Bill, for someone who is so busy and doesnt have time for all this you damn sure keep running that chopper... yes.. your a brilliant artist.. Your icons and Media players are literally THE best anywhere...you are a genius in the overall ui design genre... You are exactly right.. I could not agree more.  

You can not.. however.. produce a better WB...and I..stand by that.

To ME.. and many others.. the quality of the skin in question was low IMO.. no amount of defending your end will change that. If people value my opinion, great, If they don't they are free to believe what they want. Fact remains, I'm allowed to critique your work in any way I see fit if I feel it is warranted..I will continue to do so, you don't have to like it, obviously you don't take negative critique well.

You guys are almost like the German army in 1941 conquering the world, never beaten, supremely confident.. until they met.. the russian winter, and found out, they had a weak spot.


I tried to drop it a post or two back, you wanna keep the piss fest going, then keep dissing me.. I'll take it all day and give it right back.

Ok all. It's time to follow jpmurph1's advice. Take a step back and take a deep, really deep breath. If any of you would like to personally attack eachother from this point on, please take it privately. There is a Private Messaging system here for a reason. Please don't discuss the fact that you shouldnt personally attack eachother, please dont start apologizing, let's just let the personal stuff die off, and get back to discussing the topic objectively.

ok.

Topic change..

I for one am looking forward to the Vista version of Hyperdesk

So what do you think about all of us... thinking maybe lock down?

is this your first kid Jeff?

Well I for one welcome our Hyperdesk overlords.... er wait, that's what you say on Digg.

Back on topic, before my com padre started into it with mr. styler, does anyone know if there is a restriction for creating WB commercially. Certainly one of you Stardockers know. Andrew? Karma? If not, I can have DarkMatter converted in a few weeks and ready for consumption.

well no, but you can all go to your rooms with no supper

Yes, first and last. I'm sticking with 1 baby, a sheltie and 2 personality-amplified kitty cats. Oh and 1 wife.

That's fine as long as i get bread and water and nicotine gum. Otherwise it's a jailbreak. I'm going over the wall.

Oh... I just ask because.. my first.. of four boys.. threw up EVERYthing he drank and ate for 18 months.. all over me, screamed 24\7 I never slept.. was unbearable... I hope you dont have to deal with anything like that.

Okay guys, I'm on vacation but I am getting emails about this thread so you've pulled me off my boat to look at this thread.

I'm not going to read it all. It's not that I don't care. It's just that I don't care care.

So I'll just put a bunch of random bullet points to hopefully keep some perspective here:

• William Bart is one of the best skinners of all time. He has been making world class skinning since BEFORE there was a WindowBlinds I believe (Mac Kaleidoscope I think).
• Kol is well known as a great skinner too. I use many of his skins.
• VStyler is an awesome skinner, I'm running one of his skins right now.
• Jeff Schader is possibly the most talented skinner art director I know of.  As someone who designs things (not skins) I can say that people should not be quick to trivialize the contribution that art directors bring to the table.
• I only have Windows Vista up at Higgins Lake (where I'm vacationing) so I haven't run Hyperdesk so I can't comment on the quality of the skins.
• My position regarding Hyperdesk's choice to patch system files and patch .msstyles files (that's what StyleBuilder does) hasn't changed.  I would like to think Jeff trusts a bit more my opinion on why I'm so against uxtheme patching now that he's had a good taste of the complexities of making software. Uxtheme patching is a dead end whether it be XP or Vista.  Everything else they're doing is fine I think.
• I do agree that Hyperdesk could do itself some favors if they started showing more screenshots of Hyperthemes in action (i.e. real screenshots).
• As someone who has done his share of flaming over the years, let me remind people that when you flame someone else, you're also setting yourself on fire in the process.
• It is GOOD for skinning to have as many different professionals be involved in it.  Everyone here should want, very badly, for Kol and Bart and Jeff and others to be able to make a living making skins and themes.  I have commented many times my frustration that Stardock has become the "baby daddy" of the skinning community. It would be a good thing if there were a dozen skins factories and such.  Skinning was a lot more innovative when there were things like Hoverdesk, eFX, Chroma, etc. all being concurrently developed. 
• Hyperdesk is targetting NEW people to skinning. This is a GOOD thing.  Disney themes will appeal to a demographic outside the traditional "skinning community". Once they come in, they may get into skinning themselves.  These users don't care about the underlying tech (though again, I strongly urge Jeff and his team to devise a better way than messing with msstyles, the Vista ones are even more crippled as anyone who has played with Ave's editor can tell you).

Now, I'm going back outside.  Discussing, debating, disagreeing is all fine. But please treat each other with respect.

Thanks!

Nope. I'm investing in a nanny. My first line of defense against projectile vomit and ummm... diaareah. It's gross just typing that word. I don't sleep now. I went to bed at 5am and woke up at 10am. Now you know why i'm grumpy.

I will say this, working at home has clear advantages over working at an office. Forget the fact that you don't pay anything for gasoline, but you can literally take a nap any time you need to. Plus i prefer computing in boxer shorts than slacks. Am i right? Am i right? Yeah probably too much information. I'm actually wearing slacks right now. Go figure...

Brad: I'd probably feel that a lot more if i was sitting on the boat with you. I check the mail, i check my iPhone... no boat invite.

Yeah Yeah I'll show more action shots of Hyperdesk. You guys don't realize how hard that is when your work computer is 2560 x 1600 or 1920 x 1200. The Mac Air is 1280 x 800. Kinda skinny.

We're going to patch Vista but we're probably going to offer WB Vista skins and do a version of Hyperdesk for this crowd. We're about themes. I don't care what format as long as people are getting them. So as long as no one at Stardock cares that we're selling in the WB format. We can start on them. That's right folks you heard it here... heading to the dark side. It's cold in the dark side. Blanket please.

Finally totally agree with you on something.



I'm not  :p 

Well, anybody with two cats can't be all bad. :LOL:
We have two,that's our "kids".Your description fits them well.
On TSF's site there is a Nascar theme,unfortunately it comes with a computer attached.
Make it available as a theme someday and you may win me over yet.

I had 5 cats but i lost 3 in the last 2 years. The oldest was 17.

Yay for people getting along now, with baby vomit and boxer shorts...

At any rate, best of luck, Hyperdesk team - I'll be watching to see what you come up with. :CONGRAT:

Just a friendly reminder.  [I haven't been making much comment in here of late..but I have been monitoring closely].

No-one here is above having their wrists slapped for being asses.  No-one.

By and large the thread has been a debate on the pros and cons of a 'new skinning alternative', except for the odd tangent being taken by a few.

Remember...public record can be a 'permanent' embarrassment.  If you act like a twit you can always be seen to have acted like a twit, no matter how well you try to back-pedal afterwards.

ALL site members are obliged to be civil towards their fellow members.

**************

Re Hyperdesk, Jeff...I ended up with a hard-reset to dump its install as it does NOT play well with Litestep...;)

I know how it is. My desktop machine has a 24" screen with 1920x1200, and my laptop is a piddly 15.4" with 1280x800, it's TORTURE being on such a small res!! (Which is why I'm on the desktop 99% of the time.)

As long as those WB's are for XP too...I'd rather stick with WB if it's all the same. Hell, I was using that AlienMorph icon package up until this year, from when it came out, like what, 4 years ago or something? Yeah...I was using it THAT long.

I'm so happy.  :SNIFF!: 

I don't get it. Yesterday, it was all snake piss and venom. Today, it's puppy dogs and butterfies?

I do find it interesting how everyone was complaining about the screenshots and the answer was always...no, no, no.
Brad comes on here and makes one comment about it and now it's....well..OK.

As for my screenshot I posted yesterday, there was a reason. Everyone was complaining how it looked, right?
Well, I decided to show everyone that if you don't like it, stop complaining and change it...so you do like it.
That's the fun part about skinning, if you don't like something, pop out the old paint program and fix it.
Even if you don't know how to skin, you can always change the color properties to make it look different.
That's what I did to start off with. I changed to yellow to black and the text to yellow and it didn't look half bad. But this is just my opinion and that's all it is. I'm not bashing anyone.
I know a lot of work went into it. It's like buying a new car. A lot of work went into it but people will still 'trick' it out. Skinning, in retrospect, is no different.

Now there was a lot about the Sony E skin I liked. This is just my opinion, but the start Menu didn't match the wallpaper. I'm still trying to find that yellowish-brown on the color wheel. (That's called humor, folks). I didn't say I didn't like it, just that it didn't match. Big difference. Kol did a fantastic job on it.I used this nifty little program called Skin Studio and ported it to Windowblinds.
Hey, if for some reason you don't like msstyles, you can import it.
Now, you're thinking about making Windowblinds? That's good for everyone.

As for working on one of your skins instead of mine. I know I'm the little guy, on the bottom of the totem pole being spit on by the ones with big houses, big cars and big money on top of the pole. I accept it....for now.
Well, it was my day off and I thought I'd try your product out. You have to remember, I (am) a potential customer. Yes..no?

I really like the Wall-E and 'Hyperdesk Flagship" themes. They look like they are very well made.
I do have to wonder though, have you bought any of ours?

Good luck to ya.
Here's my olive branch.

From top down:

Jafo: No reason it shouldn't play nice with Litestep. Did you try turning off litestep, installing it and then turning it back on?

Bebi: We'll try it for both Vista and XP. It's going to be DarkMatter: Subspace

Z71: I've all ready shown Windows in some of our themes, just not all of them, so its not a big deal to me. Will I go back and redo all the screen promos i've done? No. I'll just add some Window Shots for future ones and DarkMatter since they cost money. Potential customer or not, you don't have a right to convert it from msstyles to windowblinds. It's not your artwork to alter and display. I don't care what people do in the privacy of their own home but when you change our artwork and show it, there is the potential that someone may see it and think that's what it looks like and it could impact their view of us.

I just gotta say this and I'm done

vStyler was making this about the art, and TSF was making it about the clients ( the money )

You know ,we've had our differences , but now I'm starting to really like you vStyler. I'm gonna have to buy one of your master skins now.

Right we're in just for the money, that's why we spend 8 weeks making these things.

You've caused me to dual boot Vista/XP, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!  :LOL: