Hey Zu,

We are not coders, we are skinners, we don't know how MS Windows work,  but we can do a GUI.

WinCustomize is a skinning community!

The 99% of WC authors are skinners not coders! We expect some help on this problem, don't you think?

I'm removed all my dx widgets and themes from my wc gallery.

...this was my hobby, really enjoyed to made..

For my friends and downloaders: Thanks  your alltime support, and kind of worlds!

so.... Im don't want to say Goodbye, but   Thanks for the fish!

And we are getting it. Several coders are working on it. I can't believe all this over weather. As Jafo said, there was a day when a person wanted to know the weather, so they go open a webpage and check it. DX is not weather. DX does so much more than weather, we will all be fine if we just wait.

Hell, why don't all the naysayers here just email/petition weather.com and tell them how they owe us a weather feed and how they are neglecting us by leaving us high and dry with no forewarning.

Guys, I hate redoing all my work as bad as the rest of you, maybe even more, since I just did that a few months ago. I have to do it again, I don't like it, I have better things to do with my time, but I have to, that is just the way it is, so I will.

Please don't turn your backs on skinning or DesktopX over this. Stardock already pays little attention to DX, if we let this get out of hand, they may just scrap it and be done. That would certainly make me very sad.

 

Unfortunately Redneck,weather was in all the widgets I loved that matched themes I love. I use rainlendar so I could give a hoot about clocks and calendars. (Rainlendar even has a MSN weather addon. Not nearly as cool as desktopX.) Take weather out of the widgets and I don't have a lot of use for them. Same for gadgets and themes. Weather is big for people putting stuff on their desktops. Weather is the top download for Yahoo widgets as well.

I understand what you are saying, but what I make is not for putting on your desktop. It is for REPLACING your desktop.

 A lot of people use DX Themes for more than weather. A DX theme that I make is a full fledged application launcher that does everything with style. With it, the user don't need a start menu, don't need Object Dock, rainlender, windows media player, or sysmetrix. My DX themes do all that those can do.Weather can be added easily enough, just as soon as they get it fixed, and they will.

 

My statement here is that DesktopX is about a lot more than weather. Everyone is acting as though the world is coming to an end because we don't have a weather widget. How did we get by without them before Stardock cme along? Or before the PC came along? Weather isn't everything and it's definitely not worth all this fuss.

Why doesnt this surprize me ? I'm sure you all knew about this and decided to do nothing. Now you can sell more matching Themes etc . None of us are needed here anymore so I'll just delete my Widgets myself.  I have been here for years and you can say this is not a Stardock problem and that might be so but as a so called ' Community ' your making it quite clear that you don't give a rats ass about helping any of us....its just a figure it out yourself and you have 1 week to do so.  No biggy. I'm sure the skinning world won't miss a few weather widgets.  I was willing to fix each one of mine but all my weather widgets were packed as a widget pack so even to delete the weather requires rezipping the other widgets and making new previews. I have little enough time these days to worry about this when Stardock could care less.

You would think they would at least fake that they were going to help....but they don't need any of us now...its just a business.   Ta Ta

Amen Amen Amen. Show them the money! That being said I can understand the biz aspect to a point and that means they need take care of their customers and the skinners or else like Night Train said they are nothing more than the Walmart of skinning. You even mention Walmart which I guess is what Stardock aspires to be. That's fine it's your biz, Walmart makes a lot of money selling cheap, toxic crap from China but this ain't a TV and I didn't think you'd rip me off by not backing up what you sold me. It's software. You are responsible for what you sell in my view. You should back it up. I bought a lot of DX Themes from you guys. As far as I'm concerned the weather widget is a big part of what I wanted with those themes. There's nothing we can do about it except not buy anymore software from you. That's a choice each person has to make. Back up your customers and get those DX Themes that were sold fixed. It's the right thing to do and will show that you really care about your customers/community. Yeah you can get away with not fixing the themes but that just shows what you guys really have become: Skinning Walmart. It is quite evident to me that when you people of WC speak of "community" anymore it is this: COMMUNITY=$$$$$.

May be it would be a good help for skinners. But not for coders. I'm not a skinner. I'm a coder first of all. So I don't need any additions which I can't edit or modify. Sorry but I will never use this in my projects...

Dear bilbo1930 and Fairyy~,

I have no words to illustrate my bad feelings and how I understand you! Seems after a few days like this I will be ready to do the same...

From a consumers viewpoint,no. Visitors using trialware have a download cap. Imagine trying the currently non-working themes and widgets,download after download until that cap is reached. What would you do?

