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How Stardock failed the skinning community in 2006

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How Stardock failed the skinning community in 2006

A look back at what we didn't do and what we need to do

from WinCustomize Forums

WinCustomize.com is a website owned by Stardock. It was founded back in 2001 when the dot-com collapse took out most of the skin sites.  Stardock wanted to ensure that there was a stable home for people who wanted to create cool stuff to enhanced their Windows experience.

While 2006 was Stardock's best year from a traditional success point of view (doubled in size, more than doubled in revenue, helped produce stuff for Microsoft on Windows Vista, building partnerships with OEMs, and the game's division made one of the top PC games of last year), I believe Stardock failed the skinning community. It failed it utterly.

This is going to be long but I will try to identify the areas where Stardock blew it and what I think it needs to "make good".

The Failures

  • Awful documentation
  • Lack of support for skinners
  • Lack of community support
  • Lack of leadership

Awful Documentation

As bad as the documentation for making cool stuff for Stardock's apps appears, it's actually far far worse. And if you think it's really really bad, trust me, it's even worse than that.  It's not that we don't try. The problem is usually the only people who are good enough to make the documentation are the actual development teams who tend not to be very good at writing documentation. Ever looked at the actual text inside a WindowBlinds .UIS file?

Part of the problem stems from what Stardock really is as compared to "normal" companies.  We're a bunch of software developers.  Historically, almost pure coders.  Until 2002, Stardock had one artist in the entire company and he was assigned to do our games. In 2003, we brought in a second artist (also to work on games). That's insane.  But it didn't seem so.  Not to us anyway.

We've always been a tech company. We created technology for the sake of creating technology.  The fancy term for that these days are "thought leaders". That is, we think of stuff before other and try to crank it out. Those familiar with the misadventures of "TextBanners.net" may recall that we came up with text ads first. Yay. Neat technology but of course, Google owns that.  We came up with full GUI skinning. First on OS/2 back in the early 90s and then on Windows. And we even had user-created mini applications created via JavaScript back in 2000 (DesktopX).  But so what?

Without good documentation, tutorials, step by step guides, what is the point?  With WindowBlinds, we got lucky. So compelling was that program that users were willing to figure out the arcane format.  How arcane? This is from a WindowBlinds skin:

[Personality]
TextShiftNoIcon=-2
TextRightClipNoIcon=84
UsesTran=1
BUTTONCOUNT=26
TextAlignment=0
TextShift=-2
TextShiftVert=-3
TextRightClip=89
TextOnBottom=0
Menubar=YellowTab\YellowTabMainMenuBarImage.bmp
Top=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameTopUis2.bmp
Left=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameLeftUis2.bmp
Right=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameRightUis2.bmp
Bottom=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameBottomUis2.bmp
TopTopHeight=23
TopBotHeight=48
LeftTopHeight=37
LeftBotHeight=9
RightTopHeight=26
RightBotHeight=9
BottomTopHeight=2
BottomBotHeight=2

This isn't a joke. That's what the WindowBlinds "language" looks like underneath SkinStudio. My favorite is the BottomTopHeight line. But like I said, it was compelling enough that people were willing to reverse-engineer it to make cool stuff.

Our documentation elsewhere has been much more lacking. We put out documentation but it's pretty awful. Probably the best documentation we have is for DesktopX. And it's not anything I'd consider competitive in quality to Yahoo Widgets's 308 page developer manual.  In fact, compare the DesktopX page to the Yahoo Widgets page. 

The problem at Stardock is myopia. I'm not a politically correct type of guy as many of you know but I say without ego being involved that DesktopX is far far superior to Yahoo Widgets or any of the other platforms from a technological point of view. In capability (on Windows) is a complete superset and then some.  As technologists, we simply assumed that was enough. Build a better mousetrap, etc.  But people won't use the "Better" mousetrap if it requires a PhD. to manufacture.

Let me ask you this -- Where is a modern WindowBlinds tutorial? Let's say I want to create a WindowBlinds 5 skin. How do I do it? Where's the nice friendly example that walks me through it?  Heck, the user guide that's on WindowBlinds.net is awful and the only reason it's not worse is that I went and edited what was originally put up there (complete with Times Roman font and MS Word artifacts).

In the beginning, when Stardock was smaller and the community smaller, much of these problems could be masked because me or one of the other developers at Stardock could personally answer questions on a forum.  But as Stardock has grown and we've gotten a lot busier, these glaring holes in our documentation became critical.  The WindowBlinds skinning guide that is on the page is from 2002. I kid you not. FOUR YEARS AGO!  The only thing that saves WindowBlinds skinning remotely is that SkinStudio, while not an easy to use application, is pretty decent. But it's not enough and the learning curve has only gotten worse.

Lack of Support for Skinners

You'd think the terrible documentation situation would be enough to cover the lack of support for skinners. But no, it's worse than that. Even setting aside the documentation, lack of organized tutorials, lack of step-by-step guides, etc. there's the fact that Stardock should have someone who is dedicated to doing nothing else but helping people become skinners.

Think about it. Stardock benefits from people making skins and themes right? Shouldn't it have a dedicated [email protected] type email address? It doesn't. Why not? We should. Heck, we wouldn't even need a full-time person. Just someone to help point people to tutorials (that presumably would exist), answer questions, give advice, etc. 

Instead, we leave people to the tender mercies of the forums (which I'll get to next).

Stardock doesn't even put out hardly any good example content any more (that it doesn't charge for! ) for people to learn from.  Stardock released one ObjectBar theme into the ObjectBar 2 gallery.  When was the last time Stardock released some new DesktopX gadgets, themes, etc?  How about some new ObjectDock samples?  ObjectDock 1.5 supports .dockzips. Do you see any in the gallery? I don't. We released nothing that uses it.

 

Lack of Community Support

Being good in the community was something we used to be great at. Sure, there were always the perpetual "free beer" people who objected to our existence (i.e. people who didn't like the idea of paying for software but themselves didn't write any software or make skins or anything) but overall, we were much more interactive.

Now, on the plus side, the # of "Frogboy is evil" posts we get in various places has declined. But I think, as a community, we were better off with some of that when Stardock people were more interactive. And, more importantly, setting an example.

The WinCustomize forums largely disgust me. Sorry but it needs to be said. WinCustomize's forums wreak of elitism and intolerance. Why are the forums not as busy as a site that gets millions of visitor should be? Because people come on, ask a question, make a mild criticism and then get creamed by old guard people who wish "newbies" would go away. One of the reasons why we really got behind WinCustomize.com in a big way after it was launched was because we were so pissed off at some of the elitism we saw elsewhere (I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about).  But while many of us old guys have been busy coding new stuff, the forums have become an increasingly hostile place.

And when they're not hostile, they're sterile and impersonal. I'd as much hang out on the WC forums as I'd hang out on the forums for my TV manufacturer.  Only because of the wondrous loyalty of many good-hearted folks are our forums even remotely capable of being rehabilitated.

Moreover, Stardock should have a community manager. Could even be the same guy who's helping skinners. Someone who's helping out on other sites. WinCustomize isn't the only skin site. What about SkinBase? They deserve more support from Stardock than they get.  Or tons of newer customization community sites too that I'm not even hanging out on.

Again, in the old days, Stardock's lack of infrastructure was masked.  I would get an email from someone ([email protected]) and quickly answer it.  But now, I get thousands of email a day. Hundreds of which request a response. As a result, I don't even see much of the email I get.  Realistically, I should ask someone to look through my email every day and flag anything that needs urgent attention.

 

Lack of leadership

We should be better at setting an example for how things should be done.  Stardock people should be in the forums. Stardock people should be making skins and releasing them. Should be making tutorials. Should be writing documentation. Should be answering questions. Should be commenting on skins. Should be hosting IRC chats. Should be making video demos. And so on and so on.  But we're not.

And so things tend to go to whomever is the loudest or has the deepest pockets.  I mean do skinners really envision a gadget future in which they're mucking with DHTML and Javascript to create a fixed size gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar? Does that sound cool?  But what's the alternative? Making a PNG file that's tied up with some Javascript for a different multi-billion dollar company?

I've seen people on-line refer to us as "Those wizards at Stardock will think of something cool..."  Which is a very high complement. But if we want to be the thought leaders then we better bloody get back to leading on stuff.

Because I don't know about you guys but if my "skinning" options are either making another glass skin for the OS, making a weather gadget/widget for whatever or sitting it out, then forget it.

What needs to be done

It's easy for me to sit here and rip Stardock a new one. It's my company after all. Talk is cheap. What is Stardock going to actually do about this? And by do I mean realistically. Because if you read through my litany of complaints, the "solution" seems obvious -- in a perfect world. But it's not a perfect world.  We live in a world where I can't even hire a decent QA (Quality Assurance) person. We get people in for interviews who haven't even been to our webpage (first rule of thumb when interviewing for a job -- know something about the product or service that you are interested in being involved with).

Here are the things I think Stardock must do in 2007:

  • Make is easier to create stuff for our software
  • Organize support for skinners
  • Get more involved in the community
  • Lead by example

Make it easier...

Updating documentation is an obvious thing that needs to be done.  But it needs to go beyond that.  Stardock needs to develop visually easy to understand tutorials that walk a user through how to create something.

It also needs to update its software (particularly SkinStudio) in such a way to make it easier to create skins.  More specifically, there should be beginner, intermediate, and advanced ways to create stuff both from a tools point of view and a tutorial/documentation point of view.

It should be consistent across the board. Everywhere on all Stardock's products there should be guides focused on beginners, intermediate, and advanced users.

Organize Support for Skinners

Stardock should create an off-shoot of the next WinCustomize.com (like skinners.wincustomize.com) that is dedicated purely to learning the art of skinning. Everything should show up there and it should be reasonably well organized.

Moreover, Stardock should have a person who is officially responsible for helping people get into this. Have a question on how to create an alpha blended title bar for WindowBlinds?  Need help creating an animated wallpaper (well, not yet but soon...), How do I make a new boot screen for Windows Vista? How do I make a docklet for ObjectDock? And so on.

Part of this also comes in the form of trying to support other people's standards.  For example, DesktopX 3.5 will export content to the Windows Sidebar. So people who don't think it particularly joyful to muck around with DHTML and Javascript can instead use a proven environment with updated documentation and tutorials to create new stuff.

But more to the point, someone at Stardock should always be on-hand to help out on this. It should be someone specific too. Not a "skinner support department" but literally someone who is part of the community that works at Stardock that you know and feel you can talk to individually.

Get more involved in the community

This is like the above example but it has more to do with non-skinners.  Stardock needs to be more involved on a day to day basis in the community. That means hanging out on forums.  I recognize that the days of me participating in some lengthy discussion on Neowin.net or deviantART or Customize.org are long gone. There's just not the time anymore.  But someone needs to be doing it. 

We're working on that already.  IslandDog is working on this already and I imagine you'll be seeing him in a lot of other areas as we develop this new strategy.

But there's going to be some pain on WinCustomize 2007.  We're going to bring down the hammer on elitism. Any user who comes across as a bully or "anti-newbie" won't be welcome.  WinCustomize.com's forums should be thought of as a lounge to hang out with friends. The forums will be modified to support a more "community" like atmosphere.

People email me and I just don't see the emails -- literally. One user on a blog said that "Stardock's success has gone to Brad's head".  My egomania aside, the reason I don't answer emails isn't that I don't care about folks anymore but rather a simple matter of logistics. Heck, I missed Microsoft's invitation to go to CES (luckily I found out via other channels).  I just don't see the emails. Most of my time is spent doing other things. I'm actually better known in the game industry these days than in the skinning world.

But it is still the company's responsibility to replace my presence with someone else's. Otherwise, Stardock might as well just be yet another Internet business out there to squeeze money from people. People who know us know that we're in this because it's fun to do.  But to a newcomer, if we don't behave any differently than any other "business" why should we expect to be seen as any different?

So we absolutely have to rectify that in a big way.

Lead by example

Picture this: The year is 2001. DesktopX objects are starting to become popular. WindowBlinds vs. msstyles have heated up. And the sky seems unlimited in terms of new cool stuff from not just Stardock but shareware and freeware people from around the world. Great eh?

But then the ghost of Christmas future shows up and tells you that by the end of 2006 that widgets have become various ways to skin clocks, weather readers and RSS feeds (there's nothing wrong with that but then a specialized app could/should have been made for those 3 things that is MUCH easier to create skins for and that skins could be shared). And Hoverdesk and Litestep were either dead or on life support and that the ObjectBar 2 gallery had one theme in it.  Who would have believed it?

