Zoomba Zoomba

What's Wrong With WinCustomize?

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What's Wrong With WinCustomize?

Yes, we want your complaints!

from WinCustomize Forums

This March, WinCustomize turns 7.  For seven years the site has grown in terms of visitors, bandwidth, quantity of skins etc.  And the site itself has gone through several revisions in that period.  Today, we're on the 5th iteration of WinCustomize, and on the whole it still bears a striking resemblance to that first site launched back in 2001.  For good or ill, a lot of the decisions that went into that first site determine direction to this day.

While there have been a lot of improvements, there are probably a lot of places where we've failed to meet expectations.  WinCustomize 2007 was focused on a solid foundation, code that was stable and expandable.  Now we're in a position to focus on the UI and the presentation more, to improve the user experience dramatically.  This is where you come in.

About a year ago, we sought your opinions on how Stardock had failed the community.  Your comments on what you felt we could be doing better has helped us make a lot of changes and improvements to our products.  Well, we want to try that again, only this time specifically with WinCustomize.  We want to know what doesn't work, what sucks, what you hate, what you want fixed about WinCustomize.  We are looking for very specific critiques of the site, it's functionality, layout, user interface etc.

This thread is about critiques, it's not about defending the site, it's not about telling us how much you like the site.  If we are going to improve the site in the future, we need a very clear picture of what is broken and needs to be fixed.

A week from today, I will be going through the comments on this thread and compiling a master list of complaints and critiques.  We will use this list when we start the requirements and design work for the next WC update later this year.

59,173 views 151 replies
Reply #76 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree with Fuzzy. The site needs an ass kick design wise. As for functionality, take a look at Renderosity and you will see a lot that this site lacks. Uploading has always been a chore here. I have to use the old link to upload on as the link on the main page has never worked. Uploading takes far too long and the process too complex. It would make more sense to put it all on one page. Moderation needs speeding up. This site is one of the slowest for getting your images to appear. Most other sites your wallpapers are visible immediately. And why require zip files for wallpapers?  Sure if they are multiple sizes but if it is one size the server space could be saved by uploading an optimized Jpeg at minimal kb instead of mb. Ability to change age etc on personal page would be....I think...a logical option to add. Currently it is not an option and my age has always been wrong....not that I am complaining.....I am far younger on my personal page than I am in real life! :LOL:  :CONGRAT:  Come on! We are good! Let's show people we are good! Not slower than a wet week!
Reply #77 from WinCustomize Forums Top
WC is... fugly. The internet's premier skinning site looks like it was designed by a 4 year old.
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Can't agree more. Odd thing is it is designed to match Vista Aero perfectly yet we are here to change that look.  :NOTSURE: 
Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #78 from WinCustomize Forums Top
upload screenshots in .png format rather than .jpg. so many good shots,but lots of quality loss due to compressions
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I think 2of3 said this also but that's exaclty what I do. I take a SS and save it as png. Then I resave it in Photoshop as a jpg at a 12 quality. You can't tell the difference. No loss of visual quality at all.

Reply #79 from WinCustomize Forums Top
When I try to use the photo upload utility on my WinCustomize page IE7 always crashes.
I installed the ActiveX control and all that but I have never been able to upload photos.
I have Vista now but this also used to happen when I had XP.
I don't know if I would use this feature much but I have never been able to try it to see what it's like without IE crashing. :) 
Reply #80 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That's a good point Bobby. I have complained in the past that we can't use FF for uploading photos to our personal gallery
Reply #81 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Cool 2of3,it's always a relief to know it's not just me. ;)  :) 
Reply #82 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Cool 2of3,it's always a relief to know it's not just me.
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It's not just you 2 either ;) I hate IE but have to reload it when ever I wanna mess with my Photo library..bla......

Reply #83 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Weird isn't it? I can't get a single picture uploaded. (:(  :) 
Reply #84 from WinCustomize Forums Top
In searching for wallpapers, at deviant art they have a descriptive search. You can search for "water, sunset" and get all wallpapers that have water and a sunset. Or search for 'trees' and you get wallpapers with trees. They also have groups of wallpapers - fantasy, landscapes, etc. etc.
Reply #85 from WinCustomize Forums Top
In searching for wallpapers, at deviant art they have a descriptive search. You can search for "water, sunset" and get all wallpapers that have water and a sunset. Or search for 'trees' and you get wallpapers with trees. They also have groups of wallpapers - fantasy, landscapes, etc. etc.
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WC has that too.  The search looks at title, author, description and tags.
Reply #87 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I never could get 'warm' with the forum-system here.

