I have been there for years Starkers. Even was demoted for speaking up. Problem is: We are not Stardock's target audience anymore, so we have no voice.

