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