Kitrax’s guide to adding Vista looks/features to Windows XP

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Tired of the look and lack of features in Windows XP, but not ready to make the jump to Vista? Or perhaps you love XP, but just want to add a few features that Vista has. Well, this guide will walk you though the steps to give XP (or Windows 2000) the look and feel of Vista. Some people might not want all the features covered in this guide, so I’m breaking them down in to “projects” for added convince. If you don’t want a certain feature, then skip the project that covers it – all projects are independent of each other.

Below are screenshots taken by me of the various programs listed below:
Windows Blinds
The 'Arrow' skin
Desktop Sidebar
Copernic Desktop Search
Vista Start Menu
Alt-Tab Replacement & Visual Task Tips


Project #1 – ‘The Vista Look’

The first thing you notice about Windows Vista is how the desktop looks. Well, you can add the same (or similar) look to XP by using Windows Blinds. The program is simple to use and offers hundreds of ‘skins’ to choose from. The first step is to download Windows Blinds. Hop on over to http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/ to get your free trail. If you end up liking windows blinds, you can buy the full version for $20.

Now, Windows Blinds comes with a few skins built in to it. None of them were appealing to me since my goal was to get a skin that was as close to Vista as possible. This is where WB gets fun. Hop on over to http://www.wincustomize.com/Skins.aspx?LibID=1 to start searching for skins. While there is a skin that looks very similar to Vista (Black Vista Basic), I didn’t like all the extra buttons added to the title bar of every single window. Instead, I decided to go with the ‘Arrow’ skin. Here’s the link: http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=5347&libid=1 and here’s a screenshot of how it looks: http://skins6.wincustomize.com/MikeB314/wb/5347.jpg

Ok, once you have the skin you want, you need to add it to Windows Blinds. This is done by clicking on the ‘Add Skin’ link in the main window of WB. Once you’ve added the skin, you can click on it (scroll left or right if it’s not visible). By clicking on the skin, you can see a small preview. From the preview window click on ‘Apply this skin now’. On the left side of WB are the several options you can change to the currently applied skin. Feel free to browse through these options to tweak the skin to your liking. When you’re done, make sure to click ‘Apply my changes’ in the lower left corner.

That’s pretty much it for Windows Blinds. It’s fairly easy to use, and the end result in a Window’s desktop that is totally customized.


Project #2 – ‘Down to the Vista Docks’

Another thing you notice about Vista’s desktop is the side bar on the right side of the screen. The folks at Microsoft finally added a feature to windows that Google, Yahoo!, and others have been doing for awhile now – they added widgets – small applications that can add RSS feeds (i.e. news headlines from MSNBC), check your stocks, check your email, and about a dozen of other things.

If you have products from either Yahoo! or Google, you might want skip this section…unless you’re looking to change products.

Anyway, for the purpose of this guide, I’m to go with the Desktop Sidebar. Hop on over to http://www.desktopsidebar.com/ to get your free copy of the software. Setup is pretty standard, so once you’re done you’ll have the Sidebar docked to the right hand side of your screen. There are several skins that come pre-loaded with the Sidebar, none of them look much like Vista’s, but I am quite fond of the Royale Metallic Compact skin. If you don’t like any of the pre-loaded skins, you can go to: http://www.desktopsidebar.com/fileforum.php and download more skins.

To change the options for the Sidebar, right click on the Sidebar and select ‘Options’. Within the options menu, you can tweak the sidebar to your liking. Once you’re done, you can also right click on a panel to add a new panel, remove the panel you clicked on, change the panel properties, or undock the panel.

Not keen on loosing desktop real estate? Me neither, so I choose to auto-hide my Sidebar. You can change the auto-hide settings to add a delay on how long it takes before the Sidebar appears or hides itself. When hidden, all you see is about 5 pixels of the sidebar along the right side of the screen. Moving your mouse to the far right will cause it to appear with a second or two.

You can configure the Sidebar to only show the panels that you want, so spend some time looking though the selection. As you can see from the screenshots, my Sidebar has the current time and date; my local weather scrolling through current conditions, and a day in advanced forecast; an analog clock; a stock ticker; a system performance monitor; my RSS feed from MSNBC.com (top headlines only); WinAMP controls, and the Copernic Desktop Search (we’ll get to that later). By hovering your mouse over a panel, it will expand to show more details.


Project #3 – Desktop Searching

(Note, if you have a desktop search program, such as Google Desktop, you’ll probably want to skip this section, since you already have this feature)

Need to find a file, but forgot where you saved it to, or perhaps you forgot its name. Well, XP’s search is the way most people find things on their computer. Why? Because it’s there. It can take ages to find something you need, and if you need to search for the same, or similar item again, you have to wait all over again. Hop on over to http://www.copernic.com/ to get the free tool.

That’s where Copernic Desktop Search comes in. This free tool, catalogs any drive you have connected, in a similar way Google’s web crawlers find information on websites. Once Copernic finishes its initial indexing, it knows where everything on your drives are, and can display the results about a second. To prove this, I wanted Copernic to find every file with a .jpg extension. So, I gave it a “wild card”, followed by ‘.jpg’. Before I even finished typing ‘.jpg’, I already had search results being displayed on the fly. Once I had finished typing, it took less then 2 seconds by the way, Copernic had found 2,835 files. Sorting through all those files would take forever, so Copernic added the ability to refine the search on the fly.

