WinCustomize 2K5 Preview BETA up!

http://www2.wincustomize.com
from WinCustomize Forums

If you're a current WinCustomize premium subscriber you can now check out the BETA. The look and feel is still under development but you'll be able to get a general idea of where it's going.

If you're not a subscriber but find this site useful, we hope you'll consider purchasing a subscription. It's only $20 and you get a lot of good stuff with it besides just access to the new site early. And it is subscriptions that are increasingly paying for this site. Go to the store link to get a subscription.

For those of you who are subscribers, it's www2.wincustomize.com. You'll have to relogon to the new site.

6,423 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Sweet, been waiting for this makeover for a while now.

First off though let me mention I think the new site seem quite nice, and seems to have potential, the "popular" tab is something I really like as I tend to browse "by downloads" when I browse for nice skins. (and I assume thats what it is

Otherwise to mention a few quick thoughts:

1, the site seemd slower ? Quite a few pages took both long time to make (server) and render (client). But perhaps that is just as it is in beta?

2, The site still (in firefox) "jumps" when it renders, which is annoying as I cant click before it has renderd fully then.

3, why do you use tables to such an extent ? (as oposed to div/css?)

4, perhaps some form av alternating background color or somthing to indicate lines in lists ?

5, Perhaps on of them nifty "rss" buttons could popup on lists and such?

6, It woould be nice if the entire "tab" was clickable as oposed to just the text inside.

7, Hovering tabs and such (I always like when things "hover" when i point at it)

well, off to watch the last episode of Elfen Leid now
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Is news from the normal WC site getting posted there? I didn't see it initially.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh baby! Looks elegant & classy.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The site looks great. However, I am still not sure I like the forums.

The site seems opera friendly also, but I am having similar problem with firefox as well.

Great work.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Mr mittens_ , the site is still under construction so news doesn't seem to be posted there as of yet.
I agree with the issues with firefox and taking a long time to load. I have yet to try it with IE, but since I use FF primarily it should work well with it.
A lot of good things going for it though and look forward to its final implementation.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Nicely done site!!
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Greatest New Ever
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
its a mix of things, but i think my biggest beef (personal taste) visually is how soft it is, and the mix of styles. you have rounded tabs with light bevels and rounded news windows with large shadows, but then you have many of the smaller containers with sharp right edges. Its also a bit interesting seeing the large bold fonts on the right and light narrow fonts on the left. I know its not done, and regardless its still very nice, just some things i noticed.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
How about a sneak peak for non-subscribers? Sort of an incentive to subscribe or re-up?
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Uh??? Slow??????
The beta site is INCREDIBLY FAST.... at least for me.... Faster than the current site is.

Don't know why, but it is and I am very impressed. As far as the subscription thing, I think its fair to give only subs a sneak peek... after all it is in beta and I'm sure they don't want everyone to all of a sudden log on until they can test it, and it is another incentive to sign up... if you already had access what incentive would there be.

Thanks to the WinCustomize team and stardock for all they give us
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top

The new WC2K5 will actually get faster as more people use it.


Here's the big speed difference: On WinCustomize, every time someone goes to a page, like say the WindowBlinds library the site has to generate the HTML for the page on the fly by doing a ton of database lookups.


On the new site, if someone visits the WndowBlinds forum and someone else visits within the same few minutes, it has that page cached in RAM and just sends it over.  So the more people on there, the faster it gets. 


Now you might say that that doesn't make sense, that as you get more people on there, the load will increase. That would be true except that the site is using the same machiens/resources/bandwidth as regular WC uses. So it's already being pushed really hard.  And as people migrate to it, the overall CPU load will go down since the new site is so much less intensive on CPU because of the caching.