Just use InvisionBoard for the Forums would be an option for me. Much less confusing and more organized than it is now. I never got why SD tried to re-invent the wheel by doing it's own thing with the forums and spoiling resources for that matter. ;) And it can handle masses of users, see Neowin.
Reply #88 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I would love to see a gallery for widescreen wallpapers. :) 
Reply #89 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I just want to clarify something about this thread as we near the 100 post mark.  Here is the sort of stuff I am looking for:
  1. Feature X does not work at all
  2. Feature Y does not work well
  3. Feature Z is stupid, get rid of it
  4. This UI bit is hard to use.
  5. That UI bit isn't well explained
  6. This piece needs to be moved
  7. That section needs to be rearranged/presented differently
  8. I absolutely hate <insert site aspect here>
  9. **** really sucks
  10. The colors hurt my eyes!

I am NOT looking for the following items.  There have been a ton of these in the thread and they will be ignored when I do the round up:
  1. The site really needs to add X (new button, new feature, new page etc.)
  2. Anything related to Stardock Application support.
  3. Anything related to moderation
  4. Anything that is not a technical feature of the site.
This thread is about what you do not like about the site AS IT IS.  It is not for asking us to add a pile of features, buttons, widgets etc.  There will be other threads for that in the future.  There are a ton of things we want to add, there are a ton of things you want to add, but before we start thinking about those we have to refine and fix what's already here. 

Step 1 is to look at what you have.
Step 2 is to figure out what works, what doesn't
Step 3 is to cut what should be cut, fix what should be fixed
Step 4 is to start looking for what to add new.

We almost always jump straight to "lets add stuff!" step, and never go back to fix what's broken.  With the next update to WinCustomize, we want to get away from that.
Reply #90 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK then...I don't like that the site does not have a ws wp gallery. ;)  :) 
Reply #91 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Zoomba . . I'd be interested in what your first pass at culling this thread gets and having the oppertunity to revise or clarify.

For example, the current "skinning" available is to move the sidebar to teh left or right.  Is "Allow skinning of WC" a new feature or a #9 or #10 on your list?

Is my suggestion that navigation needs improvement and consistancy a new feature or a #4?

Being able to open the "next" page in the forums as a new tab a new feature or #8 that I can't?
Reply #92 from WinCustomize Forums Top

"Make the site skinnable" is a new feature.  It doesn't exist as it stands. 

"Next page in new tab" is also a new feature.

"improvements and consistency in navigation" is a critique of the current system.  You're saying it currently sucks, it needs to be cleared up, made consistent etc.

If there's interest, I will post the condensed list gleaned from this thread next week.

Reply #93 from WinCustomize Forums Top
"Next page in new tab" is also a new feature.
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Open a link in new tab is a feature of FF and IE.  The fact that you can't do it in WC might be a feature I guess.   ;)

Consider me interested.  :)
Reply #94 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There should be separate DX Objects, Widgets,Gadgets and Stand Alone galleries
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Reply #95 from WinCustomize Forums Top
When using Opera Browser to view the home page the following occurs:
When you move your mouse cursor over the element bars "Today's favourites" and "Top Master skins" the pictures showing the application icons moves up a bit. Doing this repeatedly will result in the icons moving off the screen at the top.

Looks really funny but I reckon it's not meant to be that dynamic.
Reply #96 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, my 2 main things are the rating stars needs moved and I'd like to see the search less exacting. More like Google. Asking "do you mean" or pulling up results for partial names. Sorry if I've duplicated.
Reply #97 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Please fix the RSS feed, it renders as a two-line borked summary for each item, publish a properly-formatted, full content feed.
Reply #98 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Items removed as they're not related to the site.

Not enough "how to do" instructions; i.e. docks.
Reply #99 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Eh Ronald....

This is a site features discussion, not a Stardock software issues thread