Stardock has updated its forums to support a new kind of view -- summary view.

Now when you go to the forums, you will see at the top right, just under the search bar, a "Forum summary" link.  Pressing this will display the forums in a different way -- it will display the last 5 active posts in each primary category in the forum.

This view will allow users who are interested in browsing the forums as a whole a way to keep up to date easier with what's going on.  Subsequent updates will add preferences automatically to cookies so that it will default to whichever view you last chose.

Users can use the + or - buttons that are now above each primary category to hide or show a given topic category. These are automatically saved to cookies to be remembered for next time. 

Hope you like the new feature.

Greetings!

This forum has been created so that Object Desktop users from around the world can get together and tell us what they'd like to see in Object Desktop.

A lot of changes are coming to Windows in the next several months with Windows Vista in development. And we want to make sure we're here to serve your needs as users of Windows XP and eventually users of Windows Vista.

So if you have a new program, a tweak, a change, or anything else for that matter, let us know.

Thanks!

IGN is publishing a series of articles by the development team (including me) about what we're doing in Dark Avatar. What our goals were, some of the features, and some exclusive screenshots as well.

Head on over there and check 'em out.

For users interested in knowing more about Windows Vista or for Vista users who are interested in sharing their experiences, a new website has been launched -- VistaBlogging.com.  This new site allows users to share their experiences with Windows Vista as well as providing specific Vista coverage that you may not find on more generalized websites.

Articles from VistaBlogging.com are automatically syndicated to WinCustomize.com, JoeUser.com and elsewhere and vice versa if they pertain to Windows Vista.

A video demo of Windows Vista has been posted to help get things started.

http://www.vistablogging.com

Today I made a short demo of using Windows Vista. Nothing fancy and admittedly, my live talking to myself demo skills are not particularly impressive. But hopefully you'll be able to get a general overview of Windows Vista.

Click the link below to view it.

The next video in the series will get into more of the meat.  Windows Vista isn't just Windows XP with new eye candy and some new utilities, so stay tuned to see some of the benefits of Windows Vista.

Also, if you want to make your experiences of Windows Vista public, you can read this post.

Screenshots:

 My Vista default desktop

Power Users will be happy with the resource monitor.

Now a universal benchmark for Vista machines. This will become a big deal I predict.

Personalization is both more and less powerful than Vista. We'll talk about more in the coming weeks.

No "skinning" this time around in Vista by default but users can change both the opacity and color of glass in Vista which most will likely prefer.

The new Start menu is a big improvement in most ways over XP's. Easier to find things, better organized, more professional looking.

...and now the video demo...

The website http://www.vistablogging.com has been set up so that users can give their own input and feedback on Windows Vista.

So how do you create your own articles for the home page?

1) You will need an account on WinCustomize.com OR JoeUser.com.

2) You will need to create an ARTICLE on one of those two sites and make it of type: Personal Computing ->Windows Vista (with one of the appropriate sub categories from there).

Some guidelines:

a) We reserve the right to remove articles for any reason.

Please make sure your articles look good. Check spelling, check layout. Don't put in giant screenshots (use thumbnails that point to full versions).

c) Make sure your articles are accurate and to the point.  Make them interesting and informative.

d) And have fun!

The install

Installing Vista is a breeze. We pretty much expect nice installs at this point. Put in CD, press a button, and go away for awhile and come back when it's done. Which is what I did.

Welcome to Windows Vista

The first thing you're going to experience when you get into Windows Vista is that it will do a lengthy and thorough analysis of your PC's performance. The idea is for it to determine just how fast your PC is so that it can tune your experience.  But what Microsoft has done with the Vista performance analysis is pretty ingenius. When it's all said and done, you get a number. That's your rating. And that rating can have far reaching consequences.  One can picture a future where games might say "PC rated at 7 or better" rather than a myriad of hardware requirements.  The best ideas are often the most obvious in hindsight.  My Windows Experience Index is a 4.0 on the laptop (processor is a 4.7 but graphics area  4.0).

Those drivers

When you first boot up, it'll begin trying to find drivers for the various devices you have on your computer. This will likely mean sticking in a lot of CDs and hoping they work. I was a little disappointed that more support isn't already in at this stage. My ThinkPad T60's finger print reader wasn't supported for instance.  The Verizon wireless modem wasn't supported.

Living in Vista

One of the reasons to upgrade to Vista is that it's the closest thing to Windows idealized as we've ever gotten. It's a thousand little things that, when combined, make Windows a much better experience. Better dialogs, better usability, and so forth. It's just a much more pleasant environment.

One nice little touch, for example, as a power user is that when I bring up the task manager, it hides all the system processes.  You can see them all with a friendly button called Show processes from all users but for every day use, the task manager is finally useable again.

One thing that annoyed me a bit is that it didn't automatically bring up a list of wireless networks to choose from. So I had to go and set that up manually.

Installing my stuff

At this stage, it's time for me to start installing my stuff.  One of the first things I notice is that most installer dialogs of programs I use are not fully styled by Vista (i.e. have classic buttons).  I'm so used to using WindowBlinds (which skins everything) that it's a bit jarring to see anything using classic buttons.

One of the first programs I install is Multiplicity for Windows Vista. I use Multiplicity because I can then control my XP desktop, my XP laptop and now my Vista laptop from a single keyboard and mouse. It has a single clipboard between the machines so I can quickly copy and paste files and other things to the Vista machine and in turn copy and paste screenshots and such to my XP machine that already has PhotoPaint installed for tweaking photos and then pasted again to my other XP machine where I am using Front Page to write this article....there we go.

JoeUser.com is going to get a major makeover next year.  Right now, WinCustomize.com is getting the treatment (WC 2K7 won't show up until end of this year).  But we have some thoughts on the direction JoeUser.com should take:

1. Automated side-bars. You can make a given blogger your friend and quickly see what sorts of things they've been up to on the site.
2. Photo albums. Mini photo-albums (up to 6 pictures).
3. Automated home page. Based on the insightful/interesting points, the ones that get the most points in a given time frame will get auto-featured.
4. A "real" home page for each blogger. So a Draginol.JoeUser.com would not just be the latest blogs written out but a page that you can put links onto, allow friends to talk to each other on, let you feature other people's blogs and articles, and so forth.
5. A JoeUser.com today page that will let people quickly browse everythign that's been going on the site in a single glance. Users will be able to organize this by topics (like politics, technology, etc.) or just have the latest articles from your friends show up (Effectively subscribing to the blogs created by your friends).

My comparison to MySpace is somewhat in jest. JoeUser.com will focus on allowing people to express their opinions and then enabling those opinions to get out there so that others have a chance at reading them.  That remains the crucial advantage JoeUser.com has -- what you write here actually gets read by people as opposed to the typical blog that no one will ever see or, that only a handful of friends will see. (go onto Google type "Owens Corning Basement System Review" and you'll see what I mean). 

The site will be rebuilt using .NET technology so that speed and reliabily should go up.  Hopefully people have noticed that JU is a lot faster and more reliable than it was a year ago.

Stardock's goal with JoeUser.com will be for the site to act as a hub for article writing on any number of subjects and that those articles can then be syndicated to the proper subsites that feed back and forth.  And of course, to also be my blog site where I can dispense with my right-wing technology oriented claptrap.

Some people have expressed dissatisfaction with the forums but I think they'll be happier in the next week or so as the forums continue to be enhanced based on feedback with new browse modes.

Stay tuned.

Computer Games On-Line takes a sneak peek at the upcoming expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II called "Dark Avatar".

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar players confront an expanded universe after the defeat of the Dread Lords. Asteroid fields can now be mined, covert operations as a means of warfare appear, new types of treaties show up and of course tons of new features, new ship types, new planets, new maps, etc. come into play.

Check out the Q&A interview at CGOnline to learn more.