me either, but right now, I think it's neccesary.

 

Still, honestly I'm far more concerned.. as are most of the other WB skinners (as indicated above) that we get more control over the new OS... gee.. perhaps even more than we had on XP?

By not doing so, or at least trying to, would be cutting off our nose to spite our collective face.

 

As for the patch, I can say with certainty they have done some things with msstyle that were described as hard coded or impossible for WB.

not that I would EVER go back to VS.. just giving an example that perhaps the 7 OS can be manipulated more than it has been thus far.

I'm all for moving forward, I would just like to move into a future of possibilities, not restrictions.

Or....suppose a person's discretionary funds are only about $50 a month -- it's easier (and do-able) to buy a Object Desktop subscription to pretty up your old computer (or the old computer that somebody handed down to you, out of pity) than to triple that amount of money for a new operating system. 

I don't know....it's your company and you're going to do what you want because you can, but it's obvious to me from your statement there, that you don't understand what it's like to be a person struggling in this economy.

 

and how many of those will be buying a new pc soon this year or next? probably alot...... that percentage will change, would like to know where people are getting the xp percentage from. (im not trying to pick a fight, im just saying is all) because all new pcs now come with vista and soon w7, not xp.

im with brad, ive ditched xp but would like to see more flexability when it comes to wb skinning.

I think that most of XP still beimg popular is due to two reasons:

1. Businesses, which are largely conservative and take their time upgrading.
2. Vista's reputation, which is still pretty abysmal, even after Microsoft fixed the biggest issues in the service packs.

It seems that in this day and age, a lot of people are so into "going with the flow" so to speak and not trying stuff themselves. They take the advice of other people at face value and often don't realize that sometimes different people can have different experiences, and often different people have different needs.

I was willing to try Vista - and it works fine for me. I have a machine plenty capable of it. I built my system around Vista, so no driver issues. I'm willing to handle UAC if it means my system is more secure. So I went with Vista, and it worked fine for me.

After playing around with the beta and release candidate - Windows 7 is certainly a great OS from my point of view. The new Aero features are well thought out and makes a lot of stuff easier. I've heard some complaints from podcasts about the changes to the Start bar (not being able to see the text), but I know what the icons for my apps look like (I'm very visual) and I understand the basic premise behind it. The boot time and performance of Windows 7 is fantastic. Of course, I'll know for sure when I perform the final switch and move everything to it. But so far, it seems like it can handle a lot.

IMHO, Windows 7 will probably move more people to it than Vista did, due to Vista's reputation. However, don't be surprised if a lot of businesses stay with XP a while longer. They tend to be slow to move.

But - businesses aren't really Stardock's target market anyways. It would make a lot more sense to measure the number of home PCs moving to Vista or 7 than it would to measure the total number. Home PCs would probably be a more accurate measure of what Stardock is looking at.

In any case - I do agree it's probably still a bit necessary to support XP. It's still popular enough that it wouldn't make sense to get rid of support yet. But I do understand his frustration to support an old OS. Vista and 7 do the graphics so differently that it's very likely that they need a lot more effort to duplicate the same functionality in XP as they do in Vista/7.

I'm glad to hear this... supporting XP indefinitely just gives users another excuse not to move on, which I believe ultimately holds back development in some areas.  For example, because XP was/is the norm/most popular, some companies were quite slow in updating their software and drivers for Vista... and in the case of some (often but not always smaller ones), it still hasn't been done.  The same applies to 64 bit computing and the greater utilisation of hardware... 32 bit is the norm/standard and not a lot of devs support x64.

Time and technology moves on... people need to do the same.  Decrepit old XP needs to die a natural death now, so let's not prolong the agony through stubborn refusal to let go... turn off XP's life support now

I really don't understand why people are mourning about the price of a piece of software (speak Windows) they will use for YEARS facing the fact that a game You are through with in 4 weeks is the cost of half or third an OS.

Yes 7 ist pretty out of the box, but for me I still want to be able to change it's look to something different and even more pretty and productive (speak OD+, DesktopX, RightClick (whatever it's name is changed to and of course Multiplicity). Object Desktop was after NOD32 and Total Commander the third thing I installed when I did a fresh install of my machine to 7. And that will not change with new machines any time soon.

 

And please, can we stop the offtopic OS wars ? OD is Windows only, no need to beat the dead Linux horse...

 

 

In this economy, i suspect it will be rather low, new PC sales are dragging ass right now, 7 will help that but if the global economy doesn't speed up, neither will PC sales.

As far as stats, they are widely available via a quick google, I know I and Lightstar can easily access what OS's are visiting our sites (64% as of this month btw) for Maxstyles. Thats quite a huge number and most certainly indicates XP is very much alive. DO i want to skin 3OS's.. hell no, I wish XP would die... I wish all I needed to skin was 7. We just aren't there yet by a long shot.

However, that really is an aside to what I'm trying to say. I am pushing for more control in the new OS and WB, regardless of how many people stay on XP. I am personally about to start skinning 7 as well and this is merely a call to action for all the issues that I 1. already know about from other skinners or.. things I know I am going to discover.

I'm not in anyway suggesting SD continue development of XP apps. rather that they give WB a good looking at as it moves into 7 (even more than has been done already)

 

Now, I'm off to somehow get 7 installed along with vista and XP on the same drive.

No biggie John. I have a triple boot going, although Seven is on a sepreate drive. XP and Vista are on one. 

To add just one more thought to why folks use older OS, because the OS they are using works for them.   Fact of life is that not all people using a computer need the lastest OS to do the things that they use a computer for.  Plain and simple.

