These days when I surf the net, if I visit a pretty busy site I'm increasingly faced with tons of banner ads, pop up ads, and other stuff that slows my visit down.

WinCustomize has no pop up ads.
It has just one banner ad at the top and not even that if you're an apprentice on up or a subscriber.

And the 100 megabyte limit?

Here's where statistics become interesting:

In the past year, roughly 10 million unique people visited the site.

Roughly 12,000 people total have downloaded over 100 megabytes and a significant percentage of them are customers or people with apprentice access or up.

12,000 people eout of 10 million is 0.1%. And since it's a lot less than 12,000 that are actually affected, it's therefore less than 0.1%.

So in effect, WinCustomize is a pretty free browsing experience for over 99.9% of the yearly visitors.

Consider the path skinz.org has taken (http://www.skinz.org) -- seriously, check it out right now. Nothing wrong with their approach IMO, it's just a different one. I would perosnally rather visit a site with as little ads and no pop-ups as possible and have that site focus on just the <0.1% of the users who are using a lot of the resources.

Different sites try different things. They all have costs they have to pay. But I thought a look at the statistics and sharing them with you might provide a different way of looking at things.

In the future, if someone wants to just link to this here's where I've posted this article:

http://draginol.stardock.com/Articles/Thereisnosuchthingsasafre.html


More and more often, users are finding that their favorite websites are now starting to ask them to contribute something back. It doesn't take a long time for some of these users to become offended and complain. Of course, they don't just come out and tell the truth "Look, I'm just a cheap leech and I want everything for free..." No, they try to hide their cheapness behind athe guise of moral outrage.

This faux moral outrage differs from site to site. But it usually involves the person who wants unlimited use of the site without contributing anything back claiming that the people running the site are "greedy".

I am an administrator on WinCustomize.com. It's a skin site where many of the most talented graphics designers from around the world submit their work. Their skins and themes and icons and wallpapers are then downloaded by users. The site is owned by Stardock and the most popular libraries on the site are for Stardock's software. The only thing that makes the site even remotely possible to have up is that a group of very generous hardworking volunteers from the "skinning" community donate their time to run the site. These volunteers are made up of by some of the top graphics designers around. So in essence, the site is actually run by the best and brightest of the community and Stardock pretty much takes a back seat and pays for the bandwidth and the programming.

Even still, the site costs quite a bit of money per year. Our ISP, MCI Worldcom (don't get me started) charges around $400 per megabit and we have 20 megabits in use ($8000 per month). The site also costs us roughly $50,000 per year in salaries and equipment to maintain the site. Or in other words, the site costs roughly $150,000 per year.

Stardock's actually in an unusual situation because it makes the software the most of the users of the site are using.. Because its software is sold directly, it therefore knows which users have purchased the software and which ones have not. As the site began to push up against that 20 megabit limit, something had to be done. The site was simply costing too much per year. So Stardock did some analysis on how that bandwidth was used:

It turned out that while the site got millions of visits each month, the bandwidth was consumed mostly by a tiny percentage of those users. It turned out that over 12,000 people had downloaded over 100 megabytes. Nothing wrong with that until it was discovered that of those 12,000, only a couple thousand of them had actually purchased the software that they were downloading the skins for.

In short, a large percentage of the bandwidth was being used by warez users essentially.

Contrary to what some may believe, no website is free. Someone has to pay for it. WinCustomize is paid for by Stardock but who pays Stardock? The individuals who purchase Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, DesktopX, etc.

So if WinCustomize was to keep going, Stardock either had to raise the prices on its software to help pay for the non-contributing users or it had to find ways to get those bandwidth intensive users to contribute something back or go away (note: getting these people to simply go away is an acceptable result - many users are under the mistaken belief that they do a site a favor simply by visiting).

Throwing pop up ads and other nonsense at its users was not an acceptable solution. The crass commercialism of the Internet was not going to be on WinCustomize (who doesn't hate those pop up ads?). Stardock decided it was not fair to force its customers to indefinitely subsidize those who were just taking and not giving anything back to the community in return.

