Why? Because of the Windows Personalization Gallery and the steady stream of new themes it provides.

Today I would like to look at Winter and Christmas themes. While it may be a bit early in the year, considering that we are still in the Autumn period, I still think that some readers may enjoy the overview.

The themes are limited to users of the Windows 7 operating systems. The wallpapers on the other hand can be used on other operating systems as well. Just extract the .themepack themes on your computer with a program like 7-zip. All wallpapers are located in the DesktopBackground folder.

Czech Winter theme

The beauty of the Czech winter, from the rooftops of Prague to tracks in the country snow leading to pine forests and other scenes of natural beauty.

Holiday Lights

Brighten up your desktop with sparkling images of holiday celebration and winter wonder in this free Windows 7 theme.

Snow Sports theme

Powder power: Catch air with the dramatic mountain skiing and snowboarding photos in this free Windows 7 theme.

Winter Sports theme from Samsung

Go for the gold with this high-energy, high-altitude free Windows 7 theme from Samsung, a proud sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team. Capture the excitement of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games!

Winter Theme

Serene scenes of snowy landscapes grace this seasonal free Windows 7 theme.

Arctic Theme

Enjoy the frozen beauty of the Arctic Circle and its wildlife—no frostbite necessary—in this free Windows 7 theme.

Dogs in Winter theme

The grass and foliage may have faded, but not the playful spirits of the doggies in this free theme for Windows 7. Enjoy them playing in leaves, running madly over the snow, chewing on stuff, and getting frost all over their whiskers.

Snow Angels

Snowflakes fall as delicately as angel wings in this free wintry Windows 7 theme.

The Windows Personalization Gallery is not the only place where you can get themes for free. One great location for hundreds if not thousands of themes is Deviant Art.

That in itself is problematic if you want to run the same advanced theme on all of your computers running a version of Windows. For that, you had to repeat the sometimes taxing installation procedures on all additional systems.

That’s however no longer necessary with the release of the Skin Pack Installer System for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. Windows users who are thinking of installing the program need to pay special attention to the installation process, as it tries to make potentially unwanted system changes (new homepage, search).

The program basically provides the options to create a skin pack with a few clicks to distribute it to other Windows systems.

Skin Pack Installer System lists the various elements and options in the interface. A click on an element opens a file browser to add a custom file to the skin pack. The elements are loosely sorted into the groups dll files, exe files and theme & installer. It is for instance possible to replace shell32.dll, explorerframe.dll, explorer.exe or notepad.exe in the dll and exe files.

The theme & installer group offers options to pick a wallpaper, cursor, visual style or media.

Once you are finished replacing the original files with custom ones, you can start creating the setup file. A click on Create Setup creates an executable that can then be run on other computer systems to install the customizations on that system.

The developer has added a resource hacker, extractor, renamer and png to bmp tool to the application which may come in handy during the preparation and creation.

It might take a bit longer to create the theme pack, but it is well worth that time considering that you can install the exact same theme then on other Windows PCs with a few clicks. Plus, it is possible to offer the theme pack as a download on the Internet or a network.

Interested users can download both the 32-bit and 64-bit version from the developer’s Deviant Art page. (via)

But users do not only get themes from the official Windows 7 Personalization site, they can create and distribute themes as well if they like. Sites like Windows 7 News have a large themes repository that offers official and custom themes for download.

Still, if you go down that route, you are working with individual themes only. The Windows 7 Theme manager changes this by offering a tool to browser, download and manage themes in its interface.

The program pulls the latest theme information from the Internet whenever it is started. Themes are displayed in groups on the left side. Available for selection are for instance TV Series, Celebrities, Animals, Cars or Games.

A click on a group opens the available themes on the right side in preview mode. Each theme is listed with its name and a preview image. A click on a theme in the list downloads it to the computer where it is opened with the default program, usually the theme engine. The selected theme is directly installed in this case. There is no other option to download themes without installation at this point in time, which also means that you can only select one theme for installation which will block the application window until it is installed on the system.

All installed themes are displayed in the program interface and the default Windows personalization control panel. Themes can be deleted from the program, but it is not possible to switch between downloaded themes there directly. Users need to open the Personalization menu of Windows to do that.

Regardless of those limitations, it is fair to say that Windows 7 Theme Manager offers an alternative to Microsoft’s Personalization gallery on the Internet. Then again, the limitations mean that it is as easy to download and install themes from the Internet than it is using the software, provided that you know where to find themes for Windows 7.

Interested users can download the Windows 7 Theme Manager from the Deviant Art page of the developer. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7.

Themepack files on the other hand are nothing more than archives that can be unpacked with a suitable unpacker, such as 7-Zip. The Windows 7 has published a guide on How To Use Windows 7 Themes On XP And Vista PCs.

Back to the two themes. The first themepack released is a lightning theme for Windows 7, perfectly suited for the autumn season.

The theme offers 14 different lightning wallpaper images taken in various locations of the world. You find screenshots and separate downloads of all wallpapers at Microsoft Releases Lightning Theme For Windows 7. The theme with a size of 5.7 Megabytes can be downloaded from this Microsoft server.

The second theme is a Halloween theme for for that one special day in October, the the night before All Hallows Day. This theme is more advanced, as it offers not only wallpaper images, but also sounds which most official themes do not offer. The theme offers 15 wallpaper images and 12 system sounds. This raises the size of the wallpaper themepack to more than 10 Megabytes.

You can take a look at all wallpaper images of the theme over at the Halloween Theme for Windows post, or download the theme right away from Microsoft.

Microsoft is pushing out new themes for Windows 7 on a regular basis, which is an effective strategy to offer new contents for the system. These kind of themes are quickly created, but provide lots of value for that.

If you are using Windows 7, have you downloaded new themes for the operating system? Let us know in the comments.

The biggest advantage of Personas is the fact that they can be added to the browser without restart (except maybe for the very first installation to switch from the old theme to the selected Personas theme). It is furthermore possible to preview themes directly in the web browser without installation. Another benefit is the sheer number of Personas that are available; Currently way over 30,000.

The main limitation of Personas is that they can change the design of existing elements but not the elements. Personas do not change buttons and other elements of the web browser. Only graphical changes are made when Personas are activated.

This is a similar difference to how themes are handled in the Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft made it easier to change some standard theme elements but users who want to change more than these basic themes offer need to patch files to do so.

To sum it up:

• Personas: Basic themes that only change the design of the browser, can be installed without restart. Unlikely to break things.
• Firefox Themes: Can change all elements of the web browser, require a restart. Can break things

Personas offer an interesting way to quickly change the look and feel of the Firefox web browser. It is however unfortunate that they are not compatible with third party themes.

Two aspects play a role. There is the new and improved theme engine in Windows 7 that makes it much easier to create and share themes. Anyone can do it as a new theme is automatically created when a user changes the wallpaper of the system. It is possible to add additional wallpapers to the theme and change the colors, sounds and other elements.

The second reason for this seems to be a change in strategy. Microsoft seems to have realized that these things make a lot of users happy. That in turn is good for Microsoft as it changes the perception of Microsoft.

The four new themes have been released at the Personalization website over at Microsoft. All themes can be downloaded from that website free of charge. Themes can be installed on the operating system with a simple double-click on the downloaded file.

The themes as you can see consist of a dog, cat, summit and Christmas theme. Check out our Windows 7 themes collection over at our Windows 7 website for more themes not only for Windows 7 but also previous Microsoft operating systems.

Another nice aspect is that there are plenty of themes available for the desktop. So with all of that said, let’s take a look at how to theme the E17 window manager.

Where to find themes

Before we go on it would be best to point out a couple of outstanding locations to find themes. There are two sites that house plenty of E17 eye candy (there used to be three main sites until Freshmeat dumped themes – BOO HISS!). Those sites are: Get-E and E17 Stuff. The latter has far more themes, but the former’s themes are much more interesting.

The files you are going to download are .edj files and contain every thing you need for your theme (including wallpaper). You can download them to any directory, so long as you have permission to access the directory. I would place them in a centralized location in your ~/ directory (like ~/Downloads). Once you have imported the theme you can them remove the .edj file from your directory.

Sift through these sites and download a few themes that you like.

The theme tool

Figure 1

If you open up your main menu in E17 (left click the mouse on a blank spot on your desktop) you will see the Settings menu. Click on that menu entry to open up the tool (see Figure 1) you will use to import and/or select your theme.

You will notice there are two radio buttons at the top left. Here you can switch from the system themes (pre-installed) or your personal themes (themes you have imported). When you import a theme you won’t have to make this switch.

