Frogboy Frogboy

Do decent Style XP users exist?

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Do decent Style XP users exist?

from WinCustomize Forums

It's funny because I debate all kinds of issues on the net. Political issues. Military history. Game industry issues and of course skinning issues.

But as a group, none of them compare to Style XP "advocates". I don't know why but we are quite regularly subjected to flames by their users on our news groups, forums, and even Download.com.

Let me give you a few examples:

Usenet thread

This is just one guy recently - but it's typical. If you look at his stuff, look at how LONG it is. And what is his alleged source of why he needs to attack us? Because I had the audacity to point out that Style XP just patches uxtheme.dll. He won't accept that. But if you read through it, you notice a pattern, his claims are the exact same claptrap Style XP advocates have gone with for years. It's as if there's a bunch of talking points.

But we'll see this kind of thing on forums ranging from Neowin to deviantART to people coming onto our own news server. It's not enough for them to bash WindowBlinds, they act like Style XP is some sort of great program that they're on a mission from above to sell to everyone.

They can't just use it, no they have to go out and trash our software. Nevermind that if it weren't for our software, uxtheme wouldn't likely exist in the first place.

I honestly can say that I advocate people try whatever they want and make their own choice. I say that because I feel pretty confident at this point that WindowBlinds is such a superior choice that the only reason not to use WindowBlinds for skinning would be price at which point free uxtheme patchers become preferable.

Which is what makes me suspect that many of these people who are so militant, so aggressive about making sure the world knows that "WindowBlinds sux" and "Style XP rulez" are people who are in denial. They paid $20 for something that patches parts of their OS and don't want to admit they made a poor purchasing choice. They don't want to admit that they could have gotten the same functionality (or virtually all of it) for free.

What gets me is when someone tries to accuse *us* of "bad mouthing" Style XP. There's nothing we've posted that is even remotely equivalent to TGT Soft's Style XP marketing document. Maybe these people can't accept that a company would so boldly write false statements like this (according to their document - updated for Style XP 2 so recent - no one else skins the Explorer task panels as one example).

It's incredibly frustrating as you can imagine.


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14,644 views 55 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What makes me always upset is when they tell lies or attack every newspost at da or neowin with stupid statements. Can't hold it... Even on the GUIOlympics thread.



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Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i agree with frog boy. i was one day, a few months ago , on the MSN gaming zone i was in a lobby talking to a few friends about window blinds. a guy/or gal "i couldnt tell" a stylesxp user started attacking me and WB. calling names and swearing. this person was not only being abuseive but being vulgar and mean...even tho i had done nothing to provoke the attack ...hell i hadent even mentioned stylesxp,

he /or she was quickly removed by a + member. most in the lobby were offended the lamo. he prolly did more damage to stylesxp's reputation than convince anybody to use it .....

these nut cases remind me of those religious zealots that MUST force their misguided view points on others ..they find unknowing impressionable people who would rather than do some thinking for themselves, believe those who yells the loudest. the sad part is that unlike the bible "which is subject to the individuals interpretation" the facts about styles xp verses WB is not negotiatable...if they truely wanted the knowledge they would them selves look at the facts and know the truth......

stylesxp is a cute little "hack" for the lack of a better word . which, if they took the time to study up, could do for free.... WB is infact a true program, built by stardock.

stardock i believe also works with M.S. to better their product. im not sure M.S. would work with a company who distributes prog that distributes a hacked file .......

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Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I've seen c242 brutally flamed on forums simply for stating facts or simply pointing out the falacy of some user.

There's been so much FUD spread about WindowBlinds by these Style XP "advocates" that some think they're "facts".

Consider these (and I'm sure you've seen these)

claim: "All WindowBlinds skins suck!"

reality: Given that there are thousands of WindowBlinds skins, it's hard to take such a claim seriously. Especially when most of the decent msstyles are also available in WindowBlinds format. And also, amazingly, msstyles peopel are constantly asking for ports of popular WindowBlinds skins.

claim: "WindowBlinds is a memory hog!"

reality: Wbload.exe on my system uses 1.7M

Meanwhile, who knows which of those svchost.exe's is the theme service (I rarely bother to turn mine off because I don't sweat about memory because I understand the concept of virtual memory and know if it ain't being used, it's going to get swapped to disk at some point).

claim: "Style XP uses no additional resources"

reality: It certainly does if you use its config and it includes a service that is always running. And last time I used it for any length it had a small memory leak that added up if you kept your system up long enough:

And I'm not even sure what that thing is supposed to do. I wasn't even running Style XP at the time. Whatever it is, it uses even more memory and handles than WBload.exe uses when its actually running.

claim: "WindowBlinds slows down your system"

reality: Relative to what? Relative to classic? Sure. Relative to running an msstyle? No way. Not unless you're running some incredibly bloated WindowBlinds visual style. For one thing, WindowBlinds uses features in the Radeon and Geforce cards to speed up drawing. If you turn on hyperpaint, you can pretty much eliminate redraws.

