Aero Glass, one of the most successful eye candy that Microsoft has implemented in  Windows Vista and Windows 7, has been the favorite of most of the Windows users (me included). Since when I am using Windows 7 RC, I have been actively looking for all the software that utilize the Aero Glass which is already in the Windows, but sadly, there is still not much software developers take effort to make use of the Aero Glass, due to many different reasons.

Nevertheless, as a Aero Glass lover, and I believe there is a lot out there as well, so i like to share my Aero Glass ‘collection’ which I have collected so far. You might want to check out the Aero Glass galore screenshot below:

Let me introduce all the apps briefly one by one followed by their download links:

(Top left) Aero Command – If you always use Windows Command Prompt during your work or your daily computing, you might want to have the Aero Command. *Solo-Dev in deviantart has make the Command Prompt get Aero-ed and it just work like the usual one without problem. Get the Aero Command from his deviantart page. (But please be aware that it might need some tricks to make it works; you have to run it twice to make the first window get Aero-ed. I am not sure this only happen to me or most of the users but it’s still some cool experience there.) However, if you happen to have a 32-bit Windows Vista or 7, I recommend you to try out his new toy, AeroCmd2 which just released few days back. (Why 32 bits only? Because it doesn’t work on my 64 Bit Windows 7 and the author has no 64 bits environment to test the program, so there might be no good news in the near future) 

(Bottom Left) Foobar2000 0.9.5.2 with FooAvA Glass Mod – Previously I have covered a quite similar glass mod for foobar2000, but the mod isn’t a very polished one. Recently I have found another skin for the older foobar2000 (below 0.9.5.2), the FooAvA Glass Mod. This skin is based on the FooAvA skin and ZaYeR modify it to use Aero Glass with the assistance from the original author,dawxxx666. It is a very well-polished skin, and it has a lot of features; all packed in one archive. Please note that the mod is only works with 0.9.5.2 or older version of Foobar2000, because it is using the Panels UI plugin which is no longer supported in newer version, so if you want to use the mod, get yourself an older version of Foobar2000. In case you missed the link to the mod, here you go.

(Top Right) Firefox 3.5/3.6 with strata40 theme and stratabuddy (and others) plugins – You might have know the mockup design of the Mozilla Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 (and 3.7 has been cancelled officially; they jumped to 4.0) , but it is still not available anytime soon. Don’t worry, with the help of some theme and plugins, you can make your Mozilla Firefox 3.5/3.6 to have the skin almost similar to those released mockup. I had covered it in previous article, so you might want to use some time to read and set up your Firefox.

(Right Middle) c2i-Gmail Notifier – If you are a Gmail user and can’t afford to miss any email when you are using the computer, the notifier might be your thing. I have covered it in my choice of Gmail Notifier, so you might want to check my simple review on it. With it’s beautiful integration with Aero Glass, I don’t see the reason why we can resist this notifier (although it still lack of quite a lot of functions, but it is already very usable in daily routine).

(Middle) Glass Notepad – I guess there are quite a number of Windows users will use notepad as a temporary text clipboard to collect any important information, and the notepad has nothing changed since the XP time, so you might get bored of it. If you still a notepad fan, you will be interested to get yourself the Glass Notepad. As the name mentioned, the notepad is now Aero-ed and it is totally a new experience in using the notepad. It is very straight forward to use it, just run the executable file, and a new window of glass notepad will appear. (it has no shortcut keys in the software atm though) theking9794 has even working on the v2.0 of glass notepad which has several extra functions, as well as displaying the text with other colours, so you might want to stay tune with his deviantart page for the release.

(Below Middle) SPlayer (Shooter Player) – SPlayer is a multimedia player developed by a Chinese, and it is one of the video players that using Aero Glass. Since it is mostly a video player, Aero Glass cannot be used extensively in it (I can’t think of the area that the Aero Glass can be applied), but SPlayer can play videos with transparency control (which is something like a glass without blurring effect), and it works even in full screen. So you can peek on your desktop to check on the downloading status, time, or anything on your desktop, while watching a nice movie in full screen using SPlayer. It is still in active development, so it might surprise you one day. I have it covered in my previous post as well, you might want to check it out. The author is on twitter as well, but of course most of the messages will be in Chinese language.   

 

Editor’s Note

I really hope there is more and more software using this very nice eye candy in the Windows, although I understood that there is some software can emulate the effect (glass2k?), but I am not pleased with the result (pure transparent instead of glass effects), since it is not natively supported by Windows. Let’s hope for more while enjoying those I introduced! If you have any to introduce, feel free to let me know!

 

Share This Article

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine