It's great, Eve! But we didn't pay for DX to study programming so deeply. The most of us (DX users) even has no free time for this. I'm sure that SD can correct all of known DX bugs and make tons of plugins. Just they have no desire (or motivation)...

So my last goal is to finish the desktop which will include Performance Meters (with "thermometers"), Media Player (with Spectrum Analyzer and Media Library), detailed Weather, Calendar with ToDo and Events and Controls for Sound/Stereo Balance and for Monitor Brightness/Contrast. Now it's ready approximately to 80%. Then I'll stop any using of DX. I'm too busy for this now...

Excuse me again. I'm sorry for my words. I've never used Visual Studio too. And will never use it in a future. About two years I wanted to see the changing of CPU/HDD temperature on my desktop and to have the Spectrum Analyzer in my Media Player. But I had no choice after I understood that Stardock will not work on improvement of DX functionality. From this time each DX user should help to itself or remove DX and forget about it... As a result I've found how to make these both gadgets. 

makes me VERY sad, you are truely the master of all DX could and should be.

Me too, Dave! But I must earn money every day to be alive. The time when I had enough $$ to work on gadgets is in the past. It was a great hobby but it couldn't show me a way to be rich. Now I finally know where and how to do this but my new business is far away from DX and even computers... I don't like it but I must do it.

May be one day I'll return back and we will drink beer...

AMEN Brother!

This I understand, i have to do the same, and its why im not here doing DX things.   Keep hoping ill make a living at it, but it isnt happening, nor looks like it ever will.

Frankly, Im plain and simply pissed so far at this. I was really looking forward to DX refresh and what do we get.

It's still nothing close to being beta. The greatest things that made DX fun and fairly easy to work with in the glory days are simply gone. They're still listed in the plugins but they are nothing more than text in a list. Why bother throwing this garbage out there if you aren't even going to give it your best attempt at a rewrite?   

Yes... Unfortunately this is only a hobby which can make rich everyone else but not the authors of widgets/gadgets. Even in so great country like US. Let's live with this sad knowing and remember a good days with DX...

So I think it is about time Stardock rethinks their "Oh, let the customer figure it out and make some great gadgets for advertising DesktopX" policy ASAP. Especially looking at the fact that those people payed more for the software (speak 'Pro') to be able to export gadgets. I personally didn't even purchase the later discounted Pro as I wanted to have it directly when it came.

I'm very sad that it has come as far as now and another great DesktopX 'freak' gives up.

Call me naive, but Brad said he was going to strip it down to bare bones, then rebuild it better than ever. I still have faith that will happen, given time. I am willing to wait, but then, it's all I have and some of you guys have been at DX longer than me.

I also remember reading in these forums somewhere that the skinners used to have to do all the coding themselves, so I count myself fortunate to have what I do have. I know that, if I had to do from scratch what little I do with DX, I couldn't. I realize DX isn't the number one priority on Brad's list, but I think they will fix it and add more stuff eventually. I don't blame them for concentrating on WB and Deskscapes first, they are more important.

As I said.....call me naive......but do call me...lol.

ok you are naive

you could be right ...but  I doubt it

I could not agree more. The beta build that was 'launched' on unsuspecting users, recently, was quite frankly, garbage. This program is important to me and many others, just as much as Windowblinds and Iconpackager. There have been very little or no information from Stardock on this thread which I find rather discouraging    

I would rather have seen them wait and produce something that would excite us. I just feel slapped in the face.

keep hoping someone from SD will at least comment

If you don't like betas, don't use them.

A lot of the challenges we face with DesktopX has to do with UAC. Simply put, Windows Vista and Windows 7 make it very hard for us to do some of the things we could do in XP and before.

But if you think the beta is "Garbage" then don't use it. 

I'm sorry if you're upset by our comments Brad, but honestly, how can you sit there and even classify this as a legit Beta. This thing is barely Alpha with the issues it's had.

Stardock betas have always been pretty well top notch with some occasional hiccups now and then but this... is in a much lower class league all by itself. As for using it... well, who actually COULD use it for full functionality?

I think the overall theme of this thread is the overwelming desire to have a great DX 4.0  something that people could use to make some really great things. And yes as always there is a lot of bitching, but thats normal.

I think the concern is 2 fold, first is the quality of the beta (something i have not used as i need to work on some things still in 3.5), and secondly and i think the main thing is the lack of imput from SD.  

We all have the desire to see DX 4 be great, and obiviously there are a lot of people who want to use it, and work with SD to make it better.  But it only works if its a 2-way street, and as of the past few weeks (or longer) its only been us talking to ourselves.

I think most of us just really wanted someone at SD to give us a status update.

I only speak for myself.

Brad, maybe the word 'garbage' was a bit strong but it was certainly not up to the usual Stardock high standards. It's very rare that I've had any major issues with one of your betas but this one didn't even make the program useable to test.

Nicely said and well put, Dave

I'm not sure why you're thinking I'm upset.  I'm simply saying that if you're not prepared for problems, don't run beta software.

Depends on the beta.  I don't think Elemental beta testers would agree with you.   That beta makes DesktopX look like perfection.

DesktopX isn't like say WindowBlinds or IconPackager or what have you because fundamentally, it has the challenge of having its very guts ripped apart by Windows UAC and we have to find a way to transition it to the Windows Vista/7 world.

Moreover, for all the complaining I see, there aren't a lot of specifics. Just complaints.  

I think when we get back we'll have to re-evaluate whether it's worth the effort to do DesktopX 4.0 at all and retire DesktopX at 3.5.  That is what I'm leaning towards right now.

I love DesktopX but I'm not convinced it can be economically updated to Windows 7 given the "security" features. It's not acceptable to require users to turn off UAC to make full use of it.

BTW, don't get me wrong, I love DesktopX. It's my baby.

I don't think people realize how wrenching it's been to watch Microsoft basically abandon some of the technologies that DesktopX relied on over the years and then throw up UAC to add insult to injury.

The thing that kills us in supporting DesktopX is backwards compatibility to an era that simply doesn't exist anymore.  DesktopX was designed in an age where it was no biggie to embed executable code into content or read in system tray or task manager or system info data and display it.  

Moreover, the market for something like DesktopX has dramatically dropped in the last few years.  If people want DesktopX to be enhanced, they are going to need to help us with real bug reports and not empty bitching and moaning.  Otherwise, it's just not worth it.

I.e. a bug report would include what OS you're running, a problem you ran into, and steps to reproduce it.

The initial release of DesktopX 4 beta had problems with installation due to the very very complex nature of handling so many different OSes. It should have been handled better, I totally agree.  

But the latest update to DesktopX 4 beta should be working. It "works on my machine" anyway.