WinCustomize 2009 Preview
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing
This May we intend to launch a completely re-designed WinCustomize.com. The new site will be a major departure over the existing site with an emphasis on speed, ease of access, and efficiency. The site will “seem” a lot simpler because there’s a lot fewer clicks.
What you see above is an early version of it (all the thumbnails will, for instance, be re-created as high quality PNG’s instead of low quality JPEGS).
One thing not shown here is that the Library list in the Explore menu won’t say “CursorFX” of “Dream” but instead say “Moue Cursors”, “Animated Wallpapers”. When the user’s mouse cursor goes over it, the right-side will explain what it used to make it happen. This way, new users understand intuitively what they are customizing and experienced users can quickly see which programs are being used for it.
With over 3 million monthly users, WinCustomize is the world’s most popular site dedicated to desktop customization so we’re putting a lot of work to make sure it’s done just right.
Even in beta, one of the things that’s really amazing is how easy to navigate the new site is versus the existing site. For example, on WinCustomize today, if I want to read articles I have to click on”Articles” and wait wait wait for the articles page to come up. Then I get a list of top articles and newest articles along with a running log of featured articles. It’s just a lot of “stuff” to deal with.
By contrast, on the new site, I click on articles, a menu comes down that quickly lets me navigate to what I want to get to, often without having to go to a seperate page.
Same thing for the community page. Right now, users click on community which then takes them to the master forum list page which takes a good 5 to 10 seconds and then they decide what they want to read. On the new WinCustomize, a user clicks on community and the menu pops up listing the most recently responded to threads along with options to jump to a particular forum right away.
Of course, it’s in the libraries (which are currently called galleries but are being rebranded as libraries to support Sins, GalCiv, Demigod, and Elemental mods along with other mods in the future) that the magic will really come in handy. For instance, right now, if I just want to find a wallpaper, it’s a pain to find one that fits my monitor. On the new WinCustomize, I’ll be able to just search on 1920x1200 wallpapers and then download. IF I’m a WinCustomize subscriber, you’ll be able to simply press a button to make that wallpaper your background immediately (to give you an idea of the direction we want to take for subscribers).
Stay tuned for more info.
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Reply #4 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 9:46 PM
Interesting....looks indeed 'quick'. I like the smart filters and screen shape detection as on Caedes. Also appears more logical.
Reply #6 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:13 PM
YAY!!!! SKINNABLE IS BACK
And Jafo needs a virtual cane he can wave at us whippersnappers
Reply #7 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:14 PM
Looks great, looking forward to it coming out. I have a dumb question - I access WC through my Firefox browser and not through my WC browser - is this update for both?
Reply #8 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:30 PM
Does this mean we will be able to upload PNG's for our "Preview Image" instead of low quality JPG's?
Site looks promising...can't wait.
Reply #10 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:45 PM
Looks like a lot of good hard work being done here. Very well done ~ !
Gona be a good one!
Reply #12 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 12:15 AM
There is a spell check...well browser built-in, but it doesn't work in this frelling WYSIWYG postbox. 
Reply #13 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 12:27 AM
Nah, that would just frustrate Zubaz. 
The new site looks like it's gonna be great! Can't wait!
Reply #14 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 8:05 AM
As a note .. the forums are not part of this update and there will be no speel check this go around.
Reply #15 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 8:12 AM
Drta...
Reply #16 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 9:45 AM
French Cows with potty mouths?
Well, OK then.
Reply #19 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 9:30 PM
Reply #20 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 11:57 PM
Ones that work....
....the same way twice....
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Reply #1 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 9:33 PM
Looks very clean and by way the you explain it also will be very fast. Two very nice things to have. Skinable too by the looks of it.
This may either be silly or unable to be done but can current subscribers be in on testing the beta version before public release?