Without leadership, you have inertia.

I wrote recently how the most damaging thing to skinning has been the length of time it took Microsoft to do Windows Vista.  This is true. That is, one can legitimately argue that the skinning community shouldn't expect Stardock to come up with all the new stuff. But on the other hand, if Stardock wants to be perceived as a "leader" in this growing trend, it needs to do stuff.

That means:

  1. Create state of the art content to give away to show what is possible.
  2. Show, in as many ways and places as possible, how that state of the art stuff was created
  3. Find new and cool things for people to do on their computers
  4. Create programs and tools (and make as many of them free as possible) to do those cool things.
  5. Present what you do with respect to others. Skinning should be fun. Skinning is fun.
  6. Interact with skinners and help them proactively.

To do these things, we are trying to build up the manpower to do this.  It has been slow going though.  The problems described in this article are things we've seen and been aware of. But solving them means bringing on talented people to help us. And that has been a real challenge. We want to hire people. But the # of people who can really do the job is amazingly small.

Conclusions

So there you have it. How Stardock failed the skinning community in 2006. I hope I do not have to write something similar next year.  The pieces are starting to come together now. But we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves. 

It mostly boils down to too much work for too few people. We've got projects going on with major PC OEMs, Microsoft, Take 2, and beyond which, for a company of around 50 people total is just immense. Especially when the ones who have traditionally "done" the stuff that made Stardock what it is today are now stretched between so many things.  But that's our problem and it is something we have to resolve.

I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, criticism you have to offer. There's a LOT to look forward to next year. And this year has been a great year. But it was definitely not a shining beacon for Stardock's support of the skinning community.  We'll do better.

69,458 views 157 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
While laid out in general (ie vague) terms, you've at least seen the monster and are moving toward a solution.

I'm pretty new to this scene, but would like to learn more. I have encountered first-hand what you were talking about.

As for your forums, you already have what you need to make them great again... members. A strong team of unified mods/supermods/admins can change a free-for-all into a productive community site... but it ain't easy, and it ain't without struggles. Mods who enforce rules are seen as tyrants who abuse their power, and are ridiculed for sucking up to "the man". Mods also can become victims of burnout when they have to shoulder too much (as in covering too much territory, bearing the brunt of the members' ire, and so forth).

Stardock has some great stuff... and the direction you have put forth will ensure that is continues to improve for everyone involved.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top

First off I wanted to say the community itself is very important, and having a welcome environment for new people to learn how to "skin" is a priority.  I spend a great deal of time each day visiting other online communities besides Wincustomize, and I can tell you the interest to learn how to skin, and just how to customize a desktop still has much interest.  I'm doing what I can to help bring those people into our community, which in turn will benefit us all in some way.

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Forums: This is the biggest problem, in my opinion. #1, the forums need to be simplified and streamlined. There are just too many forums! #2, integrate the usenet newsgroups with the web forums. A lot of the same questions get asked in both places... I, for one, usually post to both places because I'm not sure if the same people who are using usenet also visit the forums, or vice-versa.

Make things audience-specific: Split wincustomize into an end-user site and a skinner site. The latter would contain the skinner documentation, tutorials and skinner forums, and would have adequate resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. I like the idea of having a venue to showcase work-in-progress and get feedback, like conceptart.org or deviantart.

The end-user site would contain skin/theme galleries, polls, technical-support documentation, and casual "hanging-out" forums.

Skinner Documentation: Stardock can get the ball rolling, but this should be wiki-based. That way, it will become an experienced-user-supported venture and always stay updated with regard to software updates. One person should be designated to monitor each area.

Technical Documentation (Support): A good way to avoid getting thousands of technical-support e-mails, or to avoid the forums being swamped with technical-support questions, is to have a strong FAQ or wiki-based technical documentation.... You know, "What program do I need to run this?," "I downloaded the file, but how do I use it?," "What are the known bugs in the current build of WindowBlinds?"

Feature Requests: I think a good thing to have is a way for users to send in feature requests. That way, when things seem stagnant, perhaps a new idea can breathe life into an old project.

Spring cleaning: Take a poll and see which skin/theme libraries people want to keep, then get rid of the dead ones. Consider removing old skins after 2-3 years, keeping only the ones that have stellar rankings.

Consolidation: Modularity is a good thing, but at some point, things start getting a bit cluttered and confusing. Many people who use WindowBlinds also use WindowFX, and possibly IconX. Integrate these programs into one master user-console, so you can make all your changes in one place. Want a good way to get people to use ObjectBar? Integrate it more fully with the other programs -- For example, when creating a skin in SkinStudio, let it also have the option to help you design a related ObjectBar (both skin and theme). Or integrate ObjectBar and ObjectDock functionality, so you can have a Bar that has Dock eye-candy and user-friendliness.

On a related note, start to standardize skin formats between these related categories in order to facilitate interoperability and consolidation.

You guys have already started to move in this direction, but it definitely needs to be pursued to completion. If the programs -- each a dynamite application, in its own right -- become more tightly woven into a few killer apps, then things will make more sense to the end-users, and it will promote more creativity in the community of skinners.
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
One more thought re: the skinner sub-site:

Allow for collaboration between artists and the technical gurus. I'm sure there are many artists (like myself) who would love to participate in the creation of skins, themes, icons, suites, widgets, etc., but who lack the technical expertise (or time to figure it out) in order to make the skin. Likewise, as Brad already pointed out, there are many programmers who lack the artistic talent to make their ideas come alive.

If you make the skinner sub-site attractive for both types of people, it will foster creativity, collaboration and fruitful productivity.

Just my thoughts.
Best of luck, and happy holidays.

~ Alessandro.
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As Island Dog pointed out, a welcoming and encouraging environment for skinners new and experienced - is priority, and we members of the community have a very important part to play in that.

As a newbie skinner, I not only downloaded and printed out all the manuals available and followed along as best I could. They were not what I would call simple. LOL, but I managed.

When I ran into a snag (and believe me, there have been, and still are, a few!!) I ASKED for help in the fourms. And I got it. A couple of the journeymen skinners even gave me their private e-mail addy's so I could get some one on one tutoring. Now I try to return that favor, as do others.

I don't tend to rate skins - never understood exactly what I was supposed to be rating - technical correctness, usability, or percieved artistic impression?? There doesn't seem to be any guidelines, and perhaps that is why is it such a bone of contention for some.

Instead, I download all the newbie stuff, use it, look at it in Skinstudio and then offer up any help and advice that I can in the most positive and encouraging manner possible.


You have a very valid point, though, about the techies not always being able to put stuff into plain language. LOL.

There are tutorials available though, but you have to look around for them. Some of the resources under the Help tab in SkinStudio are no longer available...Aleksyander skinning Tutorial, for example.

Night Train made a skin for newbies to take apart and use as a template complete with tips and hints. Taking that one step further I made a simple tutorial - didn't go into the technical side - just the practical - how to get your images into Skinstudio and come out with a blind that works. One of the members at Skinartistry even made an audio version of the tutorial. The blind and the tutorials are both available at Skinartistry.

Why didn't I post it here? Simple - I didn't want to step on any toes. After all, I figured the people who wrote the program would be putting out a new one once they got the new site up,and the bugs worked out of WB5. After all, there was a fabulous tutorial for icons (Mormegils' icon a day) that produced a flurry of great icons. Surly there would be a new, easy to understand, manual for Skinstudio and all the other great programs Stardock has to offer.

I realize time is a premium for many members, but I would happily help in any way I can in producing an easy to understand manual geared in getting those interested involved in the process of making a skin.
Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There's a LOT to look forward to next year. And this year has been a great year. But it was definitely not a shining beacon for Stardock's support of the skinning community. We'll do better.


What more could we ask for?
Doing better, is always the best direction!

I hope Stardock/Wincustomize will be around

for many more happy years to come!
Thank you !
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The weak points you notice frogboy just start covering them particaly.
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Does this mean perhaps a "Do Over" in the subscription department?
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm always for the best interest, especially here, I love the community and I love the people I've met here and it seems this is what Frogboy is about also.

