WinStyles BETA

Thanks Brad Wardell for emailing us :)

Stardock has made publicly available for the first time a beta of WinStyles. WinStyles has been in development for over a year now. It lets users apply entire suites of skins at once or individual skins all from the same interface. It was designed as a cornerstone for Object Desktop in which users could manage all their desktop enhancements from a single place in the Display Properties dialog.

WinStyles introduces two new formats: .xptheme and .suite. .xptheme is a format that is essentially a ZIP file that contains the skins, themes, icons, etc. of other programs along with information on how they are to be used. This is already in v0.90. .Suite goes one step further. It doesn't contain any skins, themes, or icons. Instead, it points to where those things can be downloaded (essentially a dynamic peer to peer theming

system). Hence, a user can create a really cool looking suite out of skins and icons from other users and upload the .suite file. Another user then downloads the .suite file and it will automatically go and download and apply those skins seemlessly. Hence, a user could upload a screenshot of their desktop and include a .suite file with it (that would only be 2K or so). A user wanting to have that desktop simply would download the .suite and apply it and it would then go to wherever the files are located (whether at DeviantART, WinCustomize, Skinbase, Deskmod, LotsOfSkins, Customize, Skinz, or somewhere else entirely) download them and apply them.

Download: WinStyles BETA