In March, I announced that my unsigned theme patch-less vision was being realized. Today, I’m happy to let everyone know beta bits of UxStyle Core are now available for public testing!

UxStyle Core does not currently have a theme manager or even a UI. UxStyle Core is exactly what it sounds like – the absolutely bare minimum (core) needed to enable third-party theme usage. Nothing more, nothing less. Later in the beta, we’ll push out a “bundle”, containing both the core software and a theme manager developed by our close partners.

Install UxStyle Core. Download some themes. Give them a whirl, everything should “just work”. Let us know how it went, bad or good, in the forums.

Thank God, no more patching.

Back in March, I wrote about a sick-joke of a limitation in Windows 7 Starter edition preventing users from changing the wallpaper. The limitation was imposed by the use of a technical licensing policy named ChangeDesktopBackground-Enabled and re-enforced by a SHA-256 hash of the static image, to prevent img0.jpg hot-swapping.

Given Windows 7 Starter’s applicability to the rising netbook market, it was presumed that Starter would branded by OEMs and/or mobile carriers (like Verizon) like any other Windows SKU. This is no longer a valid presumption.

Here’s the official scoop, from Microsoft:

In Windows Starter Edition, OEMs must not modify or replace the Windows-provided background for Windows Welcome, the logon screen, or the desktop.

Yikes.

Digging through the recent leaked builds, I have also confirmed that Microsoft has modified the SHA-256 hash, indicating a new (and now permanent) Starter wallpaper is now in place. Due to the low quality of the recent leaks, however, I can’t show you what it looks like. My guess? The new humongous Windows logo wallpaper, shrunk down of course.

(Thankfully, UxStyle, to be pushed out as a public beta this weekend (hopefully), will feature the ability to bypass this wallpaper restriction.)

Super-nerd Corner: The new hash is 08601919CA548F77C5B0ECB49E9B610AF188CA8227CF0F2DA5D99473D80090DC

Back in March, I wrote about how you could easily customize the background of a Windows 7 logon screen. One problem you may have run into is that lighter wallpapers affect button and text readability. To overcome this issue, Microsoft added the ability to change the active “button set” to a couple of alternatives.

 
Comparison of Windows 7 Logon UI “Button Sets” (from left to right: default, set one, set two)

To change your button set, simply jump to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI and add a DWORD value named ButtonSet. The supported integer values range from 0 to 2, with each value defined below.

• 0 – Lighter text shadows, darker (more opaque) buttons (Windows default)
• 1 – Darker text shadows, lighter (more translucent) buttons (for lighter backgrounds)
• 2 – No text shadows, opaque buttons (for darker backgrounds)

I was reading Mark Russinovich’s latest UAC article and Long Zheng’s latest scribblings and… developed quite the headache. Honestly, I’m tired of trying to sort out what UAC really is and don’t care anymore. UAC has become this gigantic undocumented blob of an idea that is explained (differently) on-demand every single time, to fit some marketing agenda du jour, and I’m sick of it. Mark jumps up and down about how UAC isn’t a security boundary and how we’re stupid for thinking such, yet Microsoft’s own sites pitch otherwise. Whatever, guys.

Here’s my million dollar question: If UAC wasn’t designed to ultimately protect us from anything, why does its icon resemble a damn shield?

Third to be touched upon is Microsoft Blackboard, a pseudo-physics game (reminiscent of The Incredible Machine and featuring graphics gaspingly similar to Crayon Physics) in which you use gestures to rotate and resize various objects to get balloons to explode from a light bulb’s hot touch. Like Rebound this game was developed by our friends at Fuel Games. As a huge bonus to those that can’t pass the first level, I’ve included the solve below.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Digging through the technical innards of the Touch Pack games is a rather tedious and fruitless process… but for blog post series completion purposes, Blackboard is yet another Win32 application tying into the usual DirectX and PhysX APIs, requiring shader support for high fidelity, etc. What’s new here, however, is mention of a level editor. Lets hope a) it materializes and b) is as easy to use as Tinker’s editor was.

Next in the list of toys that Microsoft revealed in the new Touch Pack for Windows 7 is Rebound. Rebound, developed by Fuel Games (the peeps that brought us Tinker), is a simple pong-like game with additions such as electricity, spinning projectiles, futuristic sounds, and clumsy AI; the perfect time vampire, if you exclude Sony’s line of products. Gameplay consists of a player (or two) placing their fingers on a set of orbs to create an arc of energy, to act as a paddle. The arc’s strength and ball stopping ability is dependent on the distance between the player’s orbs. That’s the simple rundown, obligatory game-play video below. My thanks to Paul Thurrott for being patient with me.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Judging by the score and timer counters, this was initially designed for Microsoft Surface.

On the technical side, Rebound is a native Win32 application, tying into the DirectX 9, DirectX10 and PhysX APIs. The latter is interesting because you may get a little physics processing boost if you’re using a fairly recent NVIDIA GPU (Geforce 8 or higher) or if you shelled out for and installed an AGEIA PhysX Accelerator. (If you have a PhysX card lying around collecting dust, send it to me!) With regards to shaders, things are a bit gray. It’s not clear which shader model the game requires but my guess is 2. Shader model 1 is for wimps and 3 is a bit bleeding, compared to today’s typical mass-produced consumer PC. Simply put, if your machine can’t do Aero proper (with transparency), you will have issues playing Rebound. You may be able to speed things up by throwing more memory at it with DOS/4GW, however.

This afternoon, via ‘the blog’, Microsoft revealed the new Touch Pack for Windows 7 featuring six new touch-enabled applications (toys) to be installed on touch-supported hardware (at the OEM’s discretion of course). While all the toys are nice, the first to catch my eye was the photo-realistic fishy Microsoft Surface Lagoon screensaver. It features a photo realistic set of images put together to form a vivid 3D environment for the fishies to swim around and enjoy. Touching the display while the screensaver is going results in ripple formation – consistent with a finger being inserted in the water (i tested in my real aquarium) – and even draws the fish near while keeping your finger dry. Very nice!

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

On the technical side, Lagoon is an in-house XNA-powered application that utilizes GPU shader models 2 and 3 for the eye candy goodness, depending on availability and rendering performance. (This means your EeePC is out of the question.) While it supports custom backgrounds and variable amounts of fish, it does not support the creation of rich environments, placement of 3D objects, or feeding.

About a month ago, Cullen Dudas released a neat video detailing the conceptual Windows UI he’s been working on for months, shown below for those who haven’t seen it in crap wonderful Vimeo quality. While some may not agree with certain elements of the design, you should at least appreciate his detailed analysis on the decisions he made in his new white paper. Check it out, it’s worth a read on that Kindle DX you just bought.

The folks a Seven Forums shot me a note regarding the public availability of the Windows 7 Release Candidate build. As mentioned by forum member ‘Howdr’, you can now sign up for your beta kit or simply leech the build directly using the links below.

x86 build
http://wb.dlservice.microsoft.com/dl/download/release/windows7/4/0/c/40c1e714-7910-4b38-9b5e-67fa522e6a44/7100.0.090421-1700_x86fre_client_en-us_retail_ultimate-grc1culfrer_en_dvd.iso

x64 build
http://wb.dlservice.microsoft.com/dl/download/release/windows7/e/b/5/eb58e76e-17fa-409b-855f-11fbe84d1c93/7100.0.090421-1700_x64fre_client_en-us_retail_ultimate-grc1culxfrer_en_dvd.iso

Back in February, I posted a list of applications that have the authority to automatically elevate without prompt in Windows 7. This list has been shortening over the months, with the Release Candidate build featuring the shortest list of now only 62 entries.

Notable missing entries (good thing) are rundll32.exe and mmc.exe.

• \Windows\ehome\Mcx2Prov.exe
• \Windows\System32\AdapterTroubleshooter.exe
• \Windows\System32\BitLockerWizardElev.exe
• \Windows\System32\bthudtask.exe
• \Windows\System32\chkntfs.exe
• \Windows\System32\cleanmgr.exe
• \Windows\System32\cliconfg.exe
• \Windows\System32\CompMgmtLauncher.exe
• \Windows\System32\ComputerDefaults.exe
• \Windows\System32\dccw.exe
• \Windows\System32\dcomcnfg.exe
• \Windows\System32\DeviceEject.exe
• \Windows\System32\DeviceProperties.exe
• \Windows\System32\dfrgui.exe
• \Windows\System32\djoin.exe
• \Windows\System32\eudcedit.exe
• \Windows\System32\eventvwr.exe
• \Windows\System32\FXSUNATD.exe
• \Windows\System32\hdwwiz.exe
• \Windows\System32\ieUnatt.exe
• \Windows\System32\iscsicli.exe
• \Windows\System32\iscsicpl.exe
• \Windows\System32\lpksetup.exe
• \Windows\System32\MdSched.exe
• \Windows\System32\msconfig.exe
• \Windows\System32\msdt.exe
• \Windows\System32\msra.exe
• \Windows\System32\MultiDigiMon.exe
• \Windows\System32\Netplwiz.exe
• \Windows\System32\newdev.exe
• \Windows\System32\ntprint.exe
• \Windows\System32\ocsetup.exe
• \Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe
• \Windows\System32\OptionalFeatures.exe
• \Windows\System32\perfmon.exe
• \Windows\System32\printui.exe
• \Windows\System32\rdpshell.exe
• \Windows\System32\recdisc.exe
• \Windows\System32\rrinstaller.exe
• \Windows\System32\rstrui.exe
• \Windows\System32\sdbinst.exe
• \Windows\System32\sdclt.exe
• \Windows\System32\shrpubw.exe
• \Windows\System32\slui.exe
• \Windows\System32\SndVol.exe
• \Windows\System32\spinstall.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesComputerName.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesDataExecutionPrevention.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesHardware.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesProtection.exe
• \Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesRemote.exe
• \Windows\System32\taskmgr.exe
• \Windows\System32\tcmsetup.exe
• \Windows\System32\TpmInit.exe
• \Windows\System32\verifier.exe
• \Windows\System32\wisptis.exe
• \Windows\System32\wusa.exe
• \Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\bth.inf_x86_neutral_65c949576945c2a9\fsquirt.exe
• \Windows\System32\oobe\setupsqm.exe
• \Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe