Get into the Beta Now
Stardock released a public beta for its new customization tool today. Curtains™ allows users to apply new styles along the lines of Dark Mode and Light to Windows® 10.
Taking advantage of the groundwork built to support light and dark mode, Curtains includes several new styles including Fluent, Cairo, and Crystal mode that enhance the look and feel of the Windows UI along with apps that already support light and dark mode.
"The advantage of using a program like Curtains is that it's essentially just adding new 'modes' to Windows," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. "It already works with high DPI displays and your existing programs. This gives users a little extra touch of customizing the Windows experience."
In addition, Curtains also includes styles that allow users to switch Windows to looking more like Windows XP or Windows 95 as well as alternative operating systems.
Users can easily create and share their own styles using the built in style editor. A Curtains style can change everything that Light and Dark mode can change, including the Start button, title bar buttons, and title bar coloring. It also supports tweaking gradients, shadows opacity, and hundreds of other small elements of the Windows GUI.
"Curtains makes it very easy for people to make their own styles," said Wardell. "There are a lot of customization features that have been buried in recent years such as font faces and sizes, detailed color choices and much more. Curtains allows people to adjust all of that and save it with their style easily.”
The beta of Curtains is now widely available for customers. To get into the beta, purchase Curtains for $9.99. You can also join the beta through Object Desktop and gain access to over a dozen other popular Windows customization apps.
Visit the Curtains webpage for more information.
Thanks
I would like as a suggest we can set shadow feature only on options page ( like shadowFX ) if we need without apply an entire style to titlebar .
It would be great and let users decide to adjust at will what we want
You should be able to achieve that easily by clicking create new, going to the shadows page in the editor and adjusting the shadows. But it seems there is a bug right now which breaks the frames.
This will be addressed in the next update.
I'll purchase soon.
Bought mine.
Purchased my copy today and I'm thrilled with the results. You hit a home run with this product , Stardock, thank-you.
-- Ace --
Thanks Neil to point this with advice . Achieve what I wanted
Another suggest if not possible ATM , it would be great to be able to set shadows to context menus ! ( for example desktop menus / taskbar menus ) Have never found a way to do this til now and hope curtains will get such feature and extend to whatever window class we 'd like but don't know it is hard to implement in curtains code .
A question - how does Curtains compare to WindowBlinds? Is it a complimentary product to WB, or stand alone product with its own set of features? Cause right now I frankly don't understand what Curtains does new/better than WB. Care to elaborate?
shouldn't it be in this list ?
Hello
If I purchase Curtains Public Beta, when released the final (non beta) version of Curtains, can I update to new release free?
Yes
Reply #8?
For me as a user and a little bit of skin tweaker, Curtains is lite version of Windowblinds. You can install both application at the same system but only one can be applied at a time. Curtains can change some expect of Windows but not as extensive as Windowblinds. Its great for new users, it is lite where applying themes take just little time. Give it a try.
Thank you,
BasjStardock Community Assistant.
For me, even though I liked WindowBlinds, I like how fast the skinning takes effect right away in Curtains. And to have a skin browser within the app, well that makes it easier. I am liking what I see right now and my mood always changes between light and dark. Want to see skinning of the FF and GC title bars being supported eventually.
Then again, the code in these browsers are subject to change all the time and may break Curtains or WB.
I'm just wondering, would it not be possible to set a gradient title bar by just selecting two colors? Instead of having to make an actual image file with the gradient.
I thought I was able to just select (two) colors or let them be auto selected based on wallpaper and then it would apply a gradient. From left to right or the other way around.
If I do have to make an image file myself, what dimensions should it have, what file type should it be saved as, etc... It would be nice to have a guide with some info.
You can make any size image as small as 4x2 pixel, but for gradient type, should make it longer, so that it will look better when it get stretch out. Too short, than banding might occurs. You will need two strips stack on-top of each other.
Something like this : Top for active bottom for inactive.
The best way to learn on how to skin is by looking how others do it.
Yeah, I don't want to learn how to skin. Clearly I was expecting something else from Curtains. I'll see how it evolves in the future.
We should have a pre build gradient titlebar style on the online tab pretty soon which you can then just pick accent colour and end colour from to get a gradient titlebar.
That's very good news!
Ok I can say it now - I love Curtains! You're really doing a nice job with this.
Click the Customize at the bottom and add Curtains.
That classic, and luna theme are missing currently fyi.
WBlinds: More control, more buggy
Curtains: Less control, less buggy
Simple as that.
WB tries to skin everything. Its and aggressive theme app: buttons, scrollbars, etc
Curtains just improve that ugly win10 interface, making it more user friendly.
In my case,
After 10 years of frustrations with WB, now am a loving fan of curtains
+1 for Luna.
Andyroo.....you have to put it in the list.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account