WinCustomize.com is a website owned by Stardock. It was founded back in 2001 when the dot-com collapse took out most of the skin sites.  Stardock wanted to ensure that there was a stable home for people who wanted to create cool stuff to enhanced their Windows experience.

While 2006 was Stardock's best year from a traditional success point of view (doubled in size, more than doubled in revenue, helped produce stuff for Microsoft on Windows Vista, building partnerships with OEMs, and the game's division made one of the top PC games of last year), I believe Stardock failed the skinning community. It failed it utterly.

This is going to be long but I will try to identify the areas where Stardock blew it and what I think it needs to "make good".

The Failures

• Awful documentation
• Lack of support for skinners
• Lack of community support
• Lack of leadership

Awful Documentation

As bad as the documentation for making cool stuff for Stardock's apps appears, it's actually far far worse. And if you think it's really really bad, trust me, it's even worse than that.  It's not that we don't try. The problem is usually the only people who are good enough to make the documentation are the actual development teams who tend not to be very good at writing documentation. Ever looked at the actual text inside a WindowBlinds .UIS file?

Part of the problem stems from what Stardock really is as compared to "normal" companies.  We're a bunch of software developers.  Historically, almost pure coders.  Until 2002, Stardock had one artist in the entire company and he was assigned to do our games. In 2003, we brought in a second artist (also to work on games). That's insane.  But it didn't seem so.  Not to us anyway.

We've always been a tech company. We created technology for the sake of creating technology.  The fancy term for that these days are "thought leaders". That is, we think of stuff before other and try to crank it out. Those familiar with the misadventures of "TextBanners.net" may recall that we came up with text ads first. Yay. Neat technology but of course, Google owns that.  We came up with full GUI skinning. First on OS/2 back in the early 90s and then on Windows. And we even had user-created mini applications created via JavaScript back in 2000 (DesktopX).  But so what?

Without good documentation, tutorials, step by step guides, what is the point?  With WindowBlinds, we got lucky. So compelling was that program that users were willing to figure out the arcane format.  How arcane? This is from a WindowBlinds skin:

[Personality]
TextShiftNoIcon=-2
TextRightClipNoIcon=84
UsesTran=1
BUTTONCOUNT=26
TextAlignment=0
TextShift=-2
TextShiftVert=-3
TextRightClip=89
TextOnBottom=0
Menubar=YellowTab\YellowTabMainMenuBarImage.bmp
Top=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameTopUis2.bmp
Left=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameLeftUis2.bmp
Right=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameRightUis2.bmp
Bottom=YellowTab\YellowTabWindowFrameBottomUis2.bmp
TopTopHeight=23
TopBotHeight=48
LeftTopHeight=37
LeftBotHeight=9
RightTopHeight=26
RightBotHeight=9
BottomTopHeight=2
BottomBotHeight=2

This isn't a joke. That's what the WindowBlinds "language" looks like underneath SkinStudio. My favorite is the BottomTopHeight line. But like I said, it was compelling enough that people were willing to reverse-engineer it to make cool stuff.

Our documentation elsewhere has been much more lacking. We put out documentation but it's pretty awful. Probably the best documentation we have is for DesktopX. And it's not anything I'd consider competitive in quality to Yahoo Widgets's 308 page developer manual.  In fact, compare the DesktopX page to the Yahoo Widgets page. 

The problem at Stardock is myopia. I'm not a politically correct type of guy as many of you know but I say without ego being involved that DesktopX is far far superior to Yahoo Widgets or any of the other platforms from a technological point of view. In capability (on Windows) is a complete superset and then some.  As technologists, we simply assumed that was enough. Build a better mousetrap, etc.  But people won't use the "Better" mousetrap if it requires a PhD. to manufacture.

Let me ask you this -- Where is a modern WindowBlinds tutorial? Let's say I want to create a WindowBlinds 5 skin. How do I do it? Where's the nice friendly example that walks me through it?  Heck, the user guide that's on WindowBlinds.net is awful and the only reason it's not worse is that I went and edited what was originally put up there (complete with Times Roman font and MS Word artifacts).

In the beginning, when Stardock was smaller and the community smaller, much of these problems could be masked because me or one of the other developers at Stardock could personally answer questions on a forum.  But as Stardock has grown and we've gotten a lot busier, these glaring holes in our documentation became critical.  The WindowBlinds skinning guide that is on the page is from 2002. I kid you not. FOUR YEARS AGO!  The only thing that saves WindowBlinds skinning remotely is that SkinStudio, while not an easy to use application, is pretty decent. But it's not enough and the learning curve has only gotten worse.

Lack of Support for Skinners

You'd think the terrible documentation situation would be enough to cover the lack of support for skinners. But no, it's worse than that. Even setting aside the documentation, lack of organized tutorials, lack of step-by-step guides, etc. there's the fact that Stardock should have someone who is dedicated to doing nothing else but helping people become skinners.

