locations do you want to link to?

 

+1 for your guide and help. It was really useful! As soon as I will go back tonight I will try to modify my rainmeter, hope I can do it thus, I am not a genius in writing stuff, I prefer using a simple interface.

Yes I think you are right about the gmail overlapping, but I didn't receive any message so far so I didn't notice that I could vision them on my desktop eventually?
Gmail is working perfectly, when I click on the "gmail" icon, my FF will open immediately the webpage.

Regarding a location shortcut on my desktop, I have a partition labeled as "D" which contains all my data, and I would like to access to it directly from rainmeter.
Obviosuly I don't want to leave the windows icon, so I would like to open it straight away from the rainmeter skin.
I guess I just need to edit the location on the rainmeter text editor..

By the way, Enigma theme is one of my favourite too so far! Plus I didn't need to modify it, everything was working right out of the box.

 

Thanks! Much appreciated.

To get certain things to work with Enigma, you have to use a configuration window. Open RainBrowser - Browse - Enigma - Resources - Configuration. In there, you can add your gmail user/pass, as well as a bunch of other things.

 

How do I fix this?



the icons are not aligned with the bar at the bottom

 

All of the icons should be "draggable". Right click over any of them > Settings and make sure that Draggable is checked and that Click Through is UNchecked.

 

A Zune theme I'm using currently... Don't know that I'm crazy about it, but I do like the colors.

 

Pretty colors, indeed! I've always thought their logo to be very pretty. Ultimately too contrasty for me though. I like my zen look.

 

That maybe what I try next.

 

Thought you might find this interesting. Took me all day to put this together. I'm still making little changes here and there. Using skins from about 4 different themes to get the look I want. And... did some fun stuff in Winamp to make it look like it's a rainmeter skin, but without the background so it's fixed in place and can't be accidentally moved from my fun configuration.

 

Wow, that looks really nice.

By the way, I manage to change the name to the icon of rainmeter, but still, I cannot link it to the path that I want to open..

 

What's the path you're trying to link? What skin from what theme again? Gimme details.

 

Ok, let's take for example the Enigma/taskbar/launcher/launcher1.
I did change one of the launcher that was named trillian into skype.
I don't understand where do I have to write the path to link the launcher1 with Skype, and how to correct it.
I did press the right button of my mouse on the launcher1, then I press edit skin, I got this:

HTML:

[Rainmeter]
[email protected]
AppVersion=1001000
Update=1000
MiddleMouseDownAction=!RainmeterActivateConfig #CURRENTCONFIG# Launcher1-Mini.ini

[Metadata]
Name=Enigma Launcher (1)
Config=Enigma | Taskbar | Launcher | Launcher1
Description=A text button that launches one of your chosen favorite applications or URLs when clicked.
Instructions=Click and drag by the label to move this skin. | Set "App1" as the name of the application as it appears. | Set "App1Path" as the location of the app on your computer. | Set "App1Label" as a short description or subtitle for the app.
Version=2.7
Tags=Taskbar | Launcher
License=Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0
Preview=#SKINSPATH#Enigma\Resources\Images\Preview.png
Credits=Inspired by the gorgeously cohesive and minimalist desktops of nh0j.

[Variables]
@include=#SKINSPATH#Enigma\Resources\Variables\UserVariables.inc

;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; STYLES

@include2=#SKINSPATH#Enigma\Resources\Styles\StyleTaskbar.inc

;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; METERS

[Background]
Meter=Image
MeterStyle=StyleBackground

[App]
Meter=STRING
MeterStyle=StyleText
Text="#App1#"
X=60

MouseOverAction=!execute [!RainmeterShowMeter AppActive][!RainmeterHideMeter app][!RainmeterRedraw]
MouseLeaveDownAction=!Execute [!RainmeterHideMeter AppActive][!RainmeterShowMeter App][!RainmeterRedraw]
LeftMouseDownAction=!execute ["C:\Program Files(x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe]
[AppActive]
Meter=STRING
MeterStyle=StyleText
Text="#App1#"
X=60
FontColor=#ColorActive#
Hidden=1
LeftMouseUpAction=!Execute ["#App1Path#"][!RainmeterHideMeter AppActive][!RainmeterShowMeter App][!RainmeterRedraw]

[Label]
Meter=STRING
MeterStyle=StyleLabel
Text="#App1Label#"
X=60 

As you understand better than me, you may see that I tried to edit it as you recommended me last time but I think I just messed up everything..
Can you understand something from this?

Thanks in advance!

 

Ok, the Enigma Launcher works off of metadata (information outside of the skin) in order to function. So, the skin itself doesn't link to any particular name/program. The skin is told to look at the Configuration for certain fields that are populated with App1 (category like "chat"), App1Path (full path of Trillian goes here), App1Label (name of program to display = Trillian). To edit these fields, hover your mouse over any of the Enigma skins and center click. A blackish windows should appear. Click, I think, the tools to get into the config. Scroll down to the app that matches the number of the Launcher you're using and make the appropriate changes to the fields, Save them, then refresh the skin.

If you can't get config to open that way, run RainBrowser > Browse > Enigma > Resources > Confinguration > Load Skin... and the config screen will appear.

 

I know it's a dumb question, but what should I write in the config screen? Just "Skype.exe"? Or all the string "C:/program files....."?

 

The entire path:

ie:
C:\Program Files\Skype\Skype.exe
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Skype.exe
or
whatever the path actually is. I don't use Skype.

 

Finally done it!!!! OMG.. sure it tooks a while.. there are still too many things to learn...

Thank you so much again Anseio!!

 

You're very welcome. Feel free to ask help again. I only know a little about rainmeter (I only change skins that already exist), but am always happy to share my knowledge.

Something you might find of interest. My launcher is on the left of my screen and no longer points to the config file. I can easily add or remove programs from it and the lists gets longer or shorter in height. I hated trying to make sure they all lined up the way I like.

Oh, something else you might want to know. It's easy to accidentally drag your skins out of place. So, right click over the skin > Settings > and uncheck Draggable. Right click over the skin and edit is also a much faster way to access the .ini rather than going through rainbroswer. Then, you can make your changes > CTRL+S to save and right click > refresh skin to see how the changes look.

 

Thanks' for the suggestions, I will take a look at it, actually has been a while that I am doing it..
I won't be afraid to ask you again in the future, I hope I can be useful in something for you as you were for me!