This is just an idea, and definitely one that will most likely NOT ever be made into one, just because it would take infinite amounts of work, but think about how AWESOME it would be to actually have something like this on your thumb drive! just think about it! isnt it awe inspiring?!?! anyways...it would be way too freaking hard to program to make it portable, if not impossible...but i though it would be cool to hear feedback about this idea.
Mr. O
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I dunno... Oh, I do love the idea for the challenge, if not the legal risks, but you can get pretty advanced skinning options with an alternate shell already...Then again, (a theory), you prolly could take it with you if you carried the reg entry...Do you know if it relies on any specific dll's, drivers, etc., besides the XP skinning engine? ( I know, the engine isn't crucial, but I don't have access to any pre-XP machines at the moment.)
I never thought of this, but it would be cool to have different themes on the college computers!
I'd love to see WB5 portable but I am afraid it's conenction with Windows 2000/XP is way to high to work portable ...
Embrace your dreams
Well, mabey not. Supposedly, WB5 and it's cousins are compatible with: "OS Compatibility: Windows XP and Windows Vista (when available). Windows 2000, ME, 98 users can use WindowBlinds Classic (v4.6)." (From Stardock.com)
In theory, it should not be too difficult to take it with you, even for older OS', though they may take a little bit of dedicated work. In a cursory inspection, I found only two dll's introduced by Window Blinds on my system (XP Home SP2), and both were located within the application folder itself. For the rest, they all seemed to belong to M$. I did not find any ocx or system file dependencies other than the XP skinning engine (cursory inspection), but that's not really a problem. Then there's the fact that it stores all of it's settings within the registry, but we have Reggistry Rapper for that ;).
What would seem to be the most obvious problem at this point would be the size. I have a lot of themes, toolbars, animations etc. installed, and they have brought my WB folder size alone to about 465 MB. Not very practical. I don't have another machine at the moment that I would be willing to test a 'portable' version on, because the ones here now are not expendable. (Gotta wait til June...Intel Mac!!! :D)
Then there is a legality issue. We would prolly only be able to supply the folder structure, program add-ons, and instructions, not the program itself, plus they would need to buy their own licences; and let me tell you, the trial version of WB was way to annoying to inflict on other people.
good to hear it's not so hard to make
- about files: also WB stores some data in Win dir but it should be easly moveable
- about size: well, when WB dir starts growing and growing people will have to remove some themes, personally I am using always one in a moment
- about legal: dammit
Embrace your dreams
what about releasing just a lanucher without WB files ?
Embrace your dreams
or maybe some other program that is similar, and make a launcher for that. style xp is a good one. then again, not free.