AveStyler is an in-memory uxtheme patcher that will allow you to use custom themes on Windows without replacing system files. AveStyler is the first application of this kind that supports Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7, all both in x86 (32bits) and x64 (64 bits) versions.
As a bonus, AveStyler comes with an application to install, delete and apply visual styles with one click of a button:
You can get AveStyler for just 3EUR (approx. 4USD) from http://www.avestyler.com .
There hasn’t been an update to VSB for some time now, but we have been working on version 1.4 in the last two months.
One of the most asked questions about Vista Style Builder lately, is if it will support Windows 7. While the name is Vista Style Builder, I’m happy to announce that VSB will support Windows 7 fully starting from 1.4;
On 7, Vista Style Builder will actually name itself Win7 Style Builder: http://www.win7stylebuilder.com .
Another new feature of VSB 1.4 is that it will allow you to develop and test themes on machines without patched uxtheme DLLs installed.
We hope to release 1.4 this week!
There hasn’t been a post in a while and I bet you’re wondering what’s going on. Well here’s what’s been going on.
With Windows 7 getting closer to release we’ve been getting ready to support Windows 7 in VSB (Win7 Style Builder technically).
The first thing was to research everything that’s new in Windows 7’s MSStyles. There are quite a lot of changes: there are new taskbars (yes plural) and a whole new Start Menu. So I went digging around and placing everything properly in the tree – that took quite some time and those files were released with VSB 1.3.
Now that we’ve been continuously preparing we had to give all those parts names. Took a whole lot longer as I had to change things and use the Test feature (time saver) and afterwards creating the states for them. All of the new Windows 7 specifics take up a total of over 400 lines of XML.
So that’s it right? Far from it. See the point of VSB is to make theming easy. Not only that but unleash the true power of the MSStyles format. So what happens if you make a theme which took weeks and then you later upgrade to Windows 7? Well, you import your theme. That’s right, you can import your Vista themes straight to 7.
Open dialog showing ‘Import a Vista Style’
This by far took the most amount of time. Reason being is that in Windows 7 some classes have different Class Numbers. Not only that but the structure of some parts and states are very different. So I went digging to find what’s changed so the import could work. It was morework than I thought it would be but not too bad. After finding and documenting the changes I sent them to Ave. He did his magic and half a day later he got it working.
We still have some things left to map. Start Menu being the only big one. The rest such as Clock (seeing how it has a nasty bug when there aren’t properties for images.), CommandBar (Buttons are mixed up. Not major), and Search Box (Text color has been relocated is all). To test this new feature during the day I used Longhorn Fusion’s Longhorn M7 R1 theme. Call me biased but I think it’s still the most advanced theme for Windows (MSStyles).
Windows 7 with Longhorn Fusion’s Longhorn M7 R1 theme. In this shot you can also see the Clock bug as mentioned earlier.
So now most of the work is done for you. The major thing you’d have to do is if you had a custom shellstyle.dll is make a new one. I don’t know if we can get that.
Welp that’s the gist of what’s been going on. There are many other changes in this version of VSB which shouldn’t be long.
Cheers.