The number of XP users and I dare say older OS will continue to get smaller, but not for the sole reason of upgrading, they just stop using the computer.  People do get old, could care less, or unfortunately die.

Here's the economics in this:

Supporting Windows 7 is a requirement.

Supporting Windows Vista in the process is easy = inexpensive.

Supporting Windows XP in the process hard = expensive.

So new programs are not going to focus on Windows XP. I'm sorry but that's just the way it is.  If it turns out that the market is too fractured to do the above strategy then that will be the end of our desktop enhancements unit.

Let me give you a case in point: .NET

On XP, .NET is not a very great experience.  On Windows 7, it's totally integrated in and lightning fast. Coding things in .NET is 10X faster and we know on Windows 7 that they have it.  On Windows XP, we have to do checks and do all kinds of pain.  Now, in this example, we would likely still support XP.

But what about WPF? On XP, Windows Presentation Foundation is very slow and problematic in my opinion.  But the alternative is using older GDI type stuff like we used to in ObjectBar and DesktopX and such.  But on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the legacy GDI stuff isn't even hardware accelerated any more.  So we'd be stuck writing two different drawing routines. 

Then there are simply the trends that don't make sense anymore.  Gadgets and widgets were interesting but there's a lot of side effects in trying to use them.  A lot of people just want their context menu to be able to have other stuff in them. They  don't really care whether they can have a weather gadget in there. But the capability of having it makes it 10X harder to support on Windows Vista and Windows 7 for the previously mentioned drawing issues.

 

I have to agree here.Most everyone here knows I do A/V works PC controlled Home Theaters ,Restaaraunts, Resorts etc.....I would just like to say Vista Media Center was a huge improvement over XP's I have also used Linux for home automation,Right now On my desktop I triple boot  XP,Vista,and 7.Laptop dual boot XP and Vista all that mainly to be able to build Window blinds That work for everyone!

It would be nice not to have to do all three OS's,however I still spend over 90% of my time time on XP! Now we take the average home I do a hometheater (like) last month and  it was Vista based I had the customer purchase WINDOWBLINDS obviously mostly for astectics He wanted it on his other PC's 2 days later Desktop & laptop both were XP!  So here is a cutomer with all the money he needs to install a $13,000 HomeTheater but still using XP on all his other PC's!

I am a Tech man I agree develop for the future just please continue to support XP so we can still install some of these core components for the masses at least give some archive app. for WB!

If I did not look to the future I would still be doing Hometheaters the old way but still I do old school intsalls quite regularly because some people(alot that have sved money through the years) are still reluctant to change !

Brad Keep Stardock cutting edge just XP is like the elementary school playground thats been there a while not as nice as the new one just built (7) not as big of toys....but still like coming home something  comforting to a lot of people!

Just my 2 cent thanks for listening! 

Harley

Brad your last post wasn't up when I started typing.

I agree with the direction your headed! Can there still be a way in the future to load some of the existing apps that are stable on XP.Not saying develop the new ones for XP just maybe continue to support some of the bigger ones already in place?

I personally couldn't give a pigs fart/rats ass/flying f**k about gadgets/widgets in my menu. I just wanna be able to skin it, and customize the way RC does today, just on a 64 bit OS. Vista or Win7 - doesn't matter, as long as it just works.

Maybe I'm a little bit confused about the term "unsupported." If unsupported means something like the way things are with BootskinXP  (it's unsupported but still USABLE), then I think I agree with the direction you have planned for Stardock.  If it means unusable, then I'm sad, because just about everyone I know in real life is still on XP, and I would hate to think that they would be stuck with that ugly XP blue GUI because they couldn't afford to upgrade.

This is the reality of how things are for me and the people I know:  We have old computers, that are still functional.  It doesn't make any sense to upgrade because it does everything it needs to do, and we're all in a position of having to make due, bordering on doing without.  I was pretty much forced to get a new computer and let a bunch of other bills slide because I needed something reliable for work and my XP computer was blue screening all the time.  I guess eventually we're all going that route, but I think it is going to be slow going.

Windows 7 installed.

took all of 30 mins with a spare harddrive.

When WB 7 and SKS7 are 'final' I will start updating my themes and adding 7 to current WIP's.

 

Now.. back to XP

Can I make a feature request for skinning in general?

Right now, there's a lot of duplication of effort. Like arrows. Arrows appear in a lot of places, but sometimes I want to use the same arrow in more than one place. Well, with all of the different states a control can be in, I end up having to make different graphics for what is essentially the same thing.

Or sometimes the different "states" of a control are nothing more than a color change. In those cases, maybe have an option to "generate" all of the states based on color controls.

It would be nice if it were possible to have a few "basic" controls, and have everything else be derived from them - and later, I can make individual tweaks if needed.

John, you're going to LOVE Windows 7! i'm glad you found another drive.

Couldn't you do that now by just navigating with the image drop-down arrow to the graphic you've already created and placed in SKS6, place it in the new area, then go to Frame Builder and recolor if you need to and save it as the name of what you want the new graphic and place to be?

 

Actually Tom had sent me a 400Gb external, I pulled the HD out of it, installed, voila.. done.

 

I had a poke around on 7 have yet to install WB on it yet tho.. will post my thoughts on my WIn 7 thread when I've had a look.

 

Brad, how about a response on the skinners posts about the hope we have regarding WB7?

Whoops, missed that. Been a while since I used SkinStudio.

I have a 1 TB external, can I make it an internal? Will my mobo see a full TB?

 

 

Is it possible to use a single image for frame borders (or have SkinStudio split an image) instead of creating a separate image for each side?