Transmogrifying your desktop can be as simple as just having a recycle bin icon on it or it can be as complicated as one wants. In vista, windows 7, and higher versions, there are inbuilt gadgets which perform certain functions. However, in XP there is none. People are not much satisfied by the gadgets offered by Windows, they just want to push the envelope.
Here’s the solution. Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform. It aggrandizes the desktop with different skins. Rainmeter runs the skins on the desktop. Skins are handy, compact applets which float freely on your desktop, analogous to the Windows Sidebar gadgets or the Mac dashboard widgets.
Rainmeter includes utilities for publishing and installing 3rd-party skins. Each skin is generally stored and loaded as an independent, self-contained module.
The Rainmeter latest version is 3.0 beta launched on June 2013 with galore additional features compare to the earlier version Rainmeter 2.5 launched in March 2013 . New features include migrating from an older GDI+ graphic/text rendering system to the newer and more powerful Direct2D system found in Windows 7 and 8. One of Rainmeter’s weaknesses of an earlier version was the quality of the text displayed - particularly in smaller sizes. Anyhow this has been amended by the latest release 3.0 beta. Skins can be developed by hand - they’re open-source, so widely available - or you can download packages known as “themesâ€. These rainmeter themes collection package includes :
- Platforms - Windows 7 (32 bit), Windows 7 (64 bit), Windows 8, Windows Vista (32 bit), Windows Vista (64 bit), Windows XP
- License - Open source
- Version - 3.0 beta