The dying community that is WinCustomize?
Did someone send flowers?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 by messiah1 | Discussion: OS Customization
First off, that is a partial quote from some holier-than-thou muttonhead. But I wanted to see what others think. So, do you feel we are a dying community? I've only been a member for just over a year but as I see it, this community is growing...rapidly and is THE stop for Windows customization. Sound off. |
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Reply #2 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:17 PM
| partial quote from some holier-than-thou muttonhead |
| THE stop for Windows customization |
Reply #4 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:47 PM
Alas! Woe is me!
The truth of the matter is that we are ALL dying! Every second of the clock brings me that much closer to my death.
DOOM! GLOOM!!
The END is NIGH!
Or did you mean something else? Perhaps you were talking about wincustomize.ru? 
Reply #5 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:27 PM
'Dying' is not quite right. The word is 'evolving'.
By far the simplest way to explain this is....were you to look at who the first few hundred 'Users' were here...[in order of UserID numbers....1 to 200, say] possibly half would be or have been skinners.
Now we have 2.6 Million reg'd users, but there certainly are NOT 1.3 million skinners [here OR anywhere else, for that matter].
So....the Wincustomize.com community has grown massively as skin-use popularity expands, but percentage-wise there are fewer skinners.
Skinning itself has changed....it's [generally] more intricate/complex but REAL diversity [through independent alternative skinnables] has dwindled.
That last bit is the saddest, eg for all intents and purposes there are just 2 [skinnable] media players left...WMP and WA, yet 5-6-7 years ago there were quite a few, equally as popular [or close]...kJofol, QCD, Sonique, etc.
Skinners back then might not 'just' be WB skinners....but also dabble in Sonique, or ICQ Plus, etc.....and the diversity probably enhanced creativity/experimentation.
But now.....'dying'?, no, just changing....
Reply #6 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:45 PM
I also think we were going through a certain lull in the overall community cycle. It happens a lot, a community starts out small, grows explosively for a period, new bigger community loses certain members, activity gets kind of low, and then over time a new group comes in and activity starts to climb again. Judging by site traffic, I feel we were in that lull last year and are now on the upswing.
Vista and a lot of cool stuff we have cooking internally at Stardock is going to bring about a new surge of interest, and WC will benefit from that quite directly.
Reply #7 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:34 PM
.....can hardly contain myself in anticipation of tomorrow.
Reply #8 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:55 PM
| The dying community that is WinCustomize? |
nuh-uh ...no way ...not gonna happen.
| quote from some holier-than-thou muttonhead. |
...agreed.
I expect the person will be forced to eat those words, before long...
Reply #10 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 10:43 PM
Well WinCustomize does fit the profile for a dying community:
- Increasing traffic
- Increasing user interaction
- More people posting and responding
- Increased # of new users
- Increased # of users creating personal sites
- New website
Yea, definitely signs of doom -- in BIZARRO world anyway..
Reply #13 Thursday, February 1, 2007 2:19 AM
| "By far the simplest way to explain this is....were you to look at who the first few hundred 'Users' were here...[in order of UserID numbers....1 to 200, say] possibly half would be or have been skinners." |
I'm 217 and I fit that category, I was a skinner, at least then. Now it is different, as you say. Skinning is different. I have the tools and a ton of half-finished stuff, and I can't really tell you why none of it gets done.
Well, I take that back. One thing that always hits me is how, well, temporary it all is. I make it today, it is outdated tomorrow. I either update it, or it isn't really useful to anyone any more. I would imagine it is the same with software developers.
Maybe some people handle that better. It's a Zen, sand painting kind of thing. I guess it takes a certain frame of mind to know that what you are making in five years won't really be of any use to anyone. I think about that sometimes when I see expensive software from the 90's at yard sales that now aren't even as good as the free stuff.
Reply #14 Thursday, February 1, 2007 12:17 PM
| Yea, definitely signs of doom -- in BIZARRO world anyway.. |
Now that's funny right there. I don't care who you are.
Reply #15 Thursday, February 1, 2007 1:49 PM
Bakerstreet does bring up a really valid point for skinners...it is annoying when that WMP skin you spent a lot of hours making is broken everytime Microsoft updates WMP.The skins are worthless unless you remake them.(thats why I stopped making them)
Stardock has a pretty good record for keeping Windowblinds backwards compatible.(recent builds only seemed to mess up a few fonts)But you wouldnt know they were not displaying correctly unless you were applying your old stuff from time to time or already considering an update anyway.
I cringe a little when I see people dl'ing an older skin and knowing they probably cant or wont use it.
Unless Stardock pulls off a miracle,XP skins are gonna look terrible on Vista(not their fault,it IS a new OS afterall)So now I wonder...do I skin for XP(my current OS)or Vista(the future)No time to make skins for both.
Reply #16 Thursday, February 1, 2007 2:17 PM
Be patient.....
If you pull my other leg, confetti comes out my (insert body part here).
Reply #17 Thursday, February 1, 2007 2:54 PM
| So now I wonder...do I skin for XP(my current OS)or Vista(the future)No time to make skins for both. |
Your not alone I.R. I feel like I'm up a creek without Vista.
Same goes for Internet Explorer 7. Do we still skin for IE6 tolbar icons? Throbber?
Reply #18 Thursday, February 1, 2007 3:17 PM
Problem is,most everything I do for XP will soon be near useless.(at least to Vista users)
Sounds like Vista and Stardock are gonna make skinning more interesting and have more capabilities.That also means more complicated...oh my poor brain.
I wonder what Skinstudio is going to be like...are we going to make 2 skins,or 1 with a lot of legacy elements?Will WB display XP skins to look like Xp on Vista?Or will it just attempt to skin Vista with XP skins as best as it can?(with the inevitable missing elements or elements that were designed for something else)
I'm scared and excited all at once.
Reply #19 Thursday, February 1, 2007 3:21 PM
Reply #20 Thursday, February 1, 2007 7:02 PM
| Oh,since this thread is really about whether the community is dying or not...a persons perception of that is probably directly proportional to how involved YOU are |
Ah...existentialism....
If a bear sh*ts in the woods can he hear a tree falling?
For those who never ventured here [Wincusto] was it ever born?...
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Reply #1 Wednesday, January 31, 2007 3:59 PM