Another cool thing about Copernic, is the ability to add a plug-in to the Desktop Sidebar, so you can search for files directly from the Desktop Sidebar. Hop on over to http://www.desktopsidebar.com/fileforum.php to get the plug-in.


Project #4 – The Start Menu

Another nice feature in Vista is the new start menu. At the bottom the menu is the search bar. Start typing the name of the program you want, and it starts displaying the results as you type. A very handy feature if you have dozens of sub-menus to navigate through to get to the program you need. Well, now there’s Vista Start Menu 2.3 SE. Hop on over to http://www.vistastartmenu.com/index.html to get it.

As you can see from the screenshots, Vista Start Menu 2.3 is quite large, but makes finding what you want easier. It adds the same search feature that Vista’s own start menu has, but adds customization you can’t get in XP or Vista. The search bar is more robust too. If you type ‘calc’ and press enter, the start menu will close and the windows calculator will open. If you repeat the process again, but press CTRL + Enter, it will search Google for ‘calc’. Pressing ALT + Enter will search your hard drive for a file named ‘calc’. Pretty handy if you ask me.

Vista Start Menu 2.3 SE does have some extra customization, but the majority is left for the Pro version. The free version lets you select which power option buttons are displayed in the start menu, the size of the menu and sub-menus, and how the program runs.

Personally, I like the Windows XP style start menu with the Arrow skin applied using Windows Blinds. Vista Start Menu 2.3 SE is nice and offers some great features, but in my opinion; a start menu that large, an extra tray icon, and an additional application that starts with Windows isn’t worth it. Call me old fashioned, but I’ve been using the ‘Windows Classic’ start menu until just recently. Compared to the ‘XP Style’ Vista Start Menu 2.3 SE is huge…but hey, some people might like that better.


Project #5 – Switching out Alt + Tab

Most people know that if you have several applications open at the same time, the easiest way to switch between them, is to press Alt + Tab. By holding down the Alt button after the initial tap of the Tab button will bring up a small box with the icons of the open applications for you to choose from. Just one problem…what if you have several windows open of the same program? All you would see is several icons from the same application. Well…Windows decided to release a PowerToy (an unofficial add-on made by Microsoft) called Alt-Tab Replacement. You can get it, along with all the other PowerToys for Windows XP here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx . As you can see from the screenshots, this PowerToy adds a small preview to each of the applications’ icons, so you’ll know exactly which one to open. One thing to consider is the fact that the Alt-Tab replacement is affected by any applied skin, which could make the description hard to read…but then again, you still have the icon and the small preview, so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.


Project #6 – Task tips

Yet another Vista feature is the ability to see small preview of the programs in your Task Bar. Simply hover your mouse over an applications’ tab, and a small window with a live picture of that application will appear. Well, to add this feature to XP, all you need is Visual Task Tips. Hop on over to http://www.visualtasktips.com/ to get it. It’s a small program that’s easy to install and use. It eave lets to customize how big of a preview window pops up. IF the default is too big or too small, simply use your mouse’s scroll wheel to adjust the window size.


Conclusion

One last thing to do is clean up the taskbar. Several of the programs in this guide place an icon in the taskbar for user “convince”. Well, to save some space on the taskbar and make your desktop look a little cleaner, you can set any icon to ‘always show’, ‘hide when inactive’, or ‘always hide’.
First, right click on the taskbar and select ‘Properties’. Then in the “Notification” area, make sure to select the ‘Hide inactive icons’ box, and then click the ‘Customize’ button. Inside the window that pops up is where to select one of the 3 options I mentioned above. I like the have everything set to ‘always hide’ except for the icons that actually show me useful information (i.e. my WiFi monitor).

Well, that’s it. Your computer should have a totally new look and feel to it. If you end up not liking any of the programs you installed they are all easily removed and you can get your old windows look back easily. Remember, this guide was made to give people the look and feel of Windows Vista, but using these programs with different skins, you can achieve a look that’s totally unique to you.

Thanks for reading this guide, and remember, just because Windows Vista has a lot of new features, doesn't mean that you have to get Vista to have them too!

If you like this guide, and would like to see the other guides I've written, head on over to Kitrax's Place and click on the 'Guides' link.

[ August 02, 2007, 11:58: Message edited by: Kitrax ]

 

i don't want to reply an one-word-er, so i have to type all these, but essentially,

good!

 

I used vista transformation package to turn my pc look and feel like vista. but eventually uninstalled the package to increase performace on my low end laptop. But it seems to me that you have several indepenent tools for such thing. Really liked vista look *gathers money to buy super-laptop with vista*

 

With everything installed and running on my laptop, I haven't noticed any performance drop.

With my new virus scanner (see my update in my anti-virus guide), along with all the add-ons running, I *still* have more free RAM than when I had McAfee's latest version of their Security Center installed.

I installed Windows Blinds, Desktop Sidebar, Alt-Tab Replacement, and Copernic on my brother's 6 year-old laptop (900MHz CPU with 256MB of RAM), and I didn't notice much of a performance hit. If he decided to add more RAM, that small performance hit would probably vanish.

If I were you, I would wait until MS releases SP1 for Vista. That's one of the main reasons I wrote this guide, it's for people who aren't willing to upgrade to Vista, but want some of it's looks/features.