Island Dog's Articles In OS Customization
October 28, 2021 by Island Dog
Now that we're almost clear of the Halloween season, the next event to look forward to is Thanksgiving near the end of November. Halloween and Christmas are our two biggest skinning holidays, and Thanksgiving has never really been popular for desktop themes. Even though I like changing my desktop for the seasons and holidays, I usually just skip ahead and get my Christmas desktop going. So that's the question this week. Do you add any Thanksgiving themes to your desktop?
September 14, 2021 by Island Dog
As we've done in the past, I get emailed and read blogs about design and a couple times of year various sites put out their seasonal colors, and the latest is from Creative Market. They have Cosmic Iris  as their "Color of the Season". "Iris: a flower with sword-shaped leaves, the Greek goddess of rainbows, the part of your eye that lets light in. As we discover what this new normal can look like, here’s a color that captures our quest for the unknown. The curiosity in...
February 16, 2021 by Island Dog
I have been looking at the 2020 data for WinCustomize regarding the top downloads and galleries for last year. I always find it very interesting to see what other people are downloading. Sometimes it's skins you might have missed or didn't expect to be popular. Everyone has a different style they like, so it's also a good way to keep up on any trends that might be happening. So, let's take a look at the most downloaded skins on WinCustomize in 2020! Top 10 Overall Downloads CREATIO...
December 11, 2020 by Island Dog
Happy December! The holiday season is here, and we've been talking about holiday skins for the past couple of months. Now that many of us have our holiday desktops in order, let's find out what the favorite holiday skins of our community are! What's my favorite? There are many wonderful holiday WindowBlinds skin out there, but I always appreciate the design of Christmas Holidays by adni18 .  Post a link or image of your favorite holiday skin or theme in the comments below and le...
October 22, 2020 by Island Dog
Do you skin on Turkey day? Get it.... Turkeys....skins......oh never mind. As we have discussed before, Halloween and Christmas are the two biggest skinning holidays of the year, but we do have one more between that, and that would be Thanksgiving. It hasn't been a big skinning holiday and there's only about two pages worth of uploads.  My question is though, is it something you skin your desktop for? Just wondering if we should be looking out for more or just focusing on the next big...
October 2, 2020 by Island Dog
This week's question we'll focus on something that doesn't get talked about as much.......and that would be icons. We have a couple of different categories for icons here on WinCustomize. Icon packs for use with IconPackager Icon category for general icon uploads. ObjectDock icons for icons that are meant to be used with OD. We have been curious on how the community uses icons in their desktop setups. Do you change the entire icon set with IconPackager, or do you just cha...
September 24, 2020 by Island Dog
This week's community question is focusing on desktop skinning, WindowBlinds in particular! There are so many WindowBlinds skins available and I probably couldn't describe all the styles and colors available.  I personally like more of a minimal style skin, but more "wild" skins have also been popular. If you have no preference that's certainly great, but I wanted to put out the question to our community.  Do you prefer more minimal type skins, more "wild" designs, or does it...
July 20, 2020 by Island Dog
I'm working on types of content people like and want more of on WinCustomize. Something I'm looking at now is triggered .dreams for DeskScapes. A triggered .dream is basically an animated wallpapers that changes at a designed point.  Blissful Dream was always one of my favorites. So my question to the community is do you use any triggered .dreams? If so, what specifically do you like and what themes would you like to see. For example, .dreams that switch from day to night. If you ...
June 12, 2018 by Island Dog
We have another Master Skinner spotlight, and this time I'm happy to have had the chance to speak with  DaveBax! Dave has been a member of WinCustomize since around 2007, and he has made a variety of contribution to the site over the years. He is one of the top WindowBlinds skinners on the site, and was promoted to Master Skinner in 2016.  We appreciate him taking the time to answer some of our questions for the community.   Can you tell us a bit about yourself and...
March 27, 2018 by Island Dog
Each week on WinCustomize we feature a skin made by one of the creators from our community. We've decided to take that idea a bit further and spotlight the creators themselves! I wanted to start this off with one of our top skinners and long-time member, Tom, also known here as LightStar ! He was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions so we could get to know him a little bit more.   Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved in “skin...
October 17, 2017 by Island Dog
WindowBlinds allows you to change the complete look and feel of Windows by applying skins to the user interface. This popular app includes several great looking skins, plus you can download thousands more on WinCustomize.com. I wanted to share a few tips for using WindowBlinds, especially for those who are new to it! Get WindowBlinds for $9.99 Use WindowBlinds with Start10 for a complete customization experience If you're a Windows 10 user and want the Start...
January 18, 2017 by Island Dog
WindowBlinds 10 gives Windows users the ability to change the look and feel of the desktop by applying custom skins to the user interface. There are thousands of skins available to create a truly custom feel. WindowBlinds has an interface that is very easy to use, but I wanted to go over the basics of the app and how to get started with changing your desktop theme. Get WindowBlinds here . WindowBlinds Overview When you first open WindowBlinds, the main ‘Style’ configura...
April 24, 2018 by Island Dog
We had some questions come in asking about some of the additional features of WindowBlinds regarding textures and backgrounds, so I wanted to write a post going into more detail about it.  These are all features that aren’t really difficult to use, but if you are a new user you just might not be familiar with where everything is and how they work. If you are completely new to WindowBlinds, let me recommend you also take a read through the  WindowBlinds 10 Walkthrough:...
December 11, 2017 by Island Dog
Animated wallpapers were introduced to Windows back in the Vista days and has since been continued with the DeskScapes app created by Stardock. By using DeskScapes, you can have beautiful animated wallpapers on your Windows desktops. DeskScapes also lets users manage both animated and static wallpapers, add effects, and more.  You can get a more detailed of what DeskScapes does with this article found here . There are thousands of animated wallpapers, also called Dreams, available for d...
March 14, 2014 by Island Dog
The ability to customize your Windows desktop has been around for quite some time now, and there's never been a better time to jump in and start making Windows look and work how you want it to.  We've previously talked about how Stardock has several $5 apps to make Windows 8 more usable, and today we're going to take it a step further with some other customization and enhancement apps that are just $10. Lets take a look at some of the best and most popular desktop customizati...