Of course, you're lucky to even get those specifics. Most of the time it's just shrieks of "WindowBlinds blows!".  It's just software and yet some people take it like a religion. And I bet there's 50X more WindowBlinds users than Style XP users. It's lucky for them that there isn't a proportional # of WindowBlinds trolls out there. Imagine if every time someone previewed yet another "Hey, it's like 50 other skins out there but with different title bar buttons" someone didn't say "Looks lame, you should get WindowBlinds."

And then there's copyright. Style XP includes as its default skin a MacOS X visual style complete with Apple logo. We don't because we know how Apple feels (we include a Mac classic skin because Apple legal said they didn't have a problem with that as long as it doesn't include the Apple logo).

I'm just glad our other products don't run into this though. Imagine if every time there was a post for Galactic Civilizations some Master of Orion 3 fan or some Space Empries fan trashed the posting for GalCiv? Or if every post on DesktopX had varius Litestep or Samurize advocates come out and say it's crap. I'm not saying that never happens, but it's rare.

Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Frogboy,

Isn't it time for a couple of WB skins to find it's way into the next Microsoft Plus! pack?

Just a thought
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
what cracks me up is that THEY are suing YOU. this thread alone is enough evidence to SHUT THEIR COMPANY DOWN.

i'd speak softly and not make my enemies.
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Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yea, I don't think things are going quite the way they had hoped in that.
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK now this is funny. Another forum I'm on has yet another fascinating StyleXP topic going. There's so much misinformation being spewed, it's crazy, thought I'd come here for some peace.
I'm trying to explain, again that StyleXP does indeed use resources but it ain't working. >
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There's been so much FUD spread about WindowBlinds by these Style XP "advocates" that some think they're "facts".


yeah I love this one :

"the Windowblinds themes add stupid window borders and 15 bazillion buttons so that you can access every possible function of your computer from one freaking window."

15 bazillion eh. I must have missed that particular WB.


Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
it must be that limited edition over comercialized, hyperglossy, turbo powered user, gui/os replacement skin ive heard about ....
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Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Typical example of totally uninformed not to say stupid people : http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=151509

I think it should be a law that You must be able to handle Your machine first before messing with skinning and using programs.

Look at the 1st answer to that thread: Since when is the uxtheme-patch able to do all the skinning including icons and wallpapers ?
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I can only say 2 things after reading this thread. 1)I love WindowBlinds and all the fixin's. And 2)I'm kind to dumb animals.

Ok....3 things.

"the Windowblinds themes add stupid window borders and 15 bazillion buttons so that you can access every possible function of your computer from one freaking window."


And this is a bad thing? Like I said...I'm kind to dumb animals.




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Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
From a skinners perspective, one thing that REALLY irks me is the attacks on the skins themselves.
I take that very personally as it's an attack on all the skins really.
My skins may not be the most highly polished, or usuable, but they are Unique and I know the gfx don't suck.
If I wanted a fast, clean, minimal skin, why bother any skinning software at all. XP classic does all that.
Reply #38 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hippy, your skins rock, dude. We all know that
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK, I'm going to take the initiative here to install StyleXP and get down to just how much memory it uses. I have a nifty little program here that will let you drill into a processes details and see exactly which modules are loaded by the process and how much system resources they are using. Once I have the time to do this I'll report back then we'll have some real data to use against these StyleXP zealots..

Until next time...
Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Yea, the attacks on skins get on my nerves.

I was doing an article today on the history of WindowBlinds skinning. And I firmly believe the msstyles zealots have really done real harm to skinning. I say that because skin authors have become so paranoid about making anything that isn't "minimalistic" because not only will they not be appreciated for being creative and original, they're likely to get flamed by the msstyles militia.

