Frogboy Frogboy

My problem with TGTSoft

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My problem with TGTSoft

from WinCustomize Forums
When I've spoken to Tony over at TGTSoft in the past, he seems pretty reasonable. But the marketing of Style XP is just incredible misleading. A new interview of TGTSoft was justed posted at deviantART.

http://www.deviantart.com/news.php?id=6643

Here is my response to parts of it:


As Tony pointed out, we have no hostility towards each other, but the misleading statements are what really are the center of Stardock's concerns with TGTSoft.

Consider:
TGTSoft: "Since Style XP uses the native solution to skinning XP, we enjoy multiple benefits. The most important ones are no extra memory consumed, no extra CPU, and 100% application compatibility."

This is simply incorrect. As Microsoft has pointed publicly here at deviantART (Dan Shapiro himself, project manager of visual styles at Microsoft) that visual styiles are NOT compatible. Only the 3 visual styles included with XP were compatible enough (not 100% compatible, XP includes an immense exclusion list) to ship. Visual styles had so many compatibility problems that it led Microsoft to make them digitally signed. The fact is that Style XP breaks that digital signing protection and hence introduces the incompatibility that Microsoft spoke to. So to sy 100% compatibility is completely unfactual.

Secondly, visual styles use considerable memory. What does "no 'extra' memory" mean? It certainly uses more memory than using classic. And in fact, if you're using a visual style, the DLL uxtheme.dll gets attached to *every* process you run. Download a module viewer and see for yourself. Everytime you load up anything whether it be a game or notepad, if you're using a visual style, it has to load up uxtheme.dll every single time and attach that to the process. That's definitely using more memory. And by default, Style XP uses over 13 megs of memory on top of this (this can be turned off by it is on by default).

And finally, no extra CPU? I'm not sure what that means either. Since his statement was in response to why would someone use Style XP instead of WindowBlinds this would seem to imply that WindowBlinds uses extra CPU. It uses no more or less than visual styles do.


He goes on to say:
"Additional benefits include support for shellstyle.dll (skinning the left help window on Explorer)"

WindowBlinds 3.2 supports this as well without having to hack the shellstyle.dll.

"support for multiple font sizes, and support for multiple display resolutions (150dpi)."

So does WindowBlinds and this has nothing to do with Style XP. It would be like claiming that Style XP supports multiple monitors or something. XP is doing all the work.


And more:
TGTSoft: "Further, the new XP Theme APIs are supported completely. If you press the "Test" button in StyleBuilder you can see that all the parts draw correctly. This is not the case with some alternative solutions. "

Style XP doesn't support any APIs and in fact, all it effectively does is disable one of the APIs. Visual styles have nothing to do with Style XP. And again, since he's answering why use Style XP over WindowBlinds, it implies that WindowBlinds doesn't support these APIs which is most certainly does.


Now before someone reads what i've written and sees it as a "bash TGSoft" response, please bear in mind that I hold know ill will towards TGTSoft. My issue and Stardock's issue with TGTSoft is the misleading nature of their marketing.

Style XP does not do what they say and imply it does. All beta 7 does is use a mini-driver to patch out in memory the digital signing protection in Windows XP. This in turn allows you to download and use non-Microsoft signed visual styles on Windows XP. Put another way, it just makes it possible for other visual styles to show up in the appearance dialog. That's all. The latest betas come with a rather large sized visual style loader but it initself does nothing.

Hopefully some people can see why we, as developers who have worked over the past 3 years creating an actual skinning program, would object to someone who has created something that does the same thing as a 1K hex edit trying to make the two sound remotely equivalent.

Let me use an analogy, if someone wrote a patch that enabled scrollbar skinning in the shareware version of WindowBlinds, I think most people would agree that it would be inappropriate to claim that the patch is what is doing the scrollbar skinning. This is the same sort of thing here.
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Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Come on Brad, you are really believing what you are saying?
The words "Visual styles" did not exist before Windows XP came out. And I'm sorry Brad, but if you see this as purely philosophical and truly believe it's trivial, then I don't know what to say...
OK, let me attack this from another angle. This site is not about XP, there is no product on this site that exclusively skins Windows XP. This site is about skinning software in general for any versions of Windows, and Windowblinds 3.0 (the actual name that should be given to the falsely called "WinXP skins" section) does not skin only Windows XP either.
So, considering that META tags and TITLEs should offer a description of what a site is about, then why write "XP Themes, XP Skins, XP Visual Styles". Of course their only prupose is to mislead XP users that they will get XP skins, themes or styles. If you want to be clear and remove any confusion, why not change it to "Windowblinds Themes, Windowsblinds Skins, Windowblinds Visual Styles". To go back to my analogy, you are not merely claiming that your word processor makes documents, but you are claiming your word processor makes Word documents. Heck, Brad, the actual names of your products only come last in the descrition. Are you so ashamed of your products that you're afraid to publicize them with their names?

Oh and by the way, you said that you are not saying "MSSTYLES" in the META tags, but just "XP Visual Styles". Ahem... wrong. Take a look at the key words: "XP Visual Styles,XP Themes, msstyles, XP Styles, ThemeXP, msstyles (...)" It's even saying it twice...

One more thing aout maketing strategies that didn't occur to me before grayhaze's last post: one year ago it would have occured to nobody to refuse to have one of his skin ported to another product. Heck, I've always hated Winamp and AOL. But when asked if my skins could be ported to Winamp, I've always said yes. I don't understand why somebody would refuse... If not because of a successful dirt dragging campaign that almost resulted in a new Stardock religion, not so much unlike the Apple religion that I've always disliked. I've always thought fanatically ridiculous that some Apple artists refused their icons or their Kaleidoscope skins to be ported to the Windows plateform. I'm not going to think different now.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I, personally, see the tags as a way to get people to the site. They are looking for an particular interest. You have to put a ton of key words in that people would use just so that you can find the page. (I know that when I search for something that it isn't always the most direct method that gets me there). I would think that the skin artists would want people drawn to the page. Besides, those tags are talking about the *page* not *WindowBlinds* in particular (at least that is how I see it).

I agree with Feline- when they can make an animated skin like Aquarium (of course a *cat* would prefer that one), then we can compare apples to apples. but, they can't. So, it's not worth the agrevation (I'm sure that Jafo's going to get me on that one) to try and compare them. I also wonder how they handle their tech support (such as somebody wanting to get rid of it). I have had quite a few people email Stardock support asking how to "restore" their original XP after using StyleXP. That is one thing that is nice about WindowBlinds- it comes with an uninstaller...because it is "software"

OK, so it is morning and I haven't had caffeine yet.....a little on the sarcastic side...I wonder if the coffee is done yet....
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Firstly, I think you misunderstood my comment paxx. This person contacted me and asked ME to make an msstyle version of my skin. He wasn't asking me for permission, but rather saying that WindowBlinds is an inferior product and that it was a shame that I didn't 'go the whole hog' and make an msstyle. It's that complete misunderstanding of WB that I took offense to.

Secondly, I do have to agree with you slightly on the misleading nature of WinCustomize. I'm sorry Brad, but when the site changed to introduce all this 'WinXP skins' nonsense, I just thought to myself 'what the hell?'.

For one thing, the introduction of an extra section for XP-aware skins has diluted the skins library. It's introduced a lot of duplication, as every skin in the WinXP section also needs to be posted to the standard WindowBlinds section. After all, those skins are compatible with earlier versions of Windows too. It's also caused a bit of a headache when trying to manage your download stats and comments, because you now have an indentical skin in two different sections. A more sensible thing to do would have been to simply have a little flag for each skin in the WB section showing whether that particular skin supported the extra XP elements.

I do tend to agree with paxx that the whole reshuffle of the site to promote the fact that WB supports XP has caused some confusion, and may have even mislead some people. In particular, the very fact that XP support is so in-your-face on this site may very well have turned away non-XP-users who are given the false impression that the site is now for XP only.

I agree with Brad that the term 'visual style' is a generic one. It's in no way XP-specific, and has in fact been used in other design circles long before the birth of XP. However, I agree with paxx that including msstyles in the meta tags for the site is just plain wrong. It is akin to having the word 'sex' fifty times over in your meta tags just to get more traffic to the site.

I think steps should be taken to merge the XP and WB sections back into one, and the whole XP dominance issue resolved. Take the title of the main page for example. No mention of Windows 98, 2000 or NT. Just XP-this and XP-that.

Rant over.
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just an extra few words I missed out.

I would have no problem with Stardock promoting WB skins as msstyles (after all, they do have MS support now) if the use of those skins didn't require a purchase of software to do so. WB skins should always be referred to as just that - WB skins. This would stop all the messages from people asking how they make their XP look like such and such a skin. At the moment, people are under the false impression when coming to this site for the first time that they can just download skins and they'll work in some way with XP itself.
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Achoo!! I'm allergic to installers/uninstallers...

Slightly off topic: there all kinds of neural pathways in my brain between the sudden appearance of misleading search engine bait, articles about increasing bandwidth and users and marketing tactics.
Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Some people don't have those neural pathways though craeonics.
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK, grayhaze, sorry if I misunderstood your post. My apologies. I am greatly relieved. The community spirit isn't going so much down the drain as I thought. Disregard the last paragraph of my last post.

As for the rest of your post, I agree 100% with everything you said. If "visual style" may be generic words, "XP visual styles" is not so generic.

