WindowBlinds and MS Office 2007

On XP Office 2007 skins its own titlebars (their new 'orb' requires it)  Some dialogs may have skinned titlebars though, but not the main document window.

On Vista Office 2007 will allow WB to skin the titlebar.

Unfortunately addressing the non skinning with WB on XP is something only Microsoft can do.

Hi Neil;

I'm confused. Are you saying that Office 2007 Titlebar will or will not be able to be skinned by WB 5?

How about Office 2007 running under Vista? Will Office then be able to get skinned by WB5?

If WB will not be able to skin Office 2007 under Vista, then I see no real reason to use WB at all as there are already way too many exceptions to WB with many apps either refusing to let WB skin them or other problems meaning that the Per Application has to be turned on for many apps.

Thanks;
Doc

Question:

How about Office 2007 running under Vista? Will Office then be able to get skinned by WB5?

Answer:

On Vista Office 2007 will allow WB to skin the titlebar.

. . . here are already way too many exceptions to WB with many apps either refusing to let WB skin them or other problems meaning that the Per Application has to be turned on for many apps.

What apps are you using? If they are not skinning, that's not the fault of WB. That's the fault of the application developer not following MS GUI standards. Complain to them.

Hi Zubaz;

Thanks for the good feedback; that was fast.

Concerning the many exceptions to WB skinning question; I often talk to the developers (I do a lot of Beta testing for several developers). The question of WB not skinning their product often comes up but it seems that they are mostly in the dark about how to make their app WB compatible. I usually suggest that they get in touch with Stardock for WB compatibility information but it always results in the same answer "Stardock was of no help" and it gets dropped there. Also I often get an answer like no one else has brought this up (now, just where have I heard that before?). The end results being another app with Per Application settings to turn WB skinning off.

Thanks for your input;
Doc

Which apps are you having to exclude and why?

Currently…

ShutDown Plus Professional… really gets screwed up; text all messed up, text size too big causing it to wrap where there is not enough space to wrap such as buttons. Have to use Ignore this Application, do not skin it.

ZoneAlarm… have to Only skin this application title bar otherwise it gets pretty messed up.

Pantone ColorVision… Spyder2Pro, PrintFix Pro these programs really get messed up. They have their own skinning and do not like WB.

Over the years, I have had many more programs that will not skin properly but am not currently using them.

At one time, I had as many as 12 programs that required Per Application exceptions of one kind or another. At that time, WB (and ObjectBar) was causing so many problems that I removed all StarDock items from my hard drive; that was in 2004. I have, as of last month, given StarDock products another try as WB 5 seems to be a little better than what I was using in 2004.

I do know of several WB users that finally gave up saying that there is simply too many problems for something that should be a simple skinning utility. I know that feeling very well as StarDock products can take an inordinate amount of time to set up as many skins cause many problems with readability with font size and color.

All too many WB skins have fonts that are extremely small or use weird color combinations such as dark purple on a light purple background or a grey font on a grey background. I know these problems are the fault of the person that created the skin but that only brings up the question as why StarDock has no standards for such things.

I have given up trying to use SkinStudio to tweak the fonts on each skin as it is not an easy program to use for the casual user.

I find that I delete over 50% of the skins that I download as being unreadable on many screens due to font problems.

It looks like to me that most skins are developed on smaller screens than what I use (1280 x 1900, 24 inch widescreen) and when they are run on a high rez screen such as mine the fonts really shrink into unreadable smallness.

What I would really like to see is a new StarDock product just for tweaking font size, style and color that would make it very easy for everyone to make weird fonts readable.

One other thing...

If StarDock was to start developing a Font Tweaking tool I would be more than happy be a beta tester for it as fonts are my number one problem with many StarDock products.

Thanks;
Doc

hi it's not exactly about that but i don't want to buy office 2007 do you know where i could skin offic 2000 to look like office 2007
please help
jman   

Posted to wrong thread, interesting.