For interacting with data and information, do you think having a 3-D interface would actually be more useful than the 2D style interfaces we have today?

I personally don't think so. Ultimately, interacting with information seems to work best when it's relatively linear. That is, as straight forward as possible from the source to the user. Making it 3D would add layers of complexity to it.

But I could be wrong since I've never seen a 3D interface and can't really imagine a good one. But perhaps someone reading this can think of a good 3D interface.

What do you think?

I originally wrote this on Deskmod but wanted to hear your views...

Deskmod's poll on how long youv'e been using skins is really encouraging.

The results so far:

I'm new: (>1 year): 36%
Experienced (1-2 years): 29%
Elder: (3-4 years): 23%
Old guard (4+): 12%

As someone who fits into the oldie (been skinning UI's since 1991 and professionally since 1995) it's really encouraging to see that it's a growing thing.

It always bugs me when people try to compare computers to toasters or some other appliance. I don't know about you but I don't spend hours using a toaster (unless my wife is out of town ).

Of all the things that we personalize, cars, phones, homes, etc. it's odd that making computers personalized to how we use them isn't even a bigger phenomenon. As someone who spends more hours in front of the computer than I care to admit, I can't imagine tweaking it to work the way I want. And believe me, my desktops get pretty crazy depending on what I"m doing that week.

36% of users being new. Now that's the best thing I've heard in awhile.

Anyone care to venture a prediction on whether skinning (extreme computer personalization) will become so common and mainstream that people will take it for granted?

Well, gotta go, something's burning in the toaster!

ObjectBar 1.0 came out and has been quite a hit with over 80,000 downloads. But Stardock wasn't entirely happy with the release. It felt it was too slow, too buggy, and too hard to use.

Version 1.1 addresses some of this with a much more stable, faster version of it that uses considerably less memory.

What's neat about ObjectBar is that it is so flexible that you can make a bar that looks identical to the Windows XP Start bar (on Win2k) that also has the features of it. At the same time, you could create a MacOS X-like "Finder" bar that strips out the menu bar. Basically any bar, wharf, finder, dock, etc. ObjectBar can do plus create any combination of them.

And as if all that's not enough, it's skinnable too.

Version 1.1 also includes full documentation on the ObjectBar website and information on its use.

I'm curious as to how people in this community feel about debating. Some people I know simply don't like to get into disagreements or "constructive arguments" (aka debates). Other people (like myself) love to debate (as you've no doubt seen over the years).

In my off hours, I'll visit political, history, and technology sites purely to debate with other people who also like to debate. It's a great way to sharpen the mind's thought process and think through an idea or an opinion because you get in the habit of having to look at an issue from multiple sides which can save you grief later on.

Because I visit so many different "communities" (I'm very active in the game developer community for instance as well as several political discussion communities) it's easy to see general differences in how people act and feel and argue when they feel passionate about something.

It seems to me that most people in the skinning community are generally not into debating. Which is of course not bad at all. The only downside I've seen is the number of people who want to make assertions based on emotion or "gut feeling" but are disclined to have to back up that assertion with evidence or reasoning. It usually comes back to either "Well that's just how I feel" or it'll turn into a flame war.

I think sometimes one of the reasons why some people will see my posts on some site and consider me "combative" is because when I disagree with something, I try to get the person I disagree to back up their assertions.

Example:

"Program X sucks, it's just really slow and buggy."

If I disagree, I'll respond with:

"That hasn't been the case in my experience. What version did you run? What hardware? How was it buggy?"

In over 90% of the cases, I can never get a response. The user typically goes into "Well that's just my opinion, aren't I free to have opinions?" which is known in debate circles as a "strawman argument" (i.e. trying to redirect the debate into a different topic -- I wasn't implying he didn't have a right to an opinion, but merely to explain where his opinion derived from.

One thing about techies is that there is something unusual about them compared to other people. They have an unusually high desire to demonstrate knowledge -- even when they really don't have any knowledge. Hence the situation you see above. Because typically when I do get real answers about why they think program X sucks it's "I used version 1.2 3 years ago and it crashed on my Windows 95 box so I'm going to assume it hasn't changed in 3 years and how it would run on my new Windows XP machine..."