Thats the end of that topic for me. I made my point, and I think it was understood. Not that it will change anything thouhg. Thank you.

So, how about them Olympics? Doesn't figure skating suck big time?
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Figure skating should be kicked out. They should focus on real skating. You don't see ballet or dancing as "sports" at the Summer Olympics, eh? Even curling is more of a sport than figure skating.
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Perhaps a name change to Windowblinds XP & '98 skins would be more appropriate then "WinXP Skins (Visual Styles)". https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=23

The way it is now is somewhat misleading. Not nearly as misleading as TGTSoft claims though.

"So, how about them Olympics? Doesn't figure skating suck big time?"
-paxx

Whenever I start to think a sport like that is interesting something like this happens. I remember several years ago a girl gave a spectacular preformance and didn't win. The commentators were giving excuses along the lines of "she didn't suck up enough to the judges". Wait a minute! Why am I so geeked about the Gui Olympics?
Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
paxx - One example: on this site there is a category called WinXP skins.

i see your point here. personally i am getting a bit fed up with seeing "works with XP" (or words to that effect) stuck all over everything

hoever, the counder-point to that is all the reports that have been cropping up about things that users would reasonably expect to work with XP that dont. i have seen various reports about problems with cd-rw software having problems with XP.

so i suppose if you dont stick "look, it works on XP" all over something, people have a right to be warey.

paxx - On the same thought the TITLE and the META tag on the home page of Wincustomize read "Windows XP Themes, XP Skins, XP Visual Styles"

not being an "average" user, i am not sure i can speak for then
however, if i were to go to a search engine as a total novice, looking for a progam to make "windows look different" i may well hit upon the word themes or styles without ever knowing about, or thinking of any particular program.

personally i think this point is assuming a degree of knowledge of the programs you are looking for, which a total newbee probably wouldnt have.

paxx - But I don't care that much about it, I have long accepted that those kind of practices are what marketing is about, in any company.

the cynic in me tends to agree with you. but at least they (stardock) are not doing what the sales department here keeps on doing, which is actively promising and selling things that dont exist

we often end up playing catch up.


paxx - Oh and by the way, you said that you are not saying "MSSTYLES" in the META tags, but just "XP Visual Styles". Ahem... wrong. Take a look at the key words: "XP Visual Styles,XP Themes, msstyles, XP Styles, ThemeXP, msstyles (...)" It's even saying it twice...

not sure what to make of that one personally. this is getting into semantics it seems.

one thing reading program specifications has taught me is that even a very precise description of something tends to mean something *totaly* different to a programer verses a user. even two programers can reach completely different interpritations of a given piece of text.

from some of the posts here it seems that depending on your definitions, this could be read as an acturate description, or as missleading.
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me gets struck by the evil cross-posting demon
Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
craeonics - Figure skating should be kicked out. They should focus on real skating. You don't see ballet or dancing as "sports" at the Summer Olympics, eh? Even curling is more of a sport than figure skating.

is it supposed to be a sport?
there was me thinking it was like gymnastics, a good excuse for men to watch skinny women leaping around in skin tight clothes
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think a couple people are losing site of the issue:

Here is an example of a moral equivalence argument:
Bob the bank robber kills 5 people while robbing a bank, gets drunk and runs down 4 nuns on the street. During the trial, Bob's lawyer argues that "he that is sinless should cast the first stone. Those nuns, for example, have J-walked in the past." The lawyer's argument is persuasive enough that Bob is set free.

That is a moral equivalence argument taken to an extreme.

Here we have the same thing.

Company A is stating that their for pay program has "100% application compatibility" and several other features that are demonstratably false.

Does anyone else see the absurdity of trying to compare what is in effect fraud to a skin site having "visual styles" in its metatags?

With regards to the sections, the WinXP and WB sections will eventually be merged (after the GUI Olympics). What people have to realize is that many new users are getting into skinning and they don't understand what these programs are. They just want to skin Windows XP, they aren't concerned about how it's done. But no matter how you slice it, it is absurd to try to say that a section called WinXP skins or "visual styles" being used as terminology is akin to making outright false claims about ones program.

Paxx's assertion that because MS created the term "visual style" that it can only apply to a specific format is specious. At some point, someone was first to use the term "icon" and "theme" and "skin" (Quake was the first to coin the term "skin" for instance). When we call things skins, we are not talking about Quake 3 files. Visual styles are the same thing. They are a generic term. This is also not a matter of opinion - Microsoft calls them "visual styles" (lower case) not "Visual Styles". And you can believe that if Microsoft believed the term specific that it would be "Visual Styles(R)". http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dn_voices_askgui/html/askgui10232001.asp

And finally, the point that using say "msstyles" in a metatag is the same as putting "sex sex sex" is not simply incorrect. Why? Because we didn't put "sex sex sex". Look in any web site design guide and they will say that meta tags are designed for helping search engines find your product through searches of similar or RELATED things (much the same as if you do a search on "WindowBlinds" on C-net, StyleXP and Style Builder show up). If I am doing a search on "frogs", I expect to also see results for "toads" show up as well.

