When it comes to customising the look and feel of Windows, there is no shortage of apps to choose from. The problem with many of these programs is that they are a little limited in what they enable you to achieve, but Styler enables you to take things a few steps further by making it easy to completely change the look of Windows Explorer.

The program was originally written to work with Windows XP, but despite its age it can still be used to customise the appearance of Windows 7 and Vista. If the software is installed on a version of Windows other than XP, it needs to be installed by running the setup program in compatibility mode - this makes the installation routine think that Windows XP is in use.

Once installed, compatibility mode also needs to be used to run the main program itself - this is nothing to worry about and simply enables this slightly aging program to run correctly in the most recent versions of Windows. Once you have the program up and running you can use it to take control of the appearance of your desktop, by adjusting styles, colour, background image, special effects and more.

But the program becomes really interesting when it is used in conjunction with toolbar skins. These are freely available for download from various customisation web sites and they enable you to completely change the look and feel of Windows Explorer. This might mean re-arranging the order in which buttons are displayed to make things easier to access, or it could mean mimicking the look of a different operating system.