Do decent Style XP users exist?
Wednesday, March 24, 2004 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
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:
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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Reply #42 Thursday, March 25, 2004 2:42 PM
| 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 Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:00 PM
Reply #44 Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:19 PM
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 Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:33 PM
1998, right? That's the first I can remember using it?
Reply #46 Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:33 PM
Reply #47 Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:40 PM
Reply #48 Thursday, March 25, 2004 5:14 PM
Reply #49 Thursday, March 25, 2004 6:20 PM
| 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 Thursday, March 25, 2004 6:51 PM
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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Reply #51 Friday, March 26, 2004 2:55 AM
Reply #52 Friday, March 26, 2004 4:08 AM
Reply #54 Friday, March 26, 2004 5:23 AM
Reply #55 Friday, March 26, 2004 12:11 PM
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Reply #41 Thursday, March 25, 2004 2:16 PM