Windows Experience Blog : Customization

Personalize Windows 7 with the Personalization Gallery on Windows.com

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:37:27 GMT

One of my favorite things about Windows 7 is how you can customize it and make it your own. Our personalization features give Windows 7 the ability to be as individual and to reflect who you are! Adding to this is a new Personalization Gallery on Windows.com, launched on Oct 22nd. With Windows 7, we’ve made it easy for people to customize their PC with different themes. Each theme has a custom background (or a series of backgrounds that shuffle), different Aero Glass colors, and sounds. Not only will you find Windows 7 themes on the Personalization Gallery, you’ll also find desktop backgrounds and desktop gadgets to download as well.

For the first time ever, Microsoft is working with other companies to enable them to offer their customers a branded experience on the desktop through Windows 7. The effort is part of a pilot program running until October 2010 by Microsoft Advertising. As of today, you will find themes from 7 global advertisers with well-known brands such as Coca Cola, Ducati, Ferrari, Infiniti, Pepsi, Porsche and Twentieth Century Fox on the Personalization Gallery for download. So if you are a fan of one of these brands, check them out! For more on this effort from Microsoft Advertising, see this blog post.

We’re also offering new Microsoft branded themes too – including the Xbox game Gears of War, Zune, and Bing!

So what if you want to make your own theme? No problem – it’s very easy. Click here for a step-by-step outline (and video) on how to customize and create your own themes. Once you’ve created your own theme, you can share it with you friends and family on Windows Live SkyDrive.

For you geeks out there wanting to know more about how we went about designing the ability to use themes in Windows 7, see this blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.

Customizing Your Windows Live Messenger Contact List

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:50:26 GMT

This is the first of several upcoming blog posts on different aspects of Windows Live Essentials. For more information on the Windows 7 + Windows Live experience – click here.

First, I would like to congratulate the Windows Live Messenger Team for 10 years of Messenger! Find out how *you* can celebrate the 10 Year Anniversary of Windows Live Messenger by reading this blog post from the Messenger Team. I have the pleasure of being able to say I’ve been a Messenger user since V1. It’s been exciting to see the progression of Messenger over the last decade.

Today, I use Windows Live Messenger as a primary communication vehicle (outside of email) with friends and colleagues. As you can imagine, I have a pretty big contact list. Being able to manage and customize the layout of my contact list is pretty important.

By default, Messenger will show all contacts in your contact list online or offline, as well as groups. Messenger will also show the tab bar, favorites, and What’s New feed. To customize this default layout of your contact list, you can click the contact list layout button next to the add contact button in Messenger (see below screenshot).

The Options window will appear with the layout options for your contact list.

This is where you can customize the layout of your contacts list in Messenger to fit your needs.

For me, because I have so many contacts in my contacts list, I find that I am doing a lot of scrolling between the different categories. Looking at my own IM behavior, I’m usually chatting with contacts that are online. So to help alleviate some of the scrolling, I have unchecked “Show offline contacts”. This means that contacts that are offline will not appear in my contact list in Messenger until they come online.

You can view contacts on your contact list by different sizes in Messenger: Large, Medium, Small or Status only. To consume less space on my contacts list, I’ve chosen to view contacts by status only. What’s great here is you can choose the sizes of your contacts by your main contact list and favorite contacts just in case you want your favorite contacts viewed differently than the rest.

If you someone who’s not using Windows Live Groups, you can uncheck “Show groups” so this category doesn’t appear on your contact list. You can also do this for other parts of the window on this menu too.

Hopefully talking about this helps those of you with large contact lists like me manage and customize the layout for a better experience in Messenger!

One last thing – did you know that Windows Live uses a unified contacts “store”? That means the same contacts you have in Messenger are the same contacts you have in Hotmail or in Windows Live Mail on the PC. More on this and other aspects of Windows Live Essentials in upcoming blog posts!

Shuffle your Desktop Backgrounds in Windows 7

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:00:05 GMT

Windows 7 offers some really neat new personalization options for making your desktop yours. I wanted to share my favorite personalization option: the ability to shuffle desktop backgrounds. Windows 7 now supports selecting multiple pictures as desktop backgrounds which shuffle depending on how often you set it to shuffle.

I have a special folder called “Awesome Wallpapers” that is filled with, well, awesome wallpapers. I have my Windows 7 PCs shuffling between these photos every 10 minutes. I find it keeps my desktop “fresh”.