So the solution WinCustomize came up with was relatively straight forward:

Once a user downloaded 100 megabytes of stuff, they had to do one of the following:

a) Buy a WinCustomize subscription ($20 for 2 years - 80 cents per month). They get a bunch of really cool goodies along with unlimited downloads.

OR

Register the warez/shareware version of the software they were downloading those skins, themes, icons for.

OR

c) Start contributing to the site by helping users on the message boards, submitting news on relevant things, and generally being a positive presence via written activity.

OR

d) Start making skins, icons, themes, whatever to begin contributing something back to the community.

Any one of those 4 things would do the job.

At the end of the day, someone has to pay that $150,000 that the site costs to have per year. For the past year, it's been people who register Object Desktop or one of its components. A user who thinks it's unfair that they have to do something in order to keep downloading stuff forever should ask themselves if it's fair that someone else has to pay for the bandwidth they're consuming. Because there's no such thing as a free website.

A preview version of the WinCustomize skin browser is now publicly available for all users. It is fully functional other than having a subset of the skins, themes, icons available for download.

Check it out at Betanews at: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1030146489

WB 4 isn't likely to come out this year but the betas for it will.

And even with the current internal alphas, I think it is safe to say that WindowBlinds 4 won't just be faster than msstyles on any hardware, it'll be so dramatically faster than msstyles on any hardware configuration (regardless of video card) that there won't be further debate on it. WB3/msstyles will feel painfully slow compared to WB 4. In short, there should be no more "YMMV - your mileage may vary". No matter whose machine it's being run on, fast, slow, whatever, WB 4 should appear faster to the point that they notice the difference fairly quickly.

It'll also be equally as compatible as msstyles thanks to new XP APIs Microsoft put in that we are going to be using. Let me give you an example - those apps that put their own buttons on title bars - they'll now work. Their button will show up on the title bar.

I won't touch on the actual new features of it until later on, but we think you'll find them equally cool.

We still have more versions of WindowBlinds 3.x to come out. Skincast is due in 3.5. The task pane won't get into until 4.0 though since we can't just read shellstyle.dll since that's a copyrighted DLL.

One major feature of the full version of SkinStudio (on Object Desktop or available stand alone) is its ability to import parts of skins into your creation.

So if you have created many skins in the past, you can vastly reduce your effort on new skins by using parts from previous skins you've created. When I make skins, I make use of scrollbars and other bits and pieces that most people don't really look at as being that distinct so that I can focus on the title bar and borders of my window (along with the Start menu).

If you're like me, you've probably had great ideas for skins but not had the time to go and create a full blown visual style from scratch. Using the import feature can save you massive time.

Basically here's the problem:

Apple is a very innovative company but they are stuck with the Motorola PowerPC. Motorola can't afford to keep up with AMD/Intel in the CPU speed wars because the quantity sold is so vastly different.

So now the latest Macs are stuck with CPUs that run at half or less the clock speed of new Pentium IV's.

Steven Den Beste has some articles that touch on this:
Mac's Free Ride (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/07/MacsFreeRide.shtml)
Mac the Hammer (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/07/MactheHammer.shtml)

Going to a different CPU (like Intel and AMD) could be very time consuming (years to do). What is to be done?

https://www.wincustomize.com/index.asp?Cmd=full&NewsID=1124

In the news item, we were discussing whether we're in a new golden age. Craeonics, who is someone whose opinions I respect, disagrees. He wrote:

"If this were a golden age, I would see more and more new ideas. I don't see any new ideas, so therefore this is not a golden age. Quantity != quality, you know."

To which I replied:
I think you have a case of nostalgia there. The quality of the skins of 1999-2000 can't remotely compare to the quality of today.

If you don't see the innovation and new things going on, then my answer to that is that you're probably not trying out new software very much.

Let me just give you a handful of NEW things in August 2002 just from us:

1) WindowFX 2 beta is nearly here with skinnable shadows.

