Stardock released WebBlinds 1.0 today. The program is designed to extend Microsoft Internet Explorer into being a fully skinnable web browser.
"In recent years, other browsers such as Netscape Navigator 6.0 and Neoplanet have made their ability to be "skinned" a major bullet point. Even the new version of Opera allows for visual customization. WebBlinds isn"t a web browser, it"s an Internet Explorer extension that takes advantage of Microsoft"s ATL and Stardock"s DirectSkin technologies to make IE completely skinnable," said Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock Corporation.
Not only can WebBlinds change the toolbar buttons and their backgrounds, it allows for the complete customization of the title bar and borders including allowing companies and skin authors to provide additional buttons.
WebBlinds works as a standard Microsoft Internet Explorer helper object. The power behind WebBlinds is Stardock DirectSkin, a program based on WindowBlinds skinning technology that allows developers to make their own applications skinnable
With Stardock able to integrate new features such as skinning into Internet Explorer, the next step is to use this experience to keep extending and improving Internet Explorer. For example, the enhanced version of WebBlinds integrates Stardock"s "Smart ad-blocking" technology directly into Internet Explorer. Pop-up ads are intercepted and put into IE"s status bar, giving the user the option of looking at what popped up or not. Other performance enhancements have also been integrated into the enhanced version. When activated, users should notice a significant performance increase in their web surfing. This will be most apparent for users with modem connections.
| Screenshots: | At ZDNet with a nice skin. Blocking a pop-up ad Clicking on the pop up ad icon in IE"s status bar note the buttons on the left side of IE WebScape skin, links to left |