The full DesktopX User Manual is now available as a PDF manual (Adobe Acrobat). The manual is over 50 pages long and gives users a thorough explanation of how DesktopX works, how to create things with it, and how you can put it to use. DesktopX is part of Object Desktop. Stardock is in the process of creating PDF manuals of all the major components of Object Desktop in preparation for the Object Destop 2004 CD snapshot (which will be available to all Object Desktop users).

Every wanted to put cool objects and widgets on your desktop? How about make some yourself? You can do this and much more with DesktopX, a program that makes it easy for end users to completely redesign their desktops to look, feel, and function however they want. The Media Guide goes over what is possible to do with DesktopX. DesktopX 2 is a free download at http://www.desktopx.net. The Media guide is at http://www.desktopx.net/media

IconDeveloper is a new program that is part of Object Desktop that makes it incredibly easy to create your own Windows icons. All those .PNG files (or JPG or BMP, etc.) can quickly be turned into standard Windows icons of various sizes. Visit the IconDeveloper home page to learn more about it. IconDeveloper is expected to go 1.0 before the end of the month.

Object Desktop 2004 Announced Desktop Enhancement suite provides unprecedented ability to transform the look and feel of Windows For Immediate Release: Contact: Bradley Wardell bwardell@stardock.com 734-762-0687, x226 Canton MI (TuesdayOctober 21st, 2003) – Stardock announced Object Desktop 2004 today. Object Desktop is a suite of programs that are designed to enhance the base feature set of Windows while allowing complete control over its look, feel, and function. Stardo...

Stardock is in the process of migrating it's web servers to a new ISP and on new servers. To facilitate this migration we are planning on having some down time. On Wednesday, October 8th at approximately 7:00 AM EST we will need to shut down several of our servers during that time. The outage is expected to last approximately 4 hours. The following sites and applications will be affected: www.wincustomize.com www.galciv.com www.joeuser.com Stardock Central Thank you for your ...

This month marks the 10 year anniversary from when Stardock was incorporated. Back in 1993, college student Brad Wardell, looking for a way to pay for school, founded the company. In an article that looks back over the 10 year history of Stardock, Wardell talks about the highs and lows in a year by year round up. URL: https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=328

FileFront has conducted a battery of tests to determine the effects that WindowBlinds has on the performance of PC games. The results are pretty interesting and you can see them for yourselves at the FileFront site. Definitely worth checking out.

This month's Stardock TV takes a look at the GUI Olympics, widget making, DirectGUI and how to do other really cool things to your Windows desktop. Check it out!

Two new utilities have been released for WindowBlinds that can help users and skinners get even more out of the popular windows GUI skinning program. The first one, WBExec, was developed by one of the top plug-in authors in the software industry - MadIce. It enables skinners to add new title bar buttons that can open up menus and launch all kinds of different programs including the Start menu, Most recent files, Drive menu, and much more. For skinners looking to make visual styles tha...

Blog Navigator is a fully featured Internet article reader that reads in RSS feeds (most major sites have RSS feeds these days) and displays them in a clean interface to make it very easy and fast to read through tons of news. There are other RSS readers out there already, but Blog Navigator has a few features that, when combined, make it really stand out: 1) It automatically pre-fetches articles. That is, it caches articles you haven't read yet so that when you get to them, it's a...

DirectSkin is a programming extension for software developers to easily make their existing applications fully skinnable. It comes in the form of an OCX that along with a couple lines of lines of coded added by the developer enables that application to make use of a specific visual style on their program. DirectSkin has been used by dozens of companies to deliver branded application or to enable their application to have a Windows XP look and feel on non-XP platforms. The advantage D...

Check out this article on JoeUser.com for some details on the upcoming beta of The Political Machine...

The Goodyear Theme Manager includes themes for Goodyear’s new Assurance featuring TripleTred Technology™ and Assurance featuring ComforTred Technology™ tires. Each theme has a WindowBlinds visual style, one or more wallpapers, desktop Icon Packager set and the distinctive Goodyear branded Wingfoot mouse cursor powered by CursorXP technology. The themes were designed by the artists at the Buzzwerks Interactive Marketing, a division of Hitchcock, Fleming and Associates (HFA) Interactive Ma...

Stardock TV lets you see how you can do cool things with your desktop in video form. This month's episode focuses on IconPackager but also touches on how you can use Object Desktop to create the ultra-minimalistic looking desktop. Check it out!

If you already have an active subscription to ObjectDesktop.net you can now get Object Desktop 2004 on CD for free other than shipping/media costs.