Skinning Windows XP: The Free and Easy Way

XP Themes Overview
Oftentimes, when users try to skin Windows XP they end up installing software. The first piece of software is called WindowBlinds and while it certainly does make your desktop look nicer than a typical XP skin can, the look comes at the heavy price of RAM and overall, the skinning slows down your computer a massive amount. The other program is StyleXP. This program applies a typical XP skin, but comes at a price. Why pay, when you can get the exact same end result for free. StyleXP can sometimes hide skins in its own format preventing you from using a certain skin, but don't worry there are plenty of skins to choose from that will work.

Setting it Up
The free process is simple, we patch the system. Under normal conditions, Windows XP only allows the system to use their certified skins, any others will not be applied. We just need to patch the file on the system (UXTheme.dll) that checks to see if a skin is a Windows-made skin. This is easier than it sounds with the automatic Universal UXtheme.dll patcher, which you can get here. After you download the file, run it, click patch, and follow the instructions. The process is fairly straightforward. Once the file is patched, restart your system.

Getting/Applying the Skins
You are now free to use whichever skins you wish. Search google for XP Visual Styles or Themes or something of the sort. In my opinion, deviantart.com has a great collection of skins: Customization > Skins & Themes > Windows Utilities > Visual Styles.

Simply download a skin, unzip it (right click Extract All...), and look inside for a .msstyles file. You may need to extract more than once to get to it. The file should have an icon of a paintbrush painting a window green. Double-clicking that file should open up the Display Properties dialog and show you the skin. Change the color scheme if you want and click OK. The new skin will be applied. Oftentimes, the skins will have icons and fonts to accompany them, these are optional. When applying a skin, "Compact" shortens the Start Menu by showing icons without text for My Computer, My Documents and so forth.

However, you may notice that if you set the Display Properties > Appearance to a different skin, you will not be able to go back. To reapply any skin, you must go back to its .msstyles file and double-click, it will not show up in the menu under Windows and buttons.

To do this is a bit more complicated but optional. For the theme to show up on that menu it
must be under C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\[Skin's name]\[Skin's name].msstyles
Note: be sure to copy all files that you extracted, some of the other files may be necessary for the proper functioning of the skin. Make sure that the folder and the name of the .msstyles file are EXACTLY the same. Even a space can throw it off and your skin will not show up in the menu.

My Favorite Skins
If any skin creator wants their skin off of this list let me know.

This skin leaked from Microsoft itself. There is also a light blue version. Since this is a Microsoft skin, you will not need to patch the system to use it. Find it here.

This skin I found while writing this article. It's simple and clean. Perhaps too clean for some, but if you have that kind of a taste, go for it.






This is my skin at the time of writing this article. Aquanox comes in both light and dark blue and is generally comfortable.










NeoGeniX is one cool-looking skin. The background can glow in either Green, Orange, Blue (as shown), or Pink. The File information bar of explorer can be either Left side [LS], Right side [RS] (as shown), or Top Side [TS].






OR YOU CAN DOWNLOAD MY VISUAL STYLES COLLECTION
Download and right-click extract to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\ and all the new skins should be available when you right-click the desktop and choose properties > Appearance. Make sure you do not extract to a subdirectory making MSSTYLES COLLECTION a folder, this will throw off the whole process. To simplify the process, you can right-click on the file and select Extract All... and when it asks you "Files will be extracted to this directory" type exactly C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\

Congratulations on your new skins. Enjoy!

My Favorite Wallpapers 1

I notice the variety between the wallpaper choices of individual PC users. Personally, I enjoy nature/sci fi wallpapers. From time to time, I will release some of my favorite wallpapers on this blog. I have searched through hundreds of wallpaper sites to find some of these. Hence, most of them are quite rare. The sizes vary, Some may be small for hi def users, but they are all the highest definition I could find.

Gmail Deluxe and Feeds

As I mentioned in my previous post, I use gmail because of all the added user-made functionality. I will now detail to you these convenient extras and in the process, we will create a feed reader account.

If you have not already done so. Go here and create an account. the interface is fairly simple, the hard part is finding good feeds to subscribe to. If you find an interesting website with a feed service, Firefox automatically puts an orange button on the address bar that allows you to subscribe, but to use this feature, you will need to (after creating a Google Reader account) go to Tools > Options inside firefox and choose the Feeds tab. In this tab choose Google Reader and you are set.

The world is filled with interesting sites to subscribe to. It even has people searching through these sites and socializing on the net with others regarding these sites. The idea of web2.0 is socializing: putting humans not search bots at the head of what's interesting online. You have reached your first experience of this with Del.icio.us, which allows you to create friend networks of links and discuss them. Myspace and Facebook are also web2.0 trends. However, the key site to finding interesting material on the net is Digg (although some would agree more with Reddit or Furl). Hence one of the best feeds to subscribe to, in my opinion, is Digg. After that, pick some bloggers that write interesting articles and you are set. If you want my feeds (tech, science, and humor) you can import my feeds. In your reader account click settings in the top right and click import/export. Download my feeds here and then Browse for the file you download. Then click upload and you should have my feeds.

Now, we want to integrate google reader with gmail. First we need the greasemonkey firefox extension. This will allow us to load user scripts onto certain pages. The next things we need is the actual script. Once you have installed greasemonkey and restarted firefox go here to install the script. Now feeds will show up on left bar of gmail like Inbox.

Now, a few simple scripts/stylesheets are all we need to beautify and perfect our gmail. Stylish is a firefox extension that allows users to change the styles for a particular website. Once you have installed Stylish and restarted firefox go here to see available stylish gmail modifications. As you can see, there are quite a few, my recommendations: Gmail: Inbox with new style and Gmail sidebar with renovated style. However, I don't use the sidebar, although the first recommendation I still use. Instead, I favor the complete remodeling of Gmail through this greasemonkey script. It is purely incredible.

So here is a screenshot of my gmail with all the aforementioned features. Enjoy!

My Personalized Homepage

Google may be the most popular web search and have a great list of services, but that doesn't mean that those services are the best on the web. Gmail offers little more than its competitors, many of whom have already matched or surpassed google's large mail-holding capacity. Google's spam protection certainly does recognize more emails as spam, but oftentimes, it recognizes not-spam as spam. I use gmail because it has a simple interface and because many users have extended its capabilities through firefox extensions and greasemonkey scripts.

However, this post will deal with a better personalized homepage not a better gmail (that will be in the next post). There are two services gaining popularity in the personalized homepage craze. The search leaders (google and yahoo) have made satisfactory solutions and although yahoo's is better with the modules it offers, it still cannot compare to netvibes and pageflakes.

I would highly recommend either one of them. After examining differences between the two, the only major difference I found was that netvibes has a better interface. Pageflakes apparently has better public access, but this feature is not necessary for the average internet user. You should look both of them over and decide which one you like better in terms of interface. I will focus on netvibes.
The first thing you will want to do is creat an account. You will notice this option in the top right corner. Once you have created your account, you may want to play around with the settings also in the top right. My theme is winter plain. At the top left corner, click add content. If you followed the previous posts and created a del.icio.us account, you WILL want to add the del.icio.us module. As for anything else, look at what is available and click Get More Modules... for other content. You can play around with new tabs and click the Edit link for each module to change more settings, but for the most part, netvibes works without modification. Its simple fast and most of all convenient. I have it set up as my browser start page and I've accessed from other computers without any worry. It is the center of my internet activity.

Bookmarking

When surfing the Internet, everyone reaches a pages that they want to save. That is the basic principal of bookmarking, but the standard practice of bookmarking has been completely revolutionized in the past few years. Today, there are many ways to keep track of your bookmarks and even share them with others.

Basic Bookmarking
When you visit a page you want the browser to remember, you can go to the Bookmarks menu (Alt+B) and click Bookmark this page. This is the standard method. Bookmarks can be organized into folders using this method. Alternatively, you can drag the icon of the webpage (on the left of the address bar) to your bookmarks menu or to the bookmarks toolbar (right-click on File and check Bookmarks toolbar if the toolbar is not visible). This form of bookmarking merely saves pages into the browser on this computer only.

Delicious: Bookmarking
However, what if, using a method as easy as this one, you can save your bookmarks to the web so that you could access them from any computer. Then, you have stepped into the realm of social bookmarking, a popular new trend. The current leader of this trend is del.icio.us. With Del.icio.us you get two buttons added to firefox. One for viewing all your saved bookmarks and another (TAG) for adding new ones. To bookmark a page click Tag and chooses a category (optional but recommended). You also get a new menu to the right of Help for more del.icio.us options. Some websites like this one put del.icio.us links after posts. Clicking these links will also bookmark the page.

Delicious: Creating an Account
The directions to create an account at del.icio.us are explained clearly. Go here to sign up.
After creating an account, you will have installed an extension into firefox allowing for del.icio.us bookmarking.

Delicious: Importing Firefox Bookmarks
To import your firefox bookmarks login to your del.icio.us account. Click settings (top right of the page). Click import/upload under Bookmarks. Now open the bookmarks menu (Alt+B) and click Organize Bookmarks. A new window should appear. On this new window click File > Export and save your Bookmark file to a place on the hard disk that you will remember. Now close the Organize Bookmarks window. On the del.icio.us import bookmarks page click browse and select the file you just saved. I would recommend checking "No, do not add popular tags" because there are too many popular tags and this disorganizes my bookmarks rather than the other way around. The other options are up to you. When you are ready, click import now and wait. The process should take about 1 minute for every 50 bookmarks you import. If you want to make your bookmarks public (everyone can see them, no login needed) than you have to go through and change all the imported bookmarks to public, one by one, but they work fine privately.

What exactly a google account gives you

Google Tools
Gmail - simple, fast, spam-blocking, email client with a 2 GB+ capacity and ability to chat (GTalk) with others while inside the environment.
Google Personalized Homepage - homepage environment with different modules for input from other sites and tools.
Google Documents and Spreadsheets - like Word and Excel, but inside the browser.
Google Page Creator - make your own websites.
Google Reader - feed reader
Google Notebook - take notes on the Internet.
Picasa Web Albums - publish pictures online
Google Calendar - manage dates, events, etc.
Google Webmaster Tools - make sure your website gets indexed and monitor its stats.
Google Search History - remembers previous Google searches.
Blogger - this

3rd-party
GSpace - Firefox extension that lets you upload files to your 2GB Google account.

A Google Account

The benefits of a Google account are not to be overlooked. It is effectively your gateway to the Internet. You create one simple account and receive over a dozen tools. Google offers mail (gmail), a personalized homepage, online text editor and storage, online spreadsheet editor and storage, simple website creation (googlepages), blogging (as you can see here), advertising solutions, an excellent feed reader, search history, bookmarks, personalized search, online file storage (via gspace), and more...

It is important to note that while Google often does not have the best of these tools (for example, its personalized homepage is considerably weaker than its competitors'), the integration makes it still well worth it. This list will continue to grow (google plans to release an online slideshow creation tool). Google's control of web search suggests a limitless expanse of tools. They do, after all, have the entire Internet as a resource.

So what are you waiting for, go here to get your free Google account now. Many of the later Internet "comfort configurations" will require a Google account.

If you are looking for some immediate things to do with your Google account you can read this article. It has some interesting approaches, but in the next few posts, I'll do things a slightly different way.