I believe most of us would simply uninstall the whole mess,never return to WC and never try another Stardock product.

How is that going to help anyone in the skinning community ?

 

We will be deleting all the weather widgets from SDN.  We have contacted our biggest uploader and she understands.  We are to small to get into any legal hassels.

I use a yahoo weather widget but its not skinnable, does come with a color pallete.

People...you are clearly NOT listening.

This is NOT about Stardock backing up software....this is about skinners making widgets that use a source of data that NOW WILL NOT WORK.

I cannot make it any clearer than that.

Back in 'the good old days' there was clearly less of a distinction between skinners and their coding BROTHERS.  In fact, skinning actually MEANT altering code AND graphics...not JUST graphics.

The modern skinner...even those who are now Masters of the craft have had it easy...with programs such as SKS to assist with the 'coding' end of skinning.

These widgets are BUSTED because they used what is NOW SEEN as a bad source for their info...an unreliable source, just as if the site closed down and there was a 404 there instead of a data feed.

That's it.  The world is NOT STATIC. SHIT happens.

The BETTER skinner will learn to deal...by one way or another correcting/repairing the problem.

Find another feed/site.

IT is SOLELY the responsibility of each skinner who wishes to distribute weather widgets [or any other] to ascertain that they will work, and are 'legal', just as with any other form of skinning.

No amount of bitching and moaning is going to do anything at all....other than annoy the crap out of people who are forced to endure it.

What will 'fix it' is intelligent and capable coders/skinners getting off their bums and putting their heads together to nut out solutions.

Whose fault is it that these widgets don't now work?

Not mine...I've never even used a weather widget.

Not Stardock .... they didn't make them.

Not the skinners....cos when they made them they DID work.

Ah....yes....that's right....it's the feed supplier.  They altered the ground rules.

In the meantime, Wincustomize.com can end downloaders' disappointment by removing the widgets that no longer work....

neophil, no, it's really more appropriate that ideally what is available to download will work 'out of the box'.  It is fairly unreasonable to expect the general user to know how, or be willing to alter coding or whatever to make something work.

That's why we have creatures called skinners.  They make these things.  Look at people like Fli7e .... he showed Nullsoft how to skin their own product - WinAMP.

If the modern coding languages were around when I was at school maybe I'd be able to help now....but school was 35 years ago.  The extent of my 'coding' skill is knowing my way around .rc files as used in Litestep - 'the' alternate Shell for Windows.  There coding is predominantly textual and can be extremely verbose the complexity is unlimited.

Hi Paul,
Excellent speech, very well said!

Though, you said:

I say, have you tried to understand what the authors are trying to say?

Authors are saying, with a few words, that we are the Skinning Community and at least we should share the problems and try to help each other, don't you think?

It is a pity because I see no help intention from WinCustomize/Stardock in the air...

Yep, Adni.... I hear them....I got to the widget thread late...but still sat down and read ALL 13 pages.

Stardock is a finite entity.  They have a few coders [obviously], but there are considerably more 'out  there' within the community and beyond, and any and all people accessing TWC feeds will have struck similar problems and have to alter/redesign scripts.  It's a community/skinner/widget-wide problem, yet it seems people simply say....oh...what is Stardock going to do to fix it?  It was not of their making.  Their responsibility is to fix their works/releases, not those of other people.

As with any new hurdle...the entire field has to jump over it, not just one horse....

I want my paid for DX themes fixed free of charge. Stardock: Revenue $20+ million (2008) Employees 60+ (May 2008) They complain about only having a few coders. They say it is a community/skinner problem. Quit using the term "community" please. Who in the community brings in 20 mill a year? That's a lot of money. They can't fix a few DX Themes? Take care of the people who enabled you to bring in 20 mill a year. Crap like this is why there is no faith in the economy. Customers are a second thought to most companies anymore. Take the money and run! Spin Spin Spin.....Blahh Blahh Blahh......

What money have we taken?  Does anybody read what has been posted?  This is a problem with a WEATHER FEED!

I'm contacting the Master skinners about them fixing their paid skins, but it's their responsiblity to fix them, they created them!

 

 

Stardock lives and exits because skinners bring them skins on a website called Wincustomize.

Imagine whay happend if no more skinners give their work to be downloaded and if every skinner would delete all their work ?

Hummmfffffffff, how will you continue to pay your monthly credit payment for your Porshe ?

We are talking about weather widgets here, not the entire skin base. 

We can't fix peoples skins for them, because we didn't create them.  We didn't provide the weather feeds.