1.) Enable Hidden Aurora BootScreen in Windows Vista
Microsoft decided to hide a more visually appealing boot screen that can easily be enabled with very little trouble.
Here’s the hidden one, called “Aurora”
All you have to do is type msconfig into the start menu search box, and hit enter.
Click the Boot tab, and then check the “No GUI boot” checkbox.
Hit OK and reboot the computer. You should see the new boot screen immediately.
Source @ Wincustomise
2.)Sidebar Styler
Wan a stylish sidebar? Here u go Sidebar Styler
3.)Make Vista Notification Balloon Tips Transparent
Notification balloon tips or pop-ups from Windows Vista notification area or system tray has a solid background just like in previous version of Windows XP. The solid background color balloon tip looks so ugly and ‘unVista’, especially when desktop theme is set as Windows Aero with glass transparency effect, just like shown in figure below.
How about turning the balloon tip popup to looks like something like figure below, with transparent background and blur effect, which once also appeared in Windows Longhorn Server beta.
Glass Toast for Vista is a small utility to display notification messages in transparent glass effect with masking and blurring ability.
Features of Glass Toast include:
* Intercept notification balloons and replace the pop-ups with a glass toast (style as how it’s displayed in Windows Server LongHorn build 4000 series). Only mouse over popups in taskbar will be left untouched.
* Glass toast notifications give the same response as real balloons (eg. click here on ballon will initiate the same action with glass toasts).
* Make stuff a bit prettier.
* Support skins - skinnable for different balloon style.
* Skin picker.
* Silence command line argument.
* Support dropshadow (unshadowed PNG image file is included).
* Customization options.
* Masking the blur.
* Works in Windows XP too, beside Windows Vista.
Glass Toast is skinnable, where users can customize how the transparent balloon tips will look like. Here’re some points to note if you intends to create your own skin for Glass Toast. Currently in Glass Toast, all offset values are hardcoded, and all others are derived from bitmap sizes. There is also inefficiency in DWM blurring, as such, mask.bmp is used for masking out the blur on parts that should be 100% transparent, with white for invisible and black for visible in the mask.bmp. Beside, in some applications that does not use the correct flags, there will be compatible problems with GlassToast.
Download Glass Toast (version 3) Here
To run GlassToast.exe everytime when Windows starts, simply add it to the Startup program group. It can be used with “-silence” switch that will make the starting balloon not popup. It comes with some default skins style such as Longhorn, Longhorn with no shadow and beta1 style toasts.
and now..
4.)Make Vista Home dreamscene
Now a days all of you look excited about Windows Vista Ultimate DreamScene which will allow you to play high-definition video content as your wallpaper. But do you know that, you can play video as a wallpaper on your Vista Premium or Basic version or even on Windows XP also?
Download VLC Playerand open any video in it.
Right click on the video and click on "Wallpaper"
That's it. You have an animated wallpapers now
For removing it from the taskbar, go to Preferences -> Interface -> Main Interface -> wxWidgets and uncheck Taskbar and enable Systray icon
Credit : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/439741
Andrian Khoo
Microsoft decided to hide a more visually appealing boot screen that can easily be enabled with very little trouble.
Here’s the hidden one, called “Aurora”
All you have to do is type msconfig into the start menu search box, and hit enter.
Click the Boot tab, and then check the “No GUI boot” checkbox.
Hit OK and reboot the computer. You should see the new boot screen immediately.
Source @ Wincustomise
2.)Sidebar Styler
Wan a stylish sidebar? Here u go Sidebar Styler
3.)Make Vista Notification Balloon Tips Transparent
Notification balloon tips or pop-ups from Windows Vista notification area or system tray has a solid background just like in previous version of Windows XP. The solid background color balloon tip looks so ugly and ‘unVista’, especially when desktop theme is set as Windows Aero with glass transparency effect, just like shown in figure below.
How about turning the balloon tip popup to looks like something like figure below, with transparent background and blur effect, which once also appeared in Windows Longhorn Server beta.
Glass Toast for Vista is a small utility to display notification messages in transparent glass effect with masking and blurring ability.
Features of Glass Toast include:
* Intercept notification balloons and replace the pop-ups with a glass toast (style as how it’s displayed in Windows Server LongHorn build 4000 series). Only mouse over popups in taskbar will be left untouched.
* Glass toast notifications give the same response as real balloons (eg. click here on ballon will initiate the same action with glass toasts).
* Make stuff a bit prettier.
* Support skins - skinnable for different balloon style.
* Skin picker.
* Silence command line argument.
* Support dropshadow (unshadowed PNG image file is included).
* Customization options.
* Masking the blur.
* Works in Windows XP too, beside Windows Vista.
Glass Toast is skinnable, where users can customize how the transparent balloon tips will look like. Here’re some points to note if you intends to create your own skin for Glass Toast. Currently in Glass Toast, all offset values are hardcoded, and all others are derived from bitmap sizes. There is also inefficiency in DWM blurring, as such, mask.bmp is used for masking out the blur on parts that should be 100% transparent, with white for invisible and black for visible in the mask.bmp. Beside, in some applications that does not use the correct flags, there will be compatible problems with GlassToast.
Download Glass Toast (version 3) Here
To run GlassToast.exe everytime when Windows starts, simply add it to the Startup program group. It can be used with “-silence” switch that will make the starting balloon not popup. It comes with some default skins style such as Longhorn, Longhorn with no shadow and beta1 style toasts.
and now..
4.)Make Vista Home dreamscene
Now a days all of you look excited about Windows Vista Ultimate DreamScene which will allow you to play high-definition video content as your wallpaper. But do you know that, you can play video as a wallpaper on your Vista Premium or Basic version or even on Windows XP also?
Download VLC Playerand open any video in it.
Right click on the video and click on "Wallpaper"
That's it. You have an animated wallpapers now
For removing it from the taskbar, go to Preferences -> Interface -> Main Interface -> wxWidgets and uncheck Taskbar and enable Systray icon
Credit : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/439741
Andrian Khoo