With this tool open (and your themes downloaded) click on the Import button. When

Figure 2

you click this button a small window will open where you navigate around to locate theme you want to import. After you’ve located your theme click the OK button and you will see your theme instantly appear in the Personal listing of themes (see Figure 2). Select that them and then click the Apply button to make the change. The change in theme might seem to not happen at first. Give it a second or two and the change will magically happen.

Wallpaper

You can chose to either use your theme’s wallpaper or your own personal wallpaper. To make this change click on the Main menu and then on the Settings menu. In this you will see the Wallpaper entry. Click that to open up the Wallpaper tool (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

As you can see you can select Personal wallpaper (wallpaper you have downloaded), System wallpaper (default wallpaper installed with E17), or Theme wallpaper (wallpaper included with the them). Make your selection and click OK.

If you click the Advanced button it allows you to set which desktops the wallpaper will be assigned to.

Final thoughts

Themeing a desktop has never been so easy. With Enlightenment E17 your desktop can look fairly amazing with only a few clicks.

From within the GNOME Appearance Preferences window most all customizations can be taken care of. Everything from theme, controls, window borders, pointer, and special effects can be configured here. So let’s dig into this and find out just how these customizations are handled.

Opening the preferences window

The first thing you need to do is to open up the preferences window. You will find this in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu in the top panel of the GNOME desktop. In that sub-menu click on the Appearance entry to open up the window.

The main preferences window

Figure 1

When you open the Appearance Preferences window (see Figure 1) you will notice the various themes installed. You can quickly choose from one theme or another to quickly change the overall look of your desktop. But the customization shouldn’t end there.

One button you shoudln’t over look is the Customize button. When you click this button a new window will open that allows you to make more granular changes to the various themes. Within the Customization window (see Figure 2) You can change colors, window borders, controls, icons, and the pointer.

Figure 2

The most drastic change you can make is under the Controls tab. This change effects the look and feel of what is inside the window borders. Some of these changes are subtle, but some are fairly drastic. Think of the Controls tab as a way to fine-tune each particular theme. But it doesn’t have to end there. Once you fine-tune your theme you can take it further by clicking on the Colors tab and editing the colors of the theme.

There are four colors you can customize here:

Windows: This is pretty much the background of all of your windows.

Input boxes: Such as the background color of selectable lists.

Selected Items: The color that indicates an item that has been selected.

Tool tips: The background color of tool tips.

One of my favorite personalizations is the Window Border. Linux desktops have always been fond of having artistic window borders. From different shapes, to transparencies, to shades, and much more – you can really make your desktop yours within this tab. By default Ubuntu 9.04 ships with fifteen different window borders. There aren’t any really “out there” selections. Scroll through the selections and find one you like.

Fonts

The next step would be to adjust the fonts to your liking. This should be pretty straight-forward. If you’re looking to add more fonts to your Ubuntu system just place all of the fonts you want to use in a ~/.fonts directory and you should be good to go.

Interface

This tab allows you to configure if menus and toolbars will have Icons, text, or both. You can also configure GNOME to allow editable shortcut keys. The latter feature is really nice. With this selected you can then go back to a window menu (such as the File menu), select an entry, and assign a new shortcut by simply pressing the desired shortcut (while the entry is still highlighted.) You should see the shortcut entry change in front of your eyes.

Visual Effects

This setting will depend on if you have the video card to support the effects. If you are not sure try the Normal setting. If your card does not support the effects you will know right away.

Final Thoughts

Although the look of your machine doesn’t effect how it works, it can effect (in very indirect ways) your productivity. GNOME is a very configurable desktop, it just helps to know where all the different configuration options are.

What I like about the setup is the simple lines and design despite the complexity and elaborate nature of the configuration. Despite my distaste of over-complex designs, I am impressed, because it functions as a “dashboard” should, it gives you a lot of at-a-glance information. RSS feeds from your favorite blog, the time and date with weather, and a whole bunch of other stuff, like the handy Gmail notifier.

While this may not appeal to the hardcore “clean desktop” people, I urge you all to give these setups a try, some of them might work. the reason I stray from them is that when I am working on something I tend to generate a lot of icons on my desktop which ruin the nice looks. I could of course use a different directory, but this is the most readily accessable place. if you know of any other cool desktop configurations like this be sure to drop us a note in the comments!

Although no official objections where ever made to the companies and individuals selling services like premium WordPress themes I believe there was always a little controversy. Some free software proponents feel the effort put into these kinds of services would do better being put back into the whole WordPress community so everyone benefits seeing as the community was the ones who made this kind of business possible.

