Take 1: VistaGlazz

Haven’t you always wanted more themes for your computer? I mean, sure the one with the little “start orb” is quite interesting, but admit it; it gets old, fast. I wasn’t exactly “sick” of it yet, but the colour scheme was getting me a bit down (well, there’s just too many dark colours!). Not to mention the maximized windows weren’t see-through (which I expected out of Aero, the new Vista theme/GUI).

Introducing: Vistaglazz! A program that will easily patch your uxtheme.dll and also install a “glass” .msstyle (theme file name) into your computer.

Now, I definitely remember trying to help a friend of mine patch his uxtheme.dll on his Windows XP computer. After all, he was quite excited after he installed the new Microsoft theme (the Zune one, *sigh*) and was keen to try out more. Alas, due either my poor instruction or his lack of experience, he was unable to patch it successfully.

If he had Windows Vista, I would certainly introduce him to VistaGlazz. But, he doesn’t; maybe you do! Well, after installing VistaGlazz and agreeing to the terms and conditions, you are literally a few clicks away from patching your uxtheme.dll successfully and installing the new .msstyle. Not to mention you can now use third-party themes (yes, those are free).

That’s the main screen. Quite self-explanatory; if you encounter any problems, just hover your cursor over a picture and a little tooltip will appear telling you what that option is.

That’s the option to select to change your msstyle to the clear one. Errr….actually, you might want/have to do the next step before this one.

Last but certainly not least (actually, this might be your first step) is patching the uxtheme.dll. It’s a vital file for your computer, so I wouldn’t have trusted myself to do it (actually, I’ve failed many many times). But, VistaGlazz does it with ease and also makes a backup in case you want to un-patch it.

VistaGlazz is a pretty minimalistic program. But, it was only used like once, and I’ve neglected it from then on. I still appreciate it though, and thought it would be nice to share with you Windows Vista users out there.

And with that, I will take my leave. Until next time, sayonara!

For more information in a more comprehensive article on VistaGlazz, visit my second take.
Download URL: http://www.download.com/VistaGlazz/3000-2341-10671199.html?part=dl-VistaGlazz&subj=dl&tag=button