With the recent release of WindowBlinds 6 for Vista there has been much talk around various communities on how to use existing XP .msstyles on Windows Vista.  These existing .msstyles will not work on Vista by themselves, but you can convert them using SkinStudio and applying them with WindowBlinds 6.

I wanted to give a quick tour on how simple it is to take these XP visual styles and make them work on Windows Vista.  First there is a couple of things you need.

1. The first thing you will need is to download SkinStudio.  It's free and it will allow you to convert the .msstyle for use in Windows Vista.

2. Next you need WindowBlinds 6.  A shareware version is now available and it is also part of the Object Desktop suite.

3. Your favorite XP .msstyle.

Once you have SkinStudio installed it should associate itself with .msstyles.  All you have to do is double-click the file and SkinStudio will convert it.  You can the apply the skin or do that later in the WindowBlinds configuration.

Alternatively, you can also open SkinStudio and select "Import msstyles".  Once imported you will also have the ability to modify the skins if you choose to.  However, if you did not create the visual style you cannot distribute without permission from the original author.

Pretty simple, right?

I also made a quick video showing how easy it is to use existing XP .msstyles on Windows Vista using SkinStudio and WindowBlinds.

• WindowBlinds

• SkinStudio