Personally I think these services have done nothing but good for the WP community. Better premium themes has inspired free theme creators to release better themes and to give credit where its due, most premium authors also release their themes for free in either basic version, separate complete releases or whenever they retire an older theme.

Interestingly though one of the biggest premium theme creators, Revolution themes, have decided that from now on they are changing their business model and releasing their themes for free.

In a move that would make any free software proponent proud they are instead betting on making their money through service subscriptions which you can purchase for several hundred dollars.

Their latest release of themes, Revolution 2, is a fantastic set of free themes and if you use WordPress for your blog I really recommend checking them out.

Dark Kosmos thinks “trillian is MUCH better (and looks better)” and I must admit the from the Trillian screenshot he showed it does look pretty good. I used Trillian for a while and wasn’t too taken with it, although that was a while ago now so maybe I should give it another try.

I’ve been using Digsby since it was in beta. I managed to procure a key somehow and I was really impressed by it. I’ve always been a fan of clean chats, like google talk and irc, and Digsby really does well. It used to have a problem a while ago where if you closed peoples chat windows too many times, Digsby just stopped letting you open new ones, but a quick bug report later, and within a few days the problem was fixed. Angelo said “It used to have a problem a while ago where if you closed peoples chat windows too many times, Digsby just stopped letting you open new ones, but a quick bug report later, and within a few days the problem was fixed.”

I would have to say this is something the Digsby developers have been impressing beta testers with, rapid responses and fixes to any reported problems and bugs, and consideration of all suggested features. It’s a great way to build a community up as you can see by Disbies.org which just recently started up.

Digsbies is a place for the Disby community to discuss the application and download new themes and find tools and tips. It’s only small but I’m sure with time and a official public release of Digsby version 1 it will grow.

A couple of my favourite themes are the Digsby Alive theme, designed to match Digsby in with the Windows Live products and the AeRoyale theme to better integrate Digsby with the official Windows Royale theme.

Also find more emoticons, a Wiki and a log converter for transferring all chat logs from all the major chat clients including Trillian to Digsby.

Since then all of 9 themes have been given the official signature; Luna, Silver, Olive, Classic XP, Royale, Royale Noir , Zune (modified Royale Noir), Aero and Classic Vista.

It’s not really a great selection and probably more the once you’ve wished you could give your desktop a nice new look. Luckily there is a way to get free 3rd party themes in Vista (and XP), although you’ll need to patch your system using a free tool called Vista Glazz. Once you’ve downloaded it’s as simple starting it up and pushing a button. You’ll need a reboot and then you should be able to install new themes.

For other changes you can use Vista Visual Master which is a great little application and can change icons, the boot screen and a number of other elements.

The best place to find Vista skins is of course on Deviant Art where you’ll find just about everything graphic related, although it may take you some time to sift through it all to find something you like. Icons, themes, Screensavers, wallpapers, screenshots… it’s all here.

For wallpaper images I suggest Social Wallpapering as maybe the best online resource for high resolution desktop images. It also has a voting system which is a good way to keep the standard of images high. Desktopography is a showcase of some of the greatest Photoshop artists and has an annual gallery, some of the images here are amazing, well worth checking out. You can find a few more at  Customize.org which also has some good archives of images.

For icons I would again recommend Deviant Art although you can get plenty more at VistaIcons, Jm Art Studio and this list of 50 places to get free icons.

If you know of any other good resources sound off in the comments below.

The uxtheme.dll patcher that I had installed on my previous system was not working anymore because Microsoft seemed to have replaced the uxtheme.dll file with a newer version which had the result that the patch failed. A quick research on the Internet brought me to Rafael’s website that offered a patched uxtheme.dll that was compatible with the English Windows XP Service Pack 3 final.

I then used the small application Replacer to replace the existing uxtheme.dll in c:\windows\system32 with the patched one. Replacer displays a command window upon execution and all that needs to be done is to drag and drop the original file and then the new file into the window. Everything else will be done by replacer.

I was able to change the theme after the next reboot.

Most of the downloads link to Javier’s page at Deviant Art where they can be downloaded. Wallpapers are usually available in different sizes. The visual styles can be downloaded in MS style or Windowblinds format. You do need a patched uxtheme.dll to use visual styles on your computer. I did explain the procedure in the article linked above. The icons are icon packs that can be simply used. They are available for Windows and Mac.

