Is Vista "skinnable"?

[MrTux]

This is something that I have been wondering for a while: Will we be able to download different themes for Vista like we were able to with XP? As cool as all the transparent window effects are in Vista, I don't reall care too much for the Aero theme as whole; to me it seems kind of clunky and cluttered looking. I've been running XP with a different theme than Luna since the beginning - I like a much sleeker GUI with fewer primary colors.

So has anyone heard/seen anything about this? My initial reaction is to think that it will be more difficult with the GUI being a sort of 3D construction of the graphics card.

Any thoughts/insight would be appreciated.

 

[blackangst1]

I would imagine there will many "skins" for Vista. There are already 6 or 8 available in the OS, not just the transparent one. And, as in XP, there is a themes tab to customize it. But, as in XP, the stock choices are small.

Just give it time

Oh...poke around in the control panel folder for the colors of skins option...its in there somewhere.

 

[MrTux]

Hmm, I didn't realize that there were so many skins included with it. I'm assuming these must have been added in for the final version, since I have RC2 and they aren't in there.

Do you know of any screenshots out there that show the available skins?

 

[slpaulson]

I'm not seeing any skins, other than some pretty basic color options...

 

[Doh!]

There are few posted at neowin. You need to hack uxtheme.dll & two other files, I think.

 

[Shawn]

Are the 3rd party skins 2d only?

 

[Piuc2020]

There are no skins other than Aero, but Aero can have any color + intensity you want and you can disable or enable certain features (like shadows, fade ins, glass transparency) to your liking.

Its customizable enough to get something that doesn't bother you but its a safe bet skins will come for Vista, the UI being rendered by GPU has nothing to do with it (the UI is not a weird 3D construction, its still 2D )