Subj : Re: Thin client PC to run
To   : Lordwoodoo
From : Nightfox
Date : Wed Dec 03 2025 17:22:03

  Re: Re: Thin client PC to run
  By: Lordwoodoo to Rob Mccart on Wed Dec 03 2025 07:21 pm

 Lo> You can still access them with the real control panel on Windows. They
 Lo> want to hide all this by pushing the new ::I dont love it::  interface.

A while ago, I read that Microsoft was planning to eliminate the old Control Panel altogether..  I'm glad they haven't yet.

 Lo> Reading this, I remember using Stardock Software to customize my desktop.
 Lo> Crazy themes you downloaded. And Windows Blinds, etc.. It was fun!

I still use Stardock Window Blinds.  But these days, it can't skin all apps anymore, because there's new & alternate GUI drawing functionality in newer versions of Windows that some software is using now (starting with Windows 10, or maybe Windows 8), so those programs won't get skinned by WindowBlinds.  And apparently it's something that 3rd-party apps like WindowBlinds can't hijack, or else Stardock probably would have already updated WindowBlinds to do so. I have a feeling one reason Microsoft has done that is that for some reason they don't want 3rd-party apps to be able to customize the GUI in Windows.

Probably due to that, there aren't a whole lot of WindowBlinds themes being developed, so there aren't a lot to choose from, unless you want to get into making your own WindowBlinds themes (which I imagine could be fairly tedious).

GUI themes & skinning works a lot better in Linux GUI environments, probably because they were made to support that, whereas Windows wasn't.

Recently I was seeing an issue with SyncTerm flickering while using SDL mode, and just in the last day or so, I realized it only seems to happen when I'm using WindowBlinds to skin SyncTerm..  I configured WindowBlinds to ignore SyncTerm (not to skin it), and now the flickering isn't there anymore.

Nightfox

---
 þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

.