Javier explains exactly how users can apply the new visual styles, wallpapers and icons to their system. He links to various free programs that make it easier to change the icons or visual themes. Javier is also offering skins on his website for various applications like Winamp to match the visual styles for the system.

It was funny to realize that Javier actually created the Thallos visual style that I’m using on my system currently. It’s an amazing style.

Users have to use different version of Summerboard to install the application depending on their firmware. An alpha version for firmware 1.1.1 exists, users with an older version have to use the Installer.app. Detailed explanations are available on the homepage mentioned above.

Many Summerboard themes have been posted on the installer apps website. I have selected three nice looking themes from the list of available themes. Just explore the website to take a look at all available Summerboard iPhone themes.

Click on this source link to find out how to add the themes to your Iphone.

Expect Windows XP themes of Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Dragonball, The Simpsons, Fantastic 4 and The Flash. Let me explain how you install those themes. Once you have patched the uxtheme.dll you need to unpack the themes that you download into the Windows/Resources/Themes folder. When that is done double-click the .mstyles file which should open the Appearance tab in Display Properties. Click Apply and you are all set.

You sometimes have the choice between several styles for Windows and Buttons as well as Color Schemes. Use the pulldown menus on the left to see if that is the case for the selected theme.

Dragon Ball no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

Spiderman no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

Superman no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

The Simpsons no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

Batman no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

Fantastic four no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

The Flash no off skin by ~teoiron on deviantART

I would like to introduce two methods of patching uxtheme.dll. The first method is automatic but sometimes not working. I would still suggest to use the Uxtheme Multi-patcher first if you use Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Just unpack and start the application (no installation required) and click on Patch to patch uxtheme.dll. The software checks the operating system and asks if the findings are correct. If the information is correct click OK.

Windows File Protection will kick in which you have to cancel of course. File Protection would otherwise replace the patched uxtheme.dll with the original from the Windows XP CD which would have the result that you would not be able to use custom themes. Once that is done restart the computer once and check if you can add custom themes. If that is possible you have successfully patched uxtheme.dll. If not or if you are using Windows Vista read on.

Windows Vista users or users where the automatic patching failed can replace the file manually instead. They need the application Replacer for it which can be used to replace files with system protection. They also need the patched uxtheme.dll which they can find at Uxtheme Patches. Make sure to download the correct version for your operating system.

Start Replacer and follow the on screen instructions. Begin by dragging and dropping the original uxtheme.dll file which is located in c:\windows\system32 into the program window and hit enter. Then drag and drop the patched dll into the window and hit enter again. Follow the instructions until File Protection kicks in again. Make sure you cancel the file protection window so that the patched file is not replaced with the original one again.

Custom themes can be added after a restart.

You simply use the right-click menu when you have found a link that leads to a theme or plugin for WordPress that you want to install. Choose either to install a Theme or Plugin so that OneClick Installer places it in the correct directory. It works well with zipped plugins and themes which are automatically unzipped during the process.

The One Click Installer WordPress plugin needs to be activated first and both the plugins and themes folder needs a chmod of 755 so that the Firefox extension is able to place the files in the directories.

You would then install the Firefox extension and right-click a theme or plugin to place it in the corresponding folder of your WordPress blog. Plugin diagnostics tell you if everything is configured correctly which is a great way to check if everything is working correctly.

One Click Installer can be password protected to protect your WordPress plugins and themes from being overwritten by other users and offers a so called Purgatory which offers a secure way of deleting plugins and themes.

It can also backup your plugins and themes and store them locally as zip files for later usage. The author is currently developing a version that makes it possible to auto-activate those plugins and themes as well.

found: Digital Inspiration

Visual Styles can be changed in the Appearance tab in the display properties menu or by double-clicking the *.msstyles file. Using the patched uxtheme.dll gives us an advantage over softwares like theme xp or wincustomize because we do not need to run the software in the background.

Thalios


Longhorn Inspirat


Royal Inspirat


Klarheit


aes

First you download Samurize from the homepage, then you decide which additional files you want. Categories include language files, graphics and skins (like new icons, images) and scripts & plugins (headlines, weather module, system information, visual plugins and the like).

This way you build your own custom system based on the files provided. You are free to create your own scripts and plugins, add your own background images and icons and the like. Very flexible system which needs some time to understand the relations. Once you get the hang you are free to create a customized system.