Bravo Frogboy
Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think, that before the owner of any company..(being one myself) can point the finger at anyone else, thay first have to point it at themselves. that is truly a rarity, as most will always blame someone else for thier incompetence.(it's easier. and yes i have prolly ben guilty of it myself..) now as far as around here.. i am a user, i have no artistic ability whatsoever! but i am a huge fan.. i look forward to you guys raising the bar once again!(as far as i know you guys (including the community) are the ones who set it in the first place!) good luck.
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have always found the documentation on DX to be lacking a LOT, that was the reason i started to make some tutorials. I have not had time to make many more in the past few months (maybe if i got a job making them???).

The best way to get support (for me) has been to get on IRC, ask a q, and see who can help.
GR / Mike have been great helps to me with DX problems. Sometimes i have had to send an email to try and get some more help, and i have posted a few posts here to get some help.

Anyway to get a Beta of DX 3.5? or get into the beta testers list?

I look forward to 2007, I think it going to bring a lot of new types of gadgets that most people have not thought of yet. And i agree 100000% with all the "weather/clocks", they need their own library now, as there are hundreds, most are identical except a bg change, or font. I still think it would be awesome to use DX to read a WB skin and "skin" a DX Clock or Weather gadget. I am sure this could be done if i knew more about WB, or DX for that matter.

Hope you all have a great Christmas, and 2007 turns out the be SD's best year yet!
Reply #38 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree...

In a world of excuses, blame and pass the buck, it's refreshing to see the man at the top stand up and take responsibility for his company's shortcomings. You've earned my respect and I suspect with that type of attitude, you're destined to success!

Merry Christmas everyone!
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The Failures
Awful documentation
Lack of support for skinners
Lack of community support
Lack of leadership


Agree.
Agree to a degree; the support is available but might not be readily so. I'd love to see Stardock "recruit" some of the "greats" from the past to pass on what they know to a new breed. And even if they can't skin, the sense of design can be taught. Mentors are a GOOD thing everywhere.
Disagree, but could improve. The forums and IRC are active with the same people waiting for some noob to ask for help. I know it's the reason I cruise the channels.
I think that Stardock has stayed in a comfort zone. I look forward to what lies ahead to stretch the team.

I am very active in the forums and IRC, I make an effort to reach out to new users and spread teh word about the benefits of Stardock. If you all need something more specific on a volunteer or permanent all you have to do is ask. I'm there.

Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It’s good to read posts such as these. I am glad to hear that people are watching, listening and care. Here’s a toast to WinCustomize and Stardock.
Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top

A strong team of unified mods/supermods/admins can change a free-for-all into a productive community site... but it ain't easy, and it ain't without struggles. Mods who enforce rules are seen as tyrants who abuse their power, and are ridiculed for sucking up to "the man". Mods also can become victims of burnout when they have to shoulder too much (as in covering too much territory, bearing the brunt of the members' ire, and so forth).

Gosh....and you said you were new....

It's true that some have suffered 'burnout' and ceased/diminished involvement...but others still 'happily' work at it.  It's amazing [for me at least] to realise just how tolerant and patient admins/mods need to be to nOT be seen as tyrannical.

One of the issues with the Wincustomize community is the perception of 'elitism' within....though I've always imagined that is partly a result of the Citizen/Apprentice/Journeyman rankings ....which some may see as preferential treatment by those who do the 'promoting'.  For me, it's one of the pivotal things about the WC Community simply as an indicator for others to know who to seek for guidance both in skinning and general onsite behaviour.

Some on this thread have mentioned about wanting to upload works-in-progress to some specific location....well there's no reason they cannot be uploaded to their respective skin galleries...with the title 'WIP' or 'Work In Progress' in their description.  What HAS happened, however is unfinished works get flamed by people who should know better saying "how dare you upload unfinished crap", etc....yet, as with screenshots, galleries [in that history that people ignore/forget] were for skins to go out to the public AND for interactive assistance in construction/creation.  Instead we DO get 'elitism' from one person proclaiming another as 'inferior' because he/she failed to provide a progress bar graphic, or some such tripe.

There's really only two ways to re-invigorate the forum/community...through added interest in skinning [How-to's, etc would help there, definitely]...or through controversy and flame.  The latter isn't really an option, not for what purports to be a friendly community site.

Actually....that mention of a 'WIKI or FAQ' sounds great.  Imagine an online How-to that all skinners could edit/contribute to...as and when new 'tricks' were devised/discovered....it'd be more 'community' and less 'do-it-this-way-because-we-wrote-the-proggy.'

