Windows themes: the end of the rainbow

According to legend, anyone lucky enough to find the end of the rainbow might discover a leprechaun’s hoard of hidden gold. Although we can’t guarantee a pot of gold, you can bring the fleeting magic of rainbows to your Windows desktop; the ephemeral colors in our new theme arc over landscapes from Iceland to Hawaii, and are even captured in the mist over rocky waterfalls, or as seen from an airplane soaring above the clouds.

Speaking of leprechauns, last year I published the Ireland theme in time for Saint Patrick’s Day, and although it isn’t new it’s still a great theme. Give it a try – personally I think it’s much better than green beer.

Our other newest theme is a silent sonata of Moonlight, as seen in skies from Scotland to Japan.

The other themes we’ve published recently feature the works of three photographers participating in the open call. The first one, from photographer Ian R. D. Johnson, celebrates the sunlit beauty of rural landscapes in South Australia.

Australia is also the subject of this theme from photographer Anton Gorlin, with a focus on shorelines, waterways, and sand dunes in New South Wales and Tasmania.

Last but definitely not least is Dreamgarden, showcasing the mysteriously impressionistic works of Russian photographer Christina Manchenko. I have seen a lot of incredible photography during the years I’ve worked on the Personalization Gallery, and a lot of excellent photographers have submitted images to the open call, but in my opinion this theme is really something special. It’s my new personal favorite, and is on my PCs both at work and at home. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

Since the Windows 8 Consumer Preview recently released, I just want to remind everyone that all of our Windows 7 themes also work in Windows 8.

On the other hand, if you have an older version of Windows, you can always use one of our wallpapers. We’ve published many new ones over the past several weeks, including these:

   

   

That wraps up the recent additions to the gallery, but we’ll have a lot more in upcoming weeks… so keep on visiting the Windows Personalization Gallery for new Windows 7 themes and wallpapers.

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Windows 8 Themes Not Compatible With Windows 7 Themes

Microsoft in a new blog post on the Windows Experience Blog clarified the company’s intention to go forward with the way themes have been provided recently. Windows 7 users may remember the changes the company made to themes in their operating system. The fundamental change made themes distributable, and as a result incompatible with previous Windows operating systems.

While it it possible to extract the theme contents to make use of the wallpaper images they contain, there is no option to install the themes directly in Vista, XP or another pre-Windows 7 operating system.

Themes get new improvements and features in Windows 8, namely auto color settings, panoramic theme support and better dual monitor support in general.

The auto coloring feature changes the color of the desktop class and taskbar color to the dominant color of the background image.  You can read more about the feature here: Windows 8 Aero Auto-Colorization

The feature is optional though, and Windows 8 users who prefer to stick with a select color can do so as well.

Panoramic themes are themes optimized for dual monitor systems. They are designed to display a panoramic image on both monitors. They can be installed on single-monitor systems as well, in which case the images will be cropped on the left and right so that only the center will be visible.

The second dual monitor feature is support for different wallpaper images if a regular-sized theme is installed. Windows 8 will automatically display two wallpaper images from the theme instead of the same image on both monitors.

Because of those changes, Windows 8 themes are not compatible with Windows 7 operating systems. The other way round works though. Windows 8 users can install Windows 7 themes on their system just fine.

Check out the full post here.

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Windows 8 themes: panoramas, auto color, and more

You may have heard that Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released last week! We also published a theme that showcases some of the new desktop theming features available in Windows 8.

First of all, I just want to clarify one point – all of our Windows 7 themes also work in Windows 8. But the reverse is not true. Themes created in the Windows 8 format will not work in Windows 7, because Windows 8 introduces a few new desktop personalization features that aren’t supported in Windows 7, and the file format is different.

The new feature I am most excited about is the ability to create and use panoramic themes that extend a single background across two monitors. I don’t know how many of you are running multimon, but now we can stretch a single panoramic image across both displays.

You do need to have each monitor set the same. If the displays are different sizes or have different resolution settings, the panorama will not automatically extend across both monitors. Instead, a different image will appear in each display.

Incidentally, you don’t need to have a dual monitor setup to use a theme that contains panoramic images. If you have only one monitor, each image will be cropped to the center. So those of you without multimon can still enjoy the images in the Windows Personalization Gallery’s very first Windows 8 theme, Nightfall and Starlight.

The next new feature is also aimed at users with dual monitor setups: Themes containing regular-size (non-panoramic) images will display a different image in each monitor, instead of just duplicating the same image, as occurs in Windows 7. Windows 8 actually does this automatically, even with Windows 7 themes.

The last new feature is auto color. Windows 8 themes created with the auto color setting will smoothly and automatically shift the Windows desktop glass and taskbar color to match the dominant color in whichever background image is currently being displayed. I really like this feature because it means I won’t have to struggle to try to find one single glass color that goes with every image in a set!

I hope you’ll enjoy trying out the new desktop personalization features in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. And keep visiting the Windows Personalization Gallery for new Windows themes and wallpapers – I add more almost every week.

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