This is particular prevalent in IRC where those most inclined to behave in this way 15 to 21 year olds, will usually confuse ignorant criticism for providing knowledge (everything "sucks" to these 15 to 21 year old IRC people even if they're only vaguely familiar with it - sometimes it only requires hearing someone else who barely knows it to say something sucks for them to say it sucks).

I tend to take the view of not expressing an opinion unless I can back up my assertion with evidence - i.e. because of my debating background, I try to be ready to defend any position I take with reason and logic.

Which brings us back to the beginning - in the skinning community, there is a higher percentage than average of the population that doesn't respond well to reason and logic -- emotion, feelings, instincts and "that's just how I feel" are much more prevalent.

So those of you reading this, what do you think? Do debates make you uncomfortable? Is it your view that people should be entitled to their opinion and speak that opinion without being called on it? Or do you feel that when someone gives an opinion on something that others are equally entitled to call them on it?

I don't think either answer is better than the other. Afterall, on the one hand you don't want people to feel like they can't give an opinion on something without being challenged all the time. And on the other hand it's lazy intellectualism to constantly give opinions based on vague "gut feelings".

What's your view?

Been playing around with Mozilla 1.0 RC 1. It's actually a very nice browser. Better than IE6 in many ways. Anyone else tried it yet?

So what are all these skins and themes and icons and suites? Want to know what does what and where to get stuff? Then check out the Skin Primer 2002.

Updated to include information on new programs as well as updated info on Deskmod, deviantART, WinCustomize, LotsOfSkins, SkinBase, and VelocityART.

We haven't come up with a name yet for it. SkinBrowser just seems too generic. We're currently thinking of calling it - WinCustomize!

The skinbrowser bypasses all the HTML stuff and goes directly to the underlying database that drives the site. See the screenshot.

The skinbrowser will be available to users who subscribe to WinCustomize. Subscriptions will become available in the next few weeks - $19.95. Not only will users get the skin browser but unlimited downloads, exclusive skin packs, and some surprises we're working on that won't be available until later.

If anyone has any thoughts on a proper name for the program (maybe calling it WinCustomize is the way to go, we're not sure), post here.

LogonStudio is a program that lets Windows XP users apply, create, and edit their own logon screens. RC1 (release candidate 1) includes a handful of logons created by Boxxi and has numerous bug fixes and other goodies over previous versions.

http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.php?s=&postid=212050&t=779#post212050

Most people seem to really like minimalistic themes. I think this is one reason why Adni's skins are so popular. They're fairly basic, no super fancy.

We're going to be starting subscriptions pretty soon and those subscriptions will come with some extra goodies for those users.

As some of you are no doubt aware, running this site is becoming increasingly expensive as skinning increases in popularity. WinCustomize is now ranked in the top 7,000 most popular websites in the world by Alexa after only 1 year of being around. That translates into several TERRABYTES of bandwidth used per month.

I realize some people think that WC subscriptions should be part of their Object Desktop subscription but that just isn't possible as long as ODNT is only $50. We may look at providing some sort of Stardock.net subscription in the future for $99.95 per year that includes ODNT, WC, and Drengin but for now we'll have to have it seperate.

One of the benefits of the upcoming WC subscription will be the skin browser:

https://www.stardock.com/products/skinbrowser/sb-apr02.jpg

The Skin Browser will act as a front end to this site making it much faster to navigate and much easier to do things like chat with people on the message board, make comments, rate skins, download skins, search for skins, use suites, create suites, etc. It'll be an ongoing development product (SB 1.0, 2.0, etc.).

Other goodies of a WC subscription will include exclusive skin packs, unlimited download rights, no banner ads, etc.

We'll be working on providing additional benefits as well. We still have to figure out how much it'll cost per year to subscribe.

One thing we are not going to do regardless if have pop up banner ads on the site. We just hate them too much and with most of the Stardock staff willing to sell blood to the blood bank to keep us from having them, we're not going to have pop up ads anytime soon even for non-subscribers. So we'll have to find other ways to encourage heavy users of the site to help defray the costs of the site.

We hope to have a beta of the skin browser ready in a week or two.