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.
20,867 views 67 replies
Reply #51 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well Paxx, we will resolve this as we have resolved all our debates in the past. With an arm-pit duck noise contest. You should preserve what dignity you have left, you know you cannot make duck noises with your armpit as well as I can. Do you not agree it better to concede the point now?
Reply #52 from WinCustomize Forums Top
is this thread locked or something?

anyways, just wanna get my main gripe in here (as it's been since windowblinds 3 came out, and brad you know this) it's the referring to windowblinds as fully skinning windows xp.

sure, theoretically it can, but, the skin definitions and such need to be updated to reflect that (i know, i know, next build, but still...it's hard to wait when windowblinds is playing catchup in amount of things skinned yet still has stuff like hyperpaint to make it worth your while, you know?)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+xp+visual+styles

that link's just for paxx and grayhaze

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #53 from WinCustomize Forums Top
When is XP going to skin menus? The betas did, but they took it out.

We should create a new thread about msstyles vs. WB skins if we want to compare the two.

But remember, on a typical system, WB is going to skin a lot more of it than XP alone will.

Reply #54 from WinCustomize Forums Top
""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..."


Just to clarify. I'm the one who controls the titles and metatags. Part of my job is to drive traffic to the site. And thats what I am doing.
Reply #55 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't think they are arguing that adding those meta-tags harms traffic levels.

I think Paxx's point is that by having those meta tags that it "misleads" users into thinking this is a site in which one would get the things in the metatags.

The problem with that argument is that metatags (and this is a pretty well known fact) were created to help search engines find sites and RELATED sites to a query. Hence my example if I type in "frog" into a search engine, my query will return links to pages about toads and other amphibians because they are related items.

I don't think anyone would argue that .msstyle visual styles are not related to .uis visual styles (or .msstyle skins vs. .uis skins if you're sensitive to terminology).

Therefore, it's appropriate to have msstyles and any other things that are related to what this site carries.

By contrast, adding "sex sex sex" into the meta tags would not be appropriate because they two aren't related (as much as I might wish they were!).

And as I've said, there is no comparison between a meta-tag on a website with a product making demonstrably false claims. And it is that sort of moral equivalence argument that "pushes my buttons" (not what Doreen said - I love to debate and discuss things with people who don't agree with me, but I really don't like moral equivalence as an argument or the even more wishy-washy IMO moral relativism arguments - claiming something you sell does something that it does not is WRONG. Period).

Reply #56 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Java....'aggravation'...Spell checker

[Slow, but sure... ]
Reply #57 from WinCustomize Forums Top
On the other 'problem'....at least Ice Skating is better than Synchronized Drowning...
Reply #58 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me goes and check if Pepsi has "Coke" in there META tags.
Nope they don't. Too bad they aren't aware of this "pretty well known fact".

Man! I got dragged into this again!
/me places my hand under my armpit: OK lets do it! You first!
Reply #59 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just to clarify the whole meta tags thing. I've been a commercial web designer for over two years now, and quite often I've been asked by a client to add the names of competing web sites or companies to the meta tags of their site to draw traffic to the site. It seems that Brad would have no problem with this, as the sole intention of meta tags is to draw traffic to the site by giving related words in his opinion. However, it's actually not legal to do this. As paxx quite rightly points out, Pepsi aren't allowed to have 'Coke' as one of their meta tags (although in reality they are allowed 'Cola'). Meta tags are for giving alternative wordings for the subject of your site, in the same way you would use a thesaurus to find an alternative way of saying something. They are not for including the names of products and/or trademarks which are not directly related to the site. So for example, if this site carried an actual msstyles section, it would be fine to have msstyle as a meta tag. However, having this in the meta tags at the moment is similar to having 'Coke' in the Pepsi meta tags.

Of course, I'm not saying this particular instance is illegal, but the common opinion of both Brad and T-Man seems to be that as long as something is related to the site, however tenuously, it's fine to put it in the meta tags. As WindowBlinds is endorsed by Microsoft anyway, I'm sure they have no problem with their trademark being in the tags for this site. It's acutally TGTSoft who are doing something illegal if they're using the same tag, as their product is actually condoned by Microsoft, rather than supported.

The real issue here is that it's misleading to bring people to the site who are looking for msstyles, for whatever reason. At present the only sites people should really find through a search engine when entering 'msstyles' are those containing information about the format and what it does.

My, what a lot of words... without a real point. lol
Reply #62 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Frogboy. I'm not stupid. I understand what people are saying. I was just letting people know that it was me who creates the MetaTags and not you.




Reply #63 from WinCustomize Forums Top
With regard to the false claims made my TGTSoft though, I do agree with you completely Brad. I'm in no way likening the what they have done to your methods of bringing people to this site, as those comments were in response to another seperate issue raised in this thread.

I've now read the interview in question all the way through for the first time, and although I agree totally with your comments on that interview, nobody likes to see one company bashing another's publicity. Unfortunately these days such behaviour only serves to make the one picking fault seem in the wrong.

The only thing you can do is keep marketing WindowBlinds in the way you always have, and let the public make their own mind up. In the end, I think the range of extra features offered by WindowBlinds over standard visual styles will sway people over to your product anyway. There's no point in publically bashing another company's product (whether you believe it to even be a product or not), as it only stirs up thoughts of the likes of Microsoft, AOL, and all the other companies who throw insults back and forth.
Reply #64 from WinCustomize Forums Top
ohhhh sooooo it was the T-Man??????

get a rope!!!!! hehe
Reply #65 from WinCustomize Forums Top
/me mulls this idea
a rope could help to contain Doreen's claws while trying to cheer her up with a tummy rub

i think we should be understanding towards T-Man. after all, anyone with the power to change our names should be treated with respect
Reply #66 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Grayhaze - we have no trademarks of others in our metatags so there is definitely nothing "illegal" in it. And all I can say is that we'll have to agree to disagree. Related items in meta tags is the industry standard. Every web book I've read has suggested doing this.

With regards to picking on TGTSoft. The interview is only part of the issue.

Check this link out:
http://www.tgtsoft.com/products/stylexp/help/benefits.html

Since we are the other "non-Microsoft" skinning engine (which in itself is a very misleading statement - WindowBinds uses virtually the same APIs to skin as msstyles do - I am quite certain that TGTSoft does not know how visual styles works) they refer to in their document, it is they, on their home page, now on some message board that is spreading false information on us.

Look at the claims that they make as an advantage over WindowBlinds:

Claim:
"Zero footprint operation"
Fact:
Very misleading. When a user uses a visual style, it uses more memory and resources than WindowBlinds + a WB visual style is running.

Claim:
"Explorer views are skinnable"
Fact:
Style XP doesn't skin explorer views, you have to hack shellstyle.dll. WindowBlinds 3.2 can now skin web views (but we haven't documented it, but this will go away."

Claim:
100% Application compatibility
Fact:
This is simply a false claim entirely. Delphi apps, for example, will not work if fully skinned. WindowBlinds is more compatible than msstyles in real world # of apps that they skin.

Claim:
Integrated into theme files
Fact:
This is true.

Claim:
Multiple Language Support
Fact:
This is just a strange claim. WB works the same.

Claim:
No hooking of SetWindowsHookEx
Fact:
msstyles use RegisterUserAPIHook which is the same thing. If they knew how visual styles worked, they would have noticed that every program has a copy of uxtheme.dll attached to it. This particular claim is really damning because they go on to say:

"Most skinning packages call SetWindowsHookEx. Aside from consuming extra resources, this also slows down your machine as almost every windows message is looked at by a third party software package."

But msstyles have THE VERY SAME ISSUE! If Stardock were as nasty as some people say, we'd likely send the lawyers out about this one.

Claim: Multiple Font Sizes
Fact: WB handles multiple font sizes as well. And in fact, skin authors can specifiy particular fonts.

Claim: Multiple DPI sizes
Fact: Huh?

Claim: Integrated into Theming APIs
Fact: WB is just as "integrated" as msstyles. Again, if they knew how the two worked, most of these claims wouldn't be made.

This is on TGTSoft's home page. It was up BEFORE I wrote this post which it in response to that and the interview.

And what happens is that you get people on Usenet and other message boards who will parrot this stuff. The # of times I've had someone say "Yea well WB slows down machines because it uses system hooks!" even though msstyles do the exact same thing. And in fact, msstyles are WORSE about it becaue they haven't had 3+ years to optimize this part.


Reply #67 from WinCustomize Forums Top
> Claim: Multiple DPI sizes
> Fact: Huh?

This is where on denser screens (like laptops) things like checkboxes actually get smaller. AFAIK, WB *does* support this, but I don't know of anyone who's used it (including me), because it's not publicised and even if it were, it's more repetitive work for no return if you're not using a high DPI display.

Incidentally, high DPI is going to be a big issue soon, especially if Tablet PC's become popular.