Let me show you some skins from 1999 so you can see what I mean in terms of originality.

 

This is old but when was the last time you saw a skin that tried to look like something other than "Look, it's another generic GUI"? Or at least done reasonably well?

This is from 2000! Sure there's OS skins in here too but look at that Allend Bond skin. Or Dangeruss's skin.

This is from Shoggot. His title bar blade actually rotated (animated) when it was the active window and the blade stretched as you increased the size of the window. I can't even remember the last time someone made a good animated title bar. And it's so easy. It's just frames of animation. Some little glowing effect or SOMETHING other than the usual gradients that everyone seems fixated on.

I believe that the reason for the lack of creativity these days is because of the obsession with downloads combined with fatigue from being flamed by the msstyle kiddies who will look at a skin that took 2 weeks to make and shrug it off "I won't use that crap" simply because it's not Windows Luna (but red) or some skin that looks like a slightly more minimalistic version of Luna.

Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Umm just another useless thought. Send each msstyle kiddie a free version of windowblinds and you will never hear anything about msstyles again. You may now continue with your discussion.
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I can't even remember the last time someone made a good animated title bar.

Centurion by Hippy has a cool one. it also makes sense interface-wise in his skin.

btw: the old days weren´t that original as well from the given examples. the first skin seems to be ported from "Notepad" by Hideaki Kamada (at least heavily inspired by) and the skin By Dangeruss is ported from "Galactica" by Duncan Cowan. both Kaleidoscope schemes. so the an other conclusion could be that Apple has done harm to Windows skinning as OS X is no longer that freeform as before and the usual sources for ripping/porting look almost all the same. the rips/ports of course will also all look the same

an other thing is that many people do not want skins, but get them pushed in the face with Luna. Classic with the ugly default colors and too high bevels is not much of an alternative. so the desire for more minimal skins by people that overwise would not have thought about skinning at all is understandable.

but yeah, of course the most important reason is that many people nowadays do not skin for fun or for creativity, but in order to upload stuff and feel like part of a community. that´s why things like comments or ratings are so important for them. an other phenomenum (not really new, but it happens more often now) are people that are watching other people´s skins like vultures waiting to port them. seems to be something pathological.

btw: the more popular skinning gets the more average and mediocre skins will be there. not much that can be done about that, it´s natural. as in the Gauss curve.
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Moshi : These may not be so lucky examples but think of Thredz or ManyK's skins. And Dangeruss has made lot more original ones as You may very well know.



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Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm just appalled by the number of false statements StyleXP has on its website. They say they "started the 3rd party visual styles craze." Are they that ignorant? WB was around long before StyleXP even thought of existing.
There are numorous other statements that detail their ignorance. It is funny that they don't have the balls to mention Windowblinds directly in any of their statements, just refer to other 3rd party software. They know if they mention it, they will be exposed.
Its too bad legally you can't do something to get those false claims off the website.
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Heck Windowblinds has been around even since before XP even thought of existing.
1998, right? That's the first I can remember using it?
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
c242: hmmm ... not as many as you might think. credits are not here at WC, they were probably removed when the skins were transferred from Skinz.org. you´d be surprised how many of those are ports. (originals: Takashi Izawa, Albie Wong or William Martin for example).
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top
moshi: You are using an exception to try to prove a general truth which I think is suspect at best. For the sake of topic, I've created a news item where you guys can debate the originality issue specifically. My 2 cents though is that Kaleidoscope was a great things for skinning too and its loss is something people are feeling now in many ways.
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I believe that well informed Style XP users could compare to well informed windowblinds users and co-exist without much hassle. It is, in my opinion, the few crazed ex-windowblinds converts or the uninformed/misinformed StyleXp users that engage in most of the bashing/flaming. People with real "chips" on their shoulders.
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top
People with real "chips" on their shoulders


This is absolutely true.. MANY of the jabs taken at WB include jabs at Frogboy or SD in general which leads one to believe that persons beef is not with WB but with Kris himself or some other aspect of SD and WB just gives them an excuse to tell everyone how abused they are.. It's really quite sad, but hey it's their loss and if we could ban them all I'd be fine with that..
Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
"WB was around long before StyleXP even thought of existing."

Even the short lived EFX, CustomEyes and Illumination preceeded StyleXP by a good 3 years.
But TGT either selectively forgot those, or just proved their ignorance to the real skinning scene that exists.
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