I expect 2007 to be a great time for Wincustomize.com.  The site will even have shiny new clothes... 2K7 really makes the 'current' site look tired and dare I say....'bland'.  The backroom 'admin' end actually has tools that work, so, considering the workload the Stardock crew was under at the latter end of 2006 the creation of the 2K7 site[s] is a tribute to all of them.  Frogboy and his coders have provided us the vehicle....now it's up to us ALL to steer it as a successful, supportive, and vibrant Community....

Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hi all and especially Frogboy. Well someone has to worry and identify where resources need to be applied to solve problems and it might as well be the owner.
From my stand point as one who is entering their second year with Stardock and WinCustomize, I summarize my first year as fun. The items of note with regard to areas needing work(as identified by the community) are:

1) Documentation
2) Tutorials
3) Library Organization
4) Forum friendliness

In my opinion the first two are the most important to solve for Stardock. For those who have the inclination and time to start skinning, the road needed to travel should be easy. Resources easily identified for skinners is one important key.

I am a consumer of themes, probably a member of the largest identifiable group of Object Desktop customers. My skills are sufficient to tweak things a bit that others have produced. As to library organization, my recommendation is to organize libraries by type of skin and by skinner. While we all have our own web pages that have our uploads in them, you currently have to do a search using a skinner's name to find an author's creations. A simple button appearing next to an item of interest would solve this. This button would appear for established skinners only and lead to other creations by the same author. And finally, with repect to library organization, what is happening is essentially what works well in one library doesn't work well in others. Window Blinds works well with a single category (a Blind theme), Object Dock doesn't. DX widgets are rapidly developing a similar problem. Themed widgets probably need a separate category. I certainly like the idea of having a themed weather widget and or calendar, a user who is looking for widget ideas though shouldn't have to wade through thirty(or more) themed widgets to find what they're searching for. So with that in mind, how to organize the libraries will take some more brainstorming and then some testing with the idea being lots of appeal to new consumers and skinners.

And lastly, forum friendliness, overall that has been an area that is and has been receiving attention. My goal has been one of wishing to treat others with as much respect as possible recognizing that all problems begin as misunderstandings. So, don't let the beginnings of misunderstandings develop into regrettable problems. Enough now from me. Merry Christmas all, I'm lookinf forward to the new year.
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree with almost all of this.

I knew things had gotten bad when ObjectBar 2 was FINALLY released and there's STILL no skins for it. However like the article says I do see that Stardock products are CONSISTANTLY better technically (in capabilities, stability and features) than anything they compete with.

I also browse by the forums once in a while and see very little of any interest. This has always been the case, but the lesser-known newsgroups were usually FULL of active conversation....it appears they are mostly dead as well.

I suppose there's trade offs with anything. If you work hard on product, documentation sufferes, and vice-versa. Stardock has signs of typical company growing pains, but it can all be worked through. So here's my advice/input:

1. Brad, get off your soap box! You often have good opinions, and are definately knowledgable. However in a growing company, generally the leader needs to be more 10,000 feet and less nitty-gritty. (You dont see Bill Gates chatting-it-up on news.microsoft.com) You're a great figure-head but your opinions and attitudes can inflame users at times. As the public figure head of a larger company, you need to be more neutral. (at least in the public eye) Let the users of the commuinty feel able to become the advocates (or detractors) of your products.

2. Don't make your political blogs part of the same persona as your WinCustomize/Stardock persona. It might seem petty, but some people will dislike your product just for your politics. (I learned this from my wife who REFUSES to talk about politics to anyone)

3. "Premium Forums" for subscribers? If you're talking about employed community support, then it should only be for WC or SD subscribers. Of course that could lead to even more elitism on the public ones? I dont know.

4. "Elitism" starts at the top. Don't want to rag on Brad for the whole post but it IS your post Brad I see a lot of elitism coming from your own posts. Maybe I insert some of that myself just by my overall opinion of him (see #2), but some of it is blatent, especially when commenting on other people's posts.

5. Good forum tagging/searching is one way to stop the "newbies" from asking the same questions, which is usually where elistism comes from. Of course at a certain point a forum post should be converted into a different form and automatically be available as part of a FAQ or Self-Help section, which is easily referenced/linked. (They should phsyically *look* different than forum posts as well)

6. Documentaton should be broken into bite-size section (even if that causes duplicate sections or overlap). As you put it, Yahoo has a 308-page development guide. Well that's certainly great, but not the way to win over a casual user....or even an advanced user who is uninitiated.


