Within Windows

UxStyle Core Beta bits now available

Rafael — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:50:14 +0000

In March, I announced that my unsigned theme patch-less vision was being realized. Today, I’m happy to let everyone know beta bits of UxStyle Core are now available for public testing!

UxStyle Core does not currently have a theme manager or even a UI. UxStyle Core is exactly what it sounds like – the absolutely bare minimum (core) needed to enable third-party theme usage. Nothing more, nothing less. Later in the beta, we’ll push out a “bundle”, containing both the core software and a theme manager developed by our close partners.

Install UxStyle Core. Download some themes. Give them a whirl, everything should “just work”. Let us know how it went, bad or good, in the forums.

Thank God, no more patching.

OEMs, partners can’t brand Windows 7 Starter either

Rafael — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:35:17 +0000

Back in March, I wrote about a sick-joke of a limitation in Windows 7 Starter edition preventing users from changing the wallpaper. The limitation was imposed by the use of a technical licensing policy named ChangeDesktopBackground-Enabled and re-enforced by a SHA-256 hash of the static image, to prevent img0.jpg hot-swapping.

Given Windows 7 Starter’s applicability to the rising netbook market, it was presumed that Starter would branded by OEMs and/or mobile carriers (like Verizon) like any other Windows SKU. This is no longer a valid presumption.

Here’s the official scoop, from Microsoft:

In Windows Starter Edition, OEMs must not modify or replace the Windows-provided background for Windows Welcome, the logon screen, or the desktop.

Yikes.

Digging through the recent leaked builds, I have also confirmed that Microsoft has modified the SHA-256 hash, indicating a new (and now permanent) Starter wallpaper is now in place. Due to the low quality of the recent leaks, however, I can’t show you what it looks like. My guess? The new humongous Windows logo wallpaper, shrunk down of course.

(Thankfully, UxStyle, to be pushed out as a public beta this weekend (hopefully), will feature the ability to bypass this wallpaper restriction.)

Super-nerd Corner: The new hash is 08601919CA548F77C5B0ECB49E9B610AF188CA8227CF0F2DA5D99473D80090DC

Tweak your Windows 7 Logon UI “button set”

Rafael — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:56:16 +0000

Back in March, I wrote about how you could easily customize the background of a Windows 7 logon screen. One problem you may have run into is that lighter wallpapers affect button and text readability. To overcome this issue, Microsoft added the ability to change the active “button set” to a couple of alternatives.

Comparison of Windows 7 Logon UI “Button Sets” (from left to right: default, set one, set two)

To change your button set, simply jump to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI and add a DWORD value named ButtonSet. The supported integer values range from 0 to 2, with each value defined below.

0 – Lighter text shadows, darker (more opaque) buttons (Windows default)
1 – Darker text shadows, lighter (more translucent) buttons (for lighter backgrounds)
2 – No text shadows, opaque buttons (for darker backgrounds)

UAC, UAC, go away, come again some other day

Rafael — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:46:22 +0000

I was reading Mark Russinovich’s latest UAC article and Long Zheng’s latest scribblings and… developed quite the headache. Honestly, I’m tired of trying to sort out what UAC really is and don’t care anymore. UAC has become this gigantic undocumented blob of an idea that is explained (differently) on-demand every single time, to fit some marketing agenda du jour, and I’m sick of it. Mark jumps up and down about how UAC isn’t a security boundary and how we’re stupid for thinking such, yet Microsoft’s own sites pitch otherwise. Whatever, guys.

Here’s my million dollar question: If UAC wasn’t designed to ultimately protect us from anything, why does its icon resemble a damn shield?

Inside the Touch Pack for Windows 7: Blackboard

Rafael — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:41:41 +0000

Third to be touched upon is Microsoft Blackboard, a pseudo-physics game (reminiscent of The Incredible Machine and featuring graphics gaspingly similar to Crayon Physics) in which you use gestures to rotate and resize various objects to get balloons to explode from a light bulb’s hot touch. Like Rebound this game was developed by our friends at Fuel Games. As a huge bonus to those that can’t pass the first level, I’ve included the solve below.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Digging through the technical innards of the Touch Pack games is a rather tedious and fruitless process… but for blog post series completion purposes, Blackboard is yet another Win32 application tying into the usual DirectX and PhysX APIs, requiring shader support for high fidelity, etc. What’s new here, however, is mention of a level editor. Lets hope a) it materializes and b) is as easy to use as Tinker’s editor was.