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When WindowBlinds 1.0 came out in 1999, it was instantly very popular. But at the same time, it gained a bad reputation with some people because it slowed down their computers and in some cases made them unstable. WindowBlinds never used very much memory, but it didn't have to. No matter how much RAM someone had installed, 128K was the pool of memory that mattered. 

Windows 2000 arrives

When users began to move to Windows 2000, Stardock began being able to separate Windows 2000 from the DOS based versions of Windows (Win95/98/ME). Users who ran Windows 2000 suddenly, almost by magic, discovered that WindowBlinds wasn't slowing down their computers much or making their systems unstable. Still though, even in WindowBlinds version 3, Stardock has to make some compromises in order for it to work still on Windows 95/98/ME since that is where the bulk of the market was. But Windows 2000's release started moving skinning (in all its forms, not just WindowBlinds) out of the "hacker" arena and make it more mainstream since desktop enhancement software was finally able to run better.

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The most obvious reason why WindowBlinds has remained so popular is not just all the features it provides, but the fact that you can run it on any version of Windows. Stardock expects that to remain the same with Longhorn (the code-name to Microsoft's next OS scheduled to come out in 2006/2007). Longhorn will have a new compositing engine (similar to Quartz on MacOS X). This will allow for vastly more sophisticated visual styles and should eliminate the last differences in performance between "classic" Windows and one with a visual style. 

A Skinning History

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The first WindowBlinds skins tended to be fairly simple.

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