2) Said beta has a fully scriptable way of handling state transitions. That is, when I minimize/max a window, I can have any type of animation I want to creat emade.

3) ObjectBar 1.3 allows users to have hot keys for any bar or item. So if I want to have Ctrl-Alt-K bring up my MP3 player and Ctrl-Alt-V bring up Visual Studio and Ctrl-Alt-N bring up display properties I can do that.

4) ObjectBar 1.3 now lets you put in ActiveX controls right into bars! So I could embed a spreadsheet object or a media player movie window or whatever right into my bar.

5) The WinCustomize skin browser will be out shortly (v1.0) allowing people to apply skins and themes and icons and etc. right from the database directly. No having to download the thing and figure out how to install the skin and then go to th eprogrma and apply it.

6) WindowFX 2 beta now allows you to put LIGHT SOURCES of ANY COLOR anywhere on your screen and it will change the color of the border of your window based on the position and distance of that window to the light source.

These are just a few things off the top of my head since I worked with them this afternoon.

Plus there are other things in development such as the MCP which will provide an open standard for skin software developers to use it rather than create system hooks so that instead of your half dozen customizeable apps using their own system hooks (which can slow down the system to a degree) only one is used.

We're also working on a way to allow developers to access Direct3D APIS right from the 2D desktop so that all sorts of different effects can be used.

I am not at liberty to mention all the cool things going into WindowBlinds 4.0 for next year except to say that it's going to be incredibly cool.

WB 3.4 came out at the tail end of last month so you can see what was new there at: http://www.windowblinds.net/wb3/wb34.html

So these are just some things that have occurred in just the past month that are off the top of my head. If I did some digging I could make a much bigger list.

So if there was time past golden age that you feel compares, feel free to bring it up and provide a comparison. I see lots of new ideas and more than just new ideas, the realistic execution of them.

But what do you think? Those of you who have been around "since the beginning" have seen what I've seen and what Craeonics has seen. What do you think?

I would assert that Craeonics or a user who holds a similar opinion probably has a subset of customization software that he uses and has not seen updates to those. Kenray (Teknidermy) has vocally supported the various freeware programs available out there which these days don't seem to be moving forward as quickly as they once did. But he may not be watching what's been going on with Object Desktop or Hoverdesk or other types of customization software.

It is my belief that today, August 2002 that the software and the skins are experiencing an unprecedented level of quality and innovation when compared to previous times.

What is your view?

Are you one of those people who tend to upgrade their computers every year? Are you going to do it this year? This article talks about the decreasing incentive to keep upgrading your PC...

I've been into customizing my computer since Windows 3.0. Back then I was hacking my video drivers to change the buttons on the title bar.

It would not be an idle boast to say that when it comes to skinning, I've been there from the start. And with that in mind, I really think we're entering into a new golden age for skinning.

For those of you who haven't been looking through what's been getting created this summer, check out some of the top authors.

Carlitus in particular represents everything that is good about our community. First, his immense talent in creating DesktopX objects and icons that go beyond virtually anything ever seen anywhere is just incredible. Secondly, he's helpful. He doesn't just share his hard work with the world, asking for nothing in return, he also helps other users. He's an active participant in message boards and raises awareness on issues that affect other skinners and users. Thirdly, he demonstrates the international appeal of skinning. He's in Spain.

To many young people, the International nature of the Intenret is something we take for granted. But 20 years ago, the idea that people from countries like Spain, UK, Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, Brazil, etc. would all be working together to create things to share with the world would have been unthinkable.

Pixtudio, for instance, is a collaboration of a skin author from Brazil and another one in Canada along with help from other skinners from around the world.

The program SkinStudio, while designed largely in the United States, is developed almost entirely in Poland. 20 years ago, Poland was part of the "East bloc" of communist countries. Now people from there and many other places that were once off limits are part of a global community that cooperates so seamlessly that when we talk about things on these very websites we take it for granted that the people we're talking to are from all over the place.