Think about it. Stardock benefits from people making skins and themes right? Shouldn't it have a dedicated [email protected] type email address? It doesn't. Why not? We should. Heck, we wouldn't even need a full-time person. Just someone to help point people to tutorials (that presumably would exist), answer questions, give advice, etc. 

Instead, we leave people to the tender mercies of the forums (which I'll get to next).

Stardock doesn't even put out hardly any good example content any more (that it doesn't charge for! ) for people to learn from.  Stardock released one ObjectBar theme into the ObjectBar 2 gallery.  When was the last time Stardock released some new DesktopX gadgets, themes, etc?  How about some new ObjectDock samples?  ObjectDock 1.5 supports .dockzips. Do you see any in the gallery? I don't. We released nothing that uses it.

Lack of Community Support

Being good in the community was something we used to be great at. Sure, there were always the perpetual "free beer" people who objected to our existence (i.e. people who didn't like the idea of paying for software but themselves didn't write any software or make skins or anything) but overall, we were much more interactive.

Now, on the plus side, the # of "Frogboy is evil" posts we get in various places has declined. But I think, as a community, we were better off with some of that when Stardock people were more interactive. And, more importantly, setting an example.

The WinCustomize forums largely disgust me. Sorry but it needs to be said. WinCustomize's forums wreak of elitism and intolerance. Why are the forums not as busy as a site that gets millions of visitor should be? Because people come on, ask a question, make a mild criticism and then get creamed by old guard people who wish "newbies" would go away. One of the reasons why we really got behind WinCustomize.com in a big way after it was launched was because we were so pissed off at some of the elitism we saw elsewhere (I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about).  But while many of us old guys have been busy coding new stuff, the forums have become an increasingly hostile place.

And when they're not hostile, they're sterile and impersonal. I'd as much hang out on the WC forums as I'd hang out on the forums for my TV manufacturer.  Only because of the wondrous loyalty of many good-hearted folks are our forums even remotely capable of being rehabilitated.

Moreover, Stardock should have a community manager. Could even be the same guy who's helping skinners. Someone who's helping out on other sites. WinCustomize isn't the only skin site. What about SkinBase? They deserve more support from Stardock than they get.  Or tons of newer customization community sites too that I'm not even hanging out on.

Again, in the old days, Stardock's lack of infrastructure was masked.  I would get an email from someone ([email protected]) and quickly answer it.  But now, I get thousands of email a day. Hundreds of which request a response. As a result, I don't even see much of the email I get.  Realistically, I should ask someone to look through my email every day and flag anything that needs urgent attention.

Lack of leadership

We should be better at setting an example for how things should be done.  Stardock people should be in the forums. Stardock people should be making skins and releasing them. Should be making tutorials. Should be writing documentation. Should be answering questions. Should be commenting on skins. Should be hosting IRC chats. Should be making video demos. And so on and so on.  But we're not.

And so things tend to go to whomever is the loudest or has the deepest pockets.  I mean do skinners really envision a gadget future in which they're mucking with DHTML and Javascript to create a fixed size gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar? Does that sound cool?  But what's the alternative? Making a PNG file that's tied up with some Javascript for a different multi-billion dollar company?

I've seen people on-line refer to us as "Those wizards at Stardock will think of something cool..."  Which is a very high complement. But if we want to be the thought leaders then we better bloody get back to leading on stuff.

Because I don't know about you guys but if my "skinning" options are either making another glass skin for the OS, making a weather gadget/widget for whatever or sitting it out, then forget it.

What needs to be done

It's easy for me to sit here and rip Stardock a new one. It's my company after all. Talk is cheap. What is Stardock going to actually do about this? And by do I mean realistically. Because if you read through my litany of complaints, the "solution" seems obvious -- in a perfect world. But it's not a perfect world.  We live in a world where I can't even hire a decent QA (Quality Assurance) person. We get people in for interviews who haven't even been to our webpage (first rule of thumb when interviewing for a job -- know something about the product or service that you are interested in being involved with).

Here are the things I think Stardock must do in 2007:

• Make is easier to create stuff for our software
• Organize support for skinners
• Get more involved in the community
• Lead by example

Make it easier...

Updating documentation is an obvious thing that needs to be done.  But it needs to go beyond that.  Stardock needs to develop visually easy to understand tutorials that walk a user through how to create something.

It also needs to update its software (particularly SkinStudio) in such a way to make it easier to create skins.  More specifically, there should be beginner, intermediate, and advanced ways to create stuff both from a tools point of view and a tutorial/documentation point of view.

It should be consistent across the board. Everywhere on all Stardock's products there should be guides focused on beginners, intermediate, and advanced users.

