Get Windows 8 Interface On Your Windows 7 Desktop

We all are waiting for Windows 8 eagerly.But we have to wait for some months windows 8 to be launched. It’ll bring a complete new interface.

But if you want the look of Windows 8 in your machine then I am going to tell you about some free applications of Windows 8 which will give you the feel of Windows 8 on your Windows 7 desktop. Though the Windows 8 interface is still under process of building but still there are some leaks come in between here and there and I came across such leaks.

STDU Explorer [Download]

If you have used the latest release of Microsoft Office, you must have seen the straight ribbon band in place of menu bar.This is what now in plans for Windows 8. For those who wants to have similar feature in Windows XP, Vista or 7 Explorer, here is an interesting software for them.

Stdu Explorer is a free Windows Explorer alternative which comes with Ribbon UI. Not only this explore files but has the native support of  many image files ‘psd, bmp, png, gif, pcx, jpeg, wmf formats’ and several e-books formates ‘DjVu, PDF, FB2, JBIG2, XPS, DCX, WWF, PDB, CBR and CBZ formats’.

Apart from exploring the files Stdu Explore also supports standard operations such as moving, copying, pasting, renaming, deleting, etc.

The main features:

• Extended representation of files list with adjustable thumbnails size.
• Fast preview any page of multipage documents.
• Fast access to a tree of bookmarks in PDF, XPS, FB2 or DjVu files.

So, you want to test the Ribbon UI use in Explorer, you should definitely give it a try. It is not the same as the ribbon interface for Windows 8, but it will give a user the idea of what it will be like to use the ribbon in Windows Explorer.It’s a simple download of an install package.This is a standalone application and will not run if you open up Explorer normally.  You will have to click on the executable to get the ribbon.

Mosaic [Download]

Mosaic is an open source application for Windows 7.It offers somewhat same features of Window 8 Menu but in the form of widgets. It contains 9 beautifully designed metro UI based desktop widgets to give Windows 7 users a feel of Windows 8 tablets. The application is however in early beta testing phase, it works without any major problems on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7.

Just like Windows 8 Menu, you can customize it from tile present at right side of the screen.The tiles can be positioned where you want them and you can scroll to the right as you add tiles.You can choose to run it full-screen mode to use HTML 5 based widget,you can use keep widgets alongside desktop items without having to switch viewing modes.Mosaic is in the alpha stage – so it’s still pretty limited.In addition to the widgets you can pin applications and websites to the desktop.

Zetro VS [Download]

Zetro VS is more of a Windows 7 theme based program.Other Windows 7 themes that usually are prepackaged but this one requires a bit more work.Just download the theme from the link below, and extract the zip file somewhere. Then follow the instructions in the Readme file, which basically contains two steps:

1. Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.
2. Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:WindowsResourcesThemes.

When you’re done, you can head to the Control Panel and Change the Theme under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be under Installed themes. The readme also mentions a few more advanced tweaks that fix a few small singularities but they aren’t really necessary.

The theme itself is a bit shocking at first, what with all the white space, but after a few minutes of getting used to it you will rather like it. Its simplicity would probably look great on a netbook or other smaller device, and if you couple it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter, you could have a pretty attractive looking desktop going on. Hit the link to see more screenshots, and to give it a go on your machine.Mosaic is easier to run and did a better job at copying the Metro UI tiles.In the end you get a lot more functionality out of the tiles however.

If you have any question and suggestion related to this article then tell me in the comments below.

This article is written by Nikita Mishra, owner of Lovely Blogging. She writes about blogging, internet tips and tricks, SEO, cool websites, etc.