The trend in this post though that I am hopefully communicating is that there *should* be a readily apparent difference between someone stating absolutely unfactual things such as "100% compatible" and meta tags. Because otherwise, you would have to argue that there is no difference between the meta tags and WindowBlinds on its page claiming to "natively run .msstyles files". And I hope people can make that distinction.
Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I still think figure skating judges should be shot...
Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me suspects we have wondered off topic somewhere along the line

the point being made here that simply inacuate claims are being made seems quite clear cut.

perhaps part of the problem is that the points at issue are technical. i know a fair amount about computers, but a lot of how windows does what it does is alien to me.

i (think i) can follow the arguments and points being made, but expecting the "average" user to find and use a program to examine the running processes is asking a bit much

at the end of the day, as someone who is ignorant of a lot of the finer points i end up forming my views on two simple fronts:
a) what does this program *seem* to do, and do i like the result
b) how trustworthy is the person telling me things i am going to have trouble verifying for myself.

since i dont yet have XP most of this is a non issue for me.

however, on the points
a) i am most happy with what WB manages to achieve
b) i see no reason not to trust stardock, since what they say stands the test of time well
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Nicely side-stepped there Brad.

I'll go with paxx on this one though and just keep quiet now I've had my say.

And yes paxx, I think those judges should be shot too...
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh, and for the record, I do agree with you on your original point Brad about TGTSoft making false claims. However, I don't think the '100% compatible' thing is really the point you should be stepping on as the other claims are far more absurd.
Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
quite often the point of what you can see and tell from task manager in XP comes up.

taking win2k task manager as an example (since i have win2k at home, not XP) taskmanager isnt always as easy to understand as you might think.

when my machine finishes booting to the logon screen (takes over 5 minutes - due to antivirus program) it is often quite slugish at first.

so, wanting to know why my machine is so slow at first i have often looked at task managed to see where all the cpu usage has gone.

the process that is always listed as eating up all the cpu is the "system idle process". recently someone at work suggested i was being a total idiot for thinking this was using power, since they said this was a measure of free resorces.

i dont know what it is, but since windows does a LOT of stuff in the background, and i have recently done a course on Java which went into great detail about garbage collection, it seemed quite reasonable to conclude that this was an equivelant process in windows, eating up resorces.

so, i may have reached completely logical conclusions that are still totaly wrong. and i am looking at the simple question of where is all my cpu power going.

in comparison guessing which skinning process is taking the most power for someone who isnt a windows programmer is likely to be quite hard to tell. this is compounded because it seems XP's skinning engine isnt called "skinning engine" in the process list.

so this leads me to the point where i am going to have to rely upon someone else to tell me what is going on here.

this leads to the point that the information the program makers are providing to the users should be as acurate and informative as possible. right back to Frogboy's point. but at least i can point to how i got here!

/me thinks all outclassed programs should be marketed as such
"buy our program, it costs as much as the alternate, and it does less"
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
paxx - I still think figure skating judges should be shot...

/me wonders who is going to be cumforting all the distressed figure skaters?
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Grayhaze/Paxx - Let me make sure that we are communicating on the same thing. The point I gather you are trying to make is that what TGTSoft is doing is no different than us putting visual styles in our metatags.

IF that is your point, I don't think most people would agree with that. But maybe I'm not understanding your points.

Whether having a section called WinXP is confusing or not is a different issue. If a user uploads to just the WindowBlind section and specifies that it supports XP, it is automatically added to the WinXP section (I personally do not like that you cna upload directly to the WInXP section). When Stardock starts putting false claims on its home page like "100% compatibility" then there's room for comparison. A discussion is a two way street. I have tried to lay out in reasonable detail my points in this friendly debate.
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top
A wise man once said (not too long ago) "There are as many truths in this world as there are people..."
I'd like to append this with "but sometimes there are MORE truths than people, dependant on who's garden you are in"

What price good old honesty - from all gardens?.....
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Another wise man once said "Beware of moral relativism. It is the slippery slope that wuld lead us to the collapse of society."

Instead of trying to worry about "truths" let's start with facts. Facts are not dependent on point of view.
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I said I'm done with this thread, and I am.
We could sit here and argue for weeks, Brad, without coming to any sort of agreement. The facts have been exposed and they remain. The interpretation of those facts is where opinions differ.
Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me can talk mystical too:

Ride the waves of XP, but be aware that you are not the one making the waves.