Organize Support for Skinners

Stardock should create an off-shoot of the next WinCustomize.com (like skinners.wincustomize.com) that is dedicated purely to learning the art of skinning. Everything should show up there and it should be reasonably well organized.

Moreover, Stardock should have a person who is officially responsible for helping people get into this. Have a question on how to create an alpha blended title bar for WindowBlinds?  Need help creating an animated wallpaper (well, not yet but soon...), How do I make a new boot screen for Windows Vista? How do I make a docklet for ObjectDock? And so on.

Part of this also comes in the form of trying to support other people's standards.  For example, DesktopX 3.5 will export content to the Windows Sidebar. So people who don't think it particularly joyful to muck around with DHTML and Javascript can instead use a proven environment with updated documentation and tutorials to create new stuff.

But more to the point, someone at Stardock should always be on-hand to help out on this. It should be someone specific too. Not a "skinner support department" but literally someone who is part of the community that works at Stardock that you know and feel you can talk to individually.

Get more involved in the community

This is like the above example but it has more to do with non-skinners.  Stardock needs to be more involved on a day to day basis in the community. That means hanging out on forums.  I recognize that the days of me participating in some lengthy discussion on Neowin.net or deviantART or Customize.org are long gone. There's just not the time anymore.  But someone needs to be doing it. 

We're working on that already.  IslandDog is working on this already and I imagine you'll be seeing him in a lot of other areas as we develop this new strategy.

But there's going to be some pain on WinCustomize 2007.  We're going to bring down the hammer on elitism. Any user who comes across as a bully or "anti-newbie" won't be welcome.  WinCustomize.com's forums should be thought of as a lounge to hang out with friends. The forums will be modified to support a more "community" like atmosphere.

People email me and I just don't see the emails -- literally. One user on a blog said that "Stardock's success has gone to Brad's head".  My egomania aside, the reason I don't answer emails isn't that I don't care about folks anymore but rather a simple matter of logistics. Heck, I missed Microsoft's invitation to go to CES (luckily I found out via other channels).  I just don't see the emails. Most of my time is spent doing other things. I'm actually better known in the game industry these days than in the skinning world.

But it is still the company's responsibility to replace my presence with someone else's. Otherwise, Stardock might as well just be yet another Internet business out there to squeeze money from people. People who know us know that we're in this because it's fun to do.  But to a newcomer, if we don't behave any differently than any other "business" why should we expect to be seen as any different?

So we absolutely have to rectify that in a big way.

Lead by example

Picture this: The year is 2001. DesktopX objects are starting to become popular. WindowBlinds vs. msstyles have heated up. And the sky seems unlimited in terms of new cool stuff from not just Stardock but shareware and freeware people from around the world. Great eh?

But then the ghost of Christmas future shows up and tells you that by the end of 2006 that widgets have become various ways to skin clocks, weather readers and RSS feeds (there's nothing wrong with that but then a specialized app could/should have been made for those 3 things that is MUCH easier to create skins for and that skins could be shared). And Hoverdesk and Litestep were either dead or on life support and that the ObjectBar 2 gallery had one theme in it.  Who would have believed it?

Without leadership, you have inertia.

I wrote recently how the most damaging thing to skinning has been the length of time it took Microsoft to do Windows Vista.  This is true. That is, one can legitimately argue that the skinning community shouldn't expect Stardock to come up with all the new stuff. But on the other hand, if Stardock wants to be perceived as a "leader" in this growing trend, it needs to do stuff.

That means:

1. Create state of the art content to give away to show what is possible.
2. Show, in as many ways and places as possible, how that state of the art stuff was created
3. Find new and cool things for people to do on their computers
4. Create programs and tools (and make as many of them free as possible) to do those cool things.
5. Present what you do with respect to others. Skinning should be fun. Skinning is fun.
6. Interact with skinners and help them proactively.

To do these things, we are trying to build up the manpower to do this.  It has been slow going though.  The problems described in this article are things we've seen and been aware of. But solving them means bringing on talented people to help us. And that has been a real challenge. We want to hire people. But the # of people who can really do the job is amazingly small.

Conclusions

So there you have it. How Stardock failed the skinning community in 2006. I hope I do not have to write something similar next year.  The pieces are starting to come together now. But we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves. 

It mostly boils down to too much work for too few people. We've got projects going on with major PC OEMs, Microsoft, Take 2, and beyond which, for a company of around 50 people total is just immense. Especially when the ones who have traditionally "done" the stuff that made Stardock what it is today are now stretched between so many things.  But that's our problem and it is something we have to resolve.

I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, criticism you have to offer. There's a LOT to look forward to next year. And this year has been a great year. But it was definitely not a shining beacon for Stardock's support of the skinning community.  We'll do better.