Hope that helps some....this didnt flow as nice as I had originally thought it out, but I kept getting interupted by dinner/family.
Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh, and the SKINS themselves need to have tags....not categories!!! Update the library so I can find interesting things, not the "top 10" or "last 10". Definately more abstract than just searching by words and categories.
When I search for skins I want to see things like:

1. Singel view of all skins made with the same template/family.
2. Skins that are "dark" or follow a type of color scheme


And one last thing....ratings dont mean much when they're made by "idiots". In other words I need a little more merit to my voters opinions than just thinking that 20 teenagers thought it was "cool". Sometimes I might want an object rated high BY DEVELOPERS, or something like that. Perhaps the labels we use for our name like "Developer JeremyG" should have some bearing other than being just a pretty label. And they should have requirments.

So say in order to obtain "developer" status, I need to publish 5 original code-heavy skins/objects. In order to be an "artist" i need to submit original artwork. (Maybe even have multiple levels of each). Then a user could have more influence on a skin if they "know what they're talking about". A user could search for "items with good code", or "items with excellant original artwork", etc.

I'm not sure the best kind of system but the ideal thing would be for me to be able to do this kind of search:

Search =
Window Blinds Skins
For version 5 (full featured)
color mood of "dark"
Rated High Quality Code by Developers
Rated Artistic by Everyone
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hello I am new in this community and French. (Not very good in English in more).
I come right data some ideas:

_ 1. Why not to make so that the people who wishes it can communicate between them by Message Personnal.
With the tools which go with like the possibility of blocking the undesirable people.
As that one can not communicate his email in all the world but everyone can communicate with you.
As on Deviantart.com or CrystalXP.net for example.
And as on deviantart when one has new a comments or a new message one is informed when one is logon on the site.

_ 2. why not integrate into the site a tool for translation like altavista for the people not speaking and not understanding English.

_ 3. In the same way, Why not make in kind in addition to the fact that the tutorials ones are clearer and on a single site (and not like now with a tutorial by application on the site of this one), that they exist in several languages.
(DesktopX is well in French for example, like objectdock and well of another products stardock).
for example in English, French, and Spanish as on CrystalXP.net.
That remains the three most current languages of the world and easiest to translate.

_ 4. Do not worry you too much for the remainder you remain the most complete site on the Net with best the applications of the market(it is a personal opinion.)

Moreover, it is well for that which I make the effort relearn English because it is not with my 2 to 3.5 of average out of 20 at the college that I could have written that.

Merry Christmas to you Brad and your family and for you all.
And continue to do this very good work for us.
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
AMEN TO THAT....im sick of bad skins....the ONLY good skinner is JJ Ying....well for the commerical front its SkinStuido with the alienware ones...
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hey Stardock. Your products are full of incredible value and are worth more then a video game by itself is worth.

Something I would like to see one day is a U3 Compatible version of Object Desktop. A U3 version of this would allow you to take your desktop look where ever there is a Windows XP Computer without the need to install additional components on their machine. When the U3 Device is ejected, the desktop goes back to the way it looked before, and no harm is done
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Something I would like to see one day is a U3 Compatible version of Object Desktop. A U3 version of this would allow you to take your desktop look where ever there is a Windows XP Computer without the need to install additional components on their machine. When the U3 Device is ejected, the desktop goes back to the way it looked before, and no harm is done


This is a great idea. There's actually 3rd party tools to make apps like OD ones run on U3. I'm not sure if this would violate the license. I would assume it would NOT because it allows for you using it on a second computer as long as you're the primary user. Since a U3 device would count as installing it on a second computer...and then immediately removing it when you're done.....it seems like it would be OK.

I'd like Stardock to comment on this.
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hey,

Wow, what an article!!!!

I would like to offer my services in anyway that they might be needed..

Speedy
Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
AMEN TO THAT....im sick of bad skins....the ONLY good skinner is JJ Ying


i beg to differ...there are quite a few very talented artists putting out high quality skins...i hate to sound like a broken record but try making something and see how hard it really is...