The last couple of weeks, I have been working incredibly hard on a tool to create Vista Style Builder. Vista Style Builder supports everything that is needed to create Visual Styles for Vista:

• Import and export images
• Change, add or remove properties
• Import and export STREAM images
• Compile into a totally new MsStyles-file

In this post I will highlight some details of Vista Style Builder (VSB) which show how much easier this application makes it to edit MsStyles.

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With Vista, Microsoft redesigned Windows Explorer a lot. One of the biggest changes was the removal of the customizable toolbar. Up to Windows XP, adding or removing the buttons that were displayed in Explorer was a simple chore.
With Vista, this customization ability is gone; the toolbar is replaced by a so-called green shaded “commandbar,” and none of it can be customized unless you are willing to take a dive into the registry.

In this post, I will show you a way to add custom buttons — like in the above image — to the commandbar by adding items to the registry. Unfortunately, not all buttons (e.g. New Folder) are possible via this way.

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Goodbye Resource Hackers and Hex-Editors. Hello Visual Style Builders.

Yes that’s right, Builders! This week, AeroXperience was the first to get exclusive previews from Andreas Verhoeven’s Vista Style Builder.

I happen to be one of the fortunate people testing this application and giving feedback to Andreas mostly from an End-users Perspective. This Application does everything we could do before plus loads more. Whereas before we could only see numbers for images, now we will be looking at descriptions or, at the very least, class names. Instead of Hex-editing, we can insert/edit class properties using a language we can one day understand. At the moment, most of us will not understand what each Visual Style class does as they have not been publicly documented, so this is where I hope to step in and help.

I don’t want to Speak for Andreas as I am sure you will be hearing from him soon, but from what I gather, his plan is to make an application that the end-user can understand and use easily. Due to the large content of .msstyles, that will not be an easy thing to do. At the moment Avestyle is a Work in progress, but Andreas worked hard to make the application as usable and functional as possible. The actual core of the application works beautifully, but the UI is still in the process of being built. In the early builds, the Vista classes will be displayed in the application with the class name and a description.I am currently researching these classes to organize the Treeview in the application in a way where the user can find what he/she is looking for.

So Instead of researching image numbers and variant hex-edits, I will be focusing my attention on researching Vista class names and property names. This will most likely be more useful to us all as I am really confident that AveStyle is the way forward. Look out for more blog’s right here at AeroXperience about the new Customizing possibilities avestyle has to offer.

www.vistastylebuilder.com | Aves Pages | AeroXperience Forum Discussion

If anybody else would like to start getting familiar with class and property names, you will find the following links useful.

• Vista Visual Style Class names
• Property Identifiers

This is my first blog post, so I am just going to take a minute to introduce myself. I joined AeroXperience mostly for tips and tricks on customizing Vista. It didn’t take long before I realised that customizing Vista was not an easy thing to do. For me, AeroXperience has always been the place to discuss this. So, with no builders to make visual styles, our only tools have been Resource Hackers and Hex-Editors.

After I created a few Visual styles and struggled with the graphic design side of things, I turned my efforts to researching and documenting my methods for Resource Hacking and Hex-Editing. Resource Hacking is where it all starts. The first time I opened the .msstyle with Restorator, I did not know where to begin. All those image numbers meant nothing to me, but 12 months of research for much of what we need has already been documented.

In October 2007 Stardock released their solution to Customizing Vista; WindowsBlinds 6.0 adds full support for skinning Windows Vista as well as applying a host of new special effects to skins (blurred glass, advanced animations, etc.) Users also can create their very own WindowBlinds skins using SkinStudio 6 Pro.

However Stardocks solution does not suit everyone and In the last 12 months, skinners using the hacking methods have been documenting what they find; the vista customization community has really pulled together to share expertise.

UxTheme Patches: (To Date)

• Raphael’s uxTheme Patches
• Vista Glazz
• PsycoB’s Style Selector

Tools:

• ResHacker (Resource Hacker)
• Restorator 2007 (Resource Hacker)
• Mirkes Tiny Hexer (Hex-Editor)
• XVI32 Hex Editor (Hex-Editor)
• Alpha Image Converter
• Png Alpha Fixer

Documentation: (Threads and Tutorials)

• How to make Aero.msstyles compatible pngs
• How to make a Visual Style for Windows Vista
• The Resource Research Thread
• Aero Resource ID’s (Wiki)
• Decimal to Hex (Calc.exe)
• Hex-Editng (general)
• Hex-Editng (Margins)