In the Windows 7 Beta – here’s how to enable shuffle for desktop backgrounds:

1. Right-click on your Desktop and choose Personalization.

2. Under the Personalization Control Panel, choose Desktop Background (bottom of screen).

3. Under Picture location, you can choose from the default locations for photos (including Top Rated Photos) or browse to a custom folder where you might be storing photos.

4. Choose multiple photos by checking each photo you want to appear as a background on your desktop.

5. At the bottom of the screen next to Picture position there is a drop down box and a check box for shuffling pictures on your desktop. Make sure the “Shuffle” checkbox is checked.

6. You can also customize how often pictures shuffle on your desktop via the drop down next to the “Shuffle” check box.

After selecting the backgrounds, enabling shuffle, and setting how often they shuffle – you can save your new “theme” in Windows 7 via the Personalization Control Panel (just click the back button from the Desktop Background screen).

You can see in the below screenshot I have a theme called “Brandon’s Awesome Theme”. Once you save your theme, it appears under “My Themes”.

TIP: You can also download new themes for the Windows 7 Beta by choosing “Get more themes online” under My Themes in the Personalization Control Panel.

You can download themes with new wallpapers from places around the world!

Customize IE8 Beta 2 to fit your needs

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:07:00 GMT

In Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 - users get some added customization benefits to the Internet Explorer layout I think folks will enjoy. To many folks, being able to customize the browser controls is very important. So I've got some customization tips for IE8 Beta 2 I'd like to share with you.

If you right-click on the IE8 toolbar area, you can uncheck the "Lock the Toolbars" option. This allows you to use your mouse to move the Command Bar and Favorites Bar. There are a variety of places you can move these around in the IE8 toolbar area.

In the top screenshot, you can see that I moved the Command Bar to be on the same level as the Favorites Bar. I can customize how much space either the Command Bar or the Favorites Bar use on that level. I can give the Favorites Bar more room or give it less for the Command Bar. In the middle screenshot, I was able to move the Favorites Bar onto the level shared by IE8's Tabs. Essentially this is switching the Favorites Bar and Command Bar from the default configuration. And in the third screenshot, I was able to hide the Favorites Bar and "make IE8 look like IE7". You can also hide the Command Bar as well if you wish. And for those who like having the Menu Bar (File, Edit, etc) you can right click on the IE8 toolbar area and choose "Menu Bar" to have that appear.

I was also able to move the Favorites button down to the Tabs level - separating it from the Favorites Bar. This is neat because it gives some added room for additions to the Favorites Bar if needed.

Another new customization option for IE8 is the ability to choose to have the Stop and Refresh buttons appear before the Smart Address Bar instead of after.

Have you ever wanted to quickly close a 3rd party toolbar you have installed in Internet Explorer? IE8 provides an excellent way of quickly closing those toolbars. When you activate a toolbar (you can activate a installed toolbar by right-clicking on the toolbar area and choosing the toolbar you wish to have appear) you'll notice a new "x" icon appear next to it on the left. When you click this "x" it turns off that toolbar (by turning it off - it disappears from the toolbar area in IE8).

I recently installed the Microsoft Live Labs Listas Toolbar. When I no longer wanted the Listas Toolbar to show up in IE8, I just clicked the "x" and it disappeared. I can choose to activate it again later when I need it. My personal preference is to keep my browser clean of toolbars. However I know many people who enjoy the added benefit to their browsing experience that many toolbars offer - a good example is the Windows Live Toolbar. I have toolbars installed just not configured to show up all the time. I activate them when I want to use then and deactivate them when I'm done.

And my last little tip for customizing IE8 may or may not be of any value to you.

When you put your mouse in the area *between* the inline search box and the Smart Address Bar - you'll notice you can increase or decrease the amount of space the search box has. Here is my search box before:

Here it is after:

I decided I wanted a little more room for my search box.

I hope these customization tips help you customize IE8 to be the way you want it to be. I guess I'm boring though - I personally keep things as they are by default in IE ;-)

Change Your Logon Background in Windows Vista

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:16:00 GMT

I caught this via Steve Clayton (who caught it via Jeff Sandquist showing off his home) - Stardock has a really neat application called LogonStudio that allows you to change the background of your logon screen in Windows Vista. I absolutely love the space background.

LogonStudio is available as a free download and also allows you to create your own backgrounds as well as download logon backgrounds via Stardock's WinCustomize Gallery too. Folks who create their own backgrounds can submit them to the WinCustomize Gallery. Give it a try. Let me know what you think.