But it's the quality combined with quantity combined with variety of things that really convinces me that we're in a new golden age. Top skinners like Mormegil, DavidK, Alexandrie, Treetog, Mercury, Aleksyndr, who have been around for a long while are still creating immensely excellent things. And newer people like the aforementioned Carlitus, JamesT, starone, Adni, APB, Kalatuu, MikeB, C242, and many others. And these are just from glancing at the top authors lists for today (which tends to change from day tod ay).

The current poll seems to indicate that most people into customization are running Windows XP or Windows 2000 which are much more suited to customization than previous versions of Windows. Which is why I think that the golden age is taking place now - Windows XP installations are reaching critical mass right at a time when the software for customization is finally getting to be more useful.

Some users on our support forums have been noting that after years of being "screenshotware" that the newer versions of DesktopX and ObjectBar are finally moving into something that they feel comfortable using all the time without downsides. WindowBlinds reached that point awhile ago and the explosion in new skins and new users shows that (you should see what we have coming in upcoming WB3.x and WB4, we'll look back at today's version of WB as "crap" in comparison ).

The skin sites have continued to increase in popularity. WinCustomize is ranked in the top 5,000 websites world wide and our friends at deviantART are roughly equally as popular. The other skin sites are also gaining in popularity for the most part demonstrating that overall, skinning is becoming an increasily popular phenomenon.

So my friends, it seems to me that we're entering into a new golden age for skinning. What do you think?

http://draginol.stardock.com/Articles/Madatcommercialsoftware.html


One of my beefs with Microsoft is that they have the rather nasty habit of blunding things into the OS that essentially squash smaller software developers.

Each new version of Windows seems to eliminate more and more potential aftermarket software products. And sometimes it seems almost unnecessary.

Did Windows, for instance, really need a skinnable media player bundled? Or was this really just to zing Winamp? What about disk compression? ZIP?

The biggest criticsm (one that I too tend to make) is that Microsoft's stuff isn't that great. Office includes a mediocre grammar checker for instance. The problem is that the software tends to be "good enough" to discourage third parties from entering that field where they could perhaps make much better versions.

But bother investing the money in a state of the art grammar checker when the market for it is so small and the average user finds the one in MS Word to be "good enough"?

This is the same criticism people make of our company, Stardock. It is not a boast to say that Stardock owns the desktop enhancement market. On Download.com, Stardock has 4 of the top 10 most popular desktop enhancements (link) including the most popular one (WindowBinds).

In the "old days" desktop enhancements were primarily the realm of hobbiests developers. In 1998, Stardock was just starting out in the Windows desktop enhancement as it was clawing its way to safety from the disintegrating OS/2 market. On OS/2, Stardock was the premiere software developer (which is like saying we were the tallest man on Mars!). But by the end of 2000 we had established ourselves pretty firmly and that's where the criticism really began to come in.

As our software reached into some new area, we would effectively discourage freeware developers. This wasn't intentional, but it is very hard for an individual developer, working in his spare time, to compete against a company with a full time dedicated team. You see this in the game industry all the time. Who wants to try to create a fully featured game when you're up against Blizzard with its staff of dozens per game?

So the net result was that freeware development dropped off and hence, users who wanted to customize some part of Windows was increasingly facing either having to pay for a commercial product or use a freeware alternative that was no longer actively being developed and vastly inferior in features (if they could find even that).

This is particularly galling to those who were around from the beginning since they saw all the developers who were busily making various programs only to get "squeezed out" by Stardock. This wasn't intentional, it was just a side effect of creating software that was "good enough".

My particular solution is the solution I'd like to see others do and that is make sure that those making management decisions avail themselves to their critics. Respond to them. Not so much to win them over but so that you recognize the responsibility you have in writing commercial software extends beyond making money. Just as the Walmarts of the world have a moral responsibility to be sensitive to local concerns after they've essentially driven all the mom and pop shops out of business, software companies need to listen to their critics and try to make sure that they stay on top of their products and ensure that it is worth it because of what it does rather than because there's no other alternative.