The most accurate modern Windows 7 themed desktop?

Hey everyone, I'm Takashi!

I've been working on something I'm quite passionate about for a little while now and I feel I'm now at a point where I'm happy to share my creation.

Background:

I personally believe that Windows 7 was (and still is) the best operating system Microsoft has ever created. I love the Frutiger Aero visual style of not only the OS itself but also all of the applications/programs of the time. Everything was so vibrant and colourful. Not only that but every program had it's own style.

Another part of technology that I loved at this time (~2006 - 2013) was the amazing web design. Every website had it's own personality and each felt like a representation of the person or brand behind it. Today however, most websites use a standard template that just looks the same as every other website. There's no personality across the internet except for a few smaller websites like SpaceHey and indie web sites that are created by some truly amazing individuals.

I wanted to try and bring back some of the magic that the web and operating systems of the late 2000s and early 2010s seemed to have so much of. This wasn't a drop-in solution for the most part as many things required at least a little tweaking but if you'd like to follow along, I'll leave links to everything I mention!

Windows:

• Windows 7 Aero theme
• Windows 7 Programs/Applications
• Windows 7 Icons
• Windows 7 System sounds
• Windows 7 Start Menu
• Windows 7 Login/Lock/Shut down screens
• Windows 7 Boot-up/Shut down sounds
• Windows 7 Boot animation
• Disables Windows update
• Removes all ads and AI from the operating system
• Probably more I forgot to add lmao

This will get you a good chunk of the way towards getting that good aero/late 2000s look and you could very well stop here and be perfectly happy with the setup. But I wanted to go further. 

To do so I changed all of my desktop icons to older looking ones for programs such as discord/Firefox/steam/etc. These icons can be found simply by googling {the name of the program} retro icon. Be sure that the icon you are downloading is in the .ico format not .png or .jpg as windows will not detect these as icons.

At this point you can simply choose a period accurate wallpaper and choose a Aero glass color in the control panel! That's the windows configuration complete. Next up is the web!

Web Browser/Websites:

For this part you'll want to be using the latest version of Firefox, you can grab that here. To begin with, Firefox looks a little out of place at the moment. To change this, we are going to install a Firefox theme called Geckium that can be found here. There is a bit of messing with moving some files around to get this one working, but the GitHub page outlines the process pretty well and it's pretty easy to follow along. If all goes well, you should be able to choose a retro chrome theme from the Geckium setup windows that appears.

After theming Firefox, we can get to styling websites! For this you'll need two extensions to begin with. Those being TamperMonkey and Stylus.

Google.com:

To theme google simply install the GPlex userscript from here. Then from the main google homepage, click on "GPlex Settings" in the top right corner. Here you can change multiple things including the overall theme, I prefer the 2013 theme. You can also turn off the google AI overviews.

You will also want to change the setting "Force load results" message to off to load search results instantly.

YouTube.com:

To theme youtube, simply head here and select "install V3 as a UserScript". Once on youtube, click through the welcome messages. No other configuration is needed but the settings for V3 can be found by clicking the drop down next to the Upload button.

Reddit.com:

This ones easy, simply install the old reddit redirect from here and your done. From now on any reddit link should redirect to the old.reddit.com version of the page.

Twitter.com:

This one may be a bit controversial but I''l include it anyway since I think the theme is awesome! Grab this extension from here, and try to load twitter. Looks much better am I right. You can go further by installing this userstyle.

There are multiple other awesome websites that match this vibe such as Ytoo! (this ones amazing, it replicates the style of the japanese Yahoo website which just looks so cool!) This list here made by xcometgirlx is an amazing resource for finding some amazing old web projects! Thank you so much for the list! :D

Screenshots!:

Finally here are some more screenshots of my current desktop

Microsoft Word 2007:

Microsoft OneNote 2007:

Control Panel Glass Colors:

Steam Client:

Last bit:

I would love to see your setups and really hope this helps anyone that's looking to revert back to a better time with better software. If you do have a go at setting all of this up and run into any issues, please ask as I'm happy to help!

Wow that was a long blog post omg. Thank you for reading all the way to the end! This has been something I'd been working on for the past month or two. I'm really happy with how it's come out and really hope you like it too! I'm always open to feedback so let me know what you think plus if you have any website/extensions/programs/tweaks that could make this setup even better, please let me know!