I've never purchased any of your products before, but I will once you have support for Windows 8. 

Specifically, these are the features I'm looking for that might not be on your current to-do list:

1) When the taskbar is at the top and you maximize a program window, Windows 7 would automatically move the program's titlebar down below the taskbar so that you could manage the program (it would scooch the program window down a bit).  This was lost in Windows 8 RTM.  Please add this back again for Win8 when the taskbar is at the top of the screen.

2) Allow me to change the background color of the initial account selection logon screen, which defaults to navy blue no matter what other color preferences you choose.  This is the not the logon screen which only shows your own account, it's the screen which shows all available accounts.

3) Allow be to change these ugly garish 1970's default taskbar and titlebar colors in Win8, including font color, gradients, and glass effects.  Just re-enable what we had in Windows 7 for colors, even if you can't get gradients and glass back, that's OK.

4) Allow me to change the background color in the Metro start screen, specifically, I want to be able to choose solid black.

Thank You!!!

@ JimHastings. Why don't you write to Microsoft> I'm sure they can fit all those changes in just for you.

Still a month till release   i wish it would be available already i want to get rid of my dual boot again...
since its mainly booting up the windows 8 kernel and has to be restarted to get into 7 on the selection menu
Because of that im using windows8 more often than i like, to be honest i use it all the time
Just installed Start8 the latest and greatest version and i cant tell the difference ( of course windowblinds is missing )  
Also i would would like to test 2 new SSD´s on WIN8 ( the ADATA Premiere Pro SP900 Series and the Intel 520 Series ) 

I'am ready to be beta tester for windowblinds for windows8, i use iconpackager and winfx on win8 rtm and have no problems yet.

i am waiting for this too and am using windows 8 pro x64 from technet. would be willing to beta test

You can count me in for beta testing windowblinds for windows 8. I'm running Win8 Pro 64 bit.

Bookmark it. Best we got.

You got to remember folks, talking to, listening to, or interacting with anyone at Microsoft is the same as interacting with politicians.  They will yammer on and on about something and in the end you never know what the hell they are saying.  I took their certifications and pasted.  I have talked with several big wigs from Microsoft and five minutes in I had them both so confused they left in a huff.  So to quote the person above, "DO NOT BELIEVE A THING FROM MICROSOFT!"  They flip flop too fast. 

I have Windows 8 and I like that new big start menu called Metro which is no longer the actual name of it.  Just put all your program icons on the start menu and when you need them just press windows key and boom there they are. 

Now where is Windowblinds 8.  I'm waiting......!

It is a little known fact that during the development of windows xp. Stardock had a hand or at least very close ties with the development of the original whistler themeing engine. Now if memory serves Microsoft decided to revise that engine into something completely proprietary but still kept close ties with stardock which is why there was a "remarkable similarity" to the theme format.

With Windowblinds XP aka WB3 on windows xp they were able to hook into uxtheme and use it to drive much of the GDI replacement of widget resources. This trend continued into Windows Vista and Windows 7 via DWM and uxtheme. In the mean time Stardock implemented it's own DWM style bluring effects for XP versions of WindowBlinds. I am completely confident in Stardock's ability to use a combination of uxtheme/dwm hooks and their own ingenuity to pick up the slack where microsoft has faultured.

I have used Windowblinds since version 1 (albeit not always legally but as of Windowblinds 5 this was rectified) and I believe in their software and their commitment to bringing control of the user experience back to the control of the user.

Ever since I learned what windowblinds was and what it could do especially since WB3 I have been a big supporter in choice of how your computer works and looks with offerings such as IconPackager ObjectBar and ObjectDock it should be up to the user to chose how the system functions from visual aesthetics to actual useability.

In many respects Microsoft over the past 10 years was humbled and started putting the wishes of it's users first. With Windows 8 this is a return to classic microsoft practices which must be fought but it won't happen in the courts like in 2001 it will happen by offerings of these 3rd party venders such as stardock who puts the wishes of the user first and combats this tendency for companies to tell users what they want instead of how it should be which is of course the other way around.

Windows 7 was my idea, Windows 8 isn't but with projects and products like classicshell, start8, windowblinds and many more programs, tools, and utilities we will take back the system for our selves just as we have always done.

I suspect with adoption of Windows 8 being forced on OEMs that we will see the rebirth of the customization and themeing scenes in a way we haven't seen since 2002-2004!

So keep at it Stardock, bring the User Experience back to the ones who matter.. the USERS!

First, sorry for intruding on a WindowBlinds thread, Neil.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am. As a developer, I have lost ALL TRUST I ever had in Microsoft.

For me it started when they killed classic Visual Basic and replaced it with Visual Basic .NET. They lied when they tried to convince other developers that VB .NET was just an evolution of classic VB. It was not, it was a brand new language and your old classic VB code wouldn't even work on it. Even if you managed to convert your classic VB code to VB .NET, it would not work the same in anything other than very simple projects because the languages are so different. .NET is heavy and extremely slow - there's a reason why Microsoft own programmer's don't use it in Windows, after all, but still stick to C++ instead.

I'm all for evolution, but evolution is NOT a clean cut with the past, as they did with .NET and are now doing with Windows 8. With .NET Microsoft forced classic VB developers to follow Microsoft's vision of how the future should be, in the process throwing away the most popular programming language EVER and BILLIONS of man hours of experience and knowledge.

Windows became successful because it was built on an open platform (the PC) and was, itself, an open platform. Microsoft's plan with Windows 8 is to become like Apple: they want to force ALL software to be sold through them (Windows app store) and take a 30% cut on other people's hard work (all of it), but they can't do it while Windows is still an open platform. So, the solution is to kill Windows as we know it (as it happened with classic VB) and turn it into a closed platform: Windows RT (i.e.; Metro apps).

Make no mistake: they want to, and will, kill the desktop and the Win32 API.

If they succeed, no software will ever be admitted into the Windows app store that does not follow Microsoft rules (whatever they are at the time) and without Microsoft's blessing. You can all say good-bye to the kind of applications Stardock and Winstep make because mostly they provide functionality that can only be accomplished by 'bending' Microsoft rules. Like Big Brother, Microsoft will rule supreme and we will *all* lose the diversity and benefits of an open platform.

I hope they crash and burn and that Stephen Sinofsky, and all his 'buddies' at Microsoft who share the same school of thought, go back to the pits of hell they must have surely come from.

hmm, wouldn't that make it much easier for you as a developer to sell your applications? i can see you selling 100,000s of Nexus Dock for $2 each.

ah, didn't know they just will have "listings" for desktop applications.

so they do not want make money of any desktop developers work anyways.

smart move actually considering all the bugs in desktop apps, quality control will be much easier for them.

Windows 8 is still completely open though. you can still sell your stuff on your website as you did before. and you have the additional opportunity to sell WinRT apps on their store.

embrace it, iOS app development has made plenty of people rich. else they would code freeware and shareware that nobody buys.

depends on how well they maintain their store.

in real life i have yet to find to find an app for iOS that is as buggy as many desktop applications are. i heard of an application from Stardock that crashes explorer if it is run on newer versions of Windows. such things won't happen with a well maintained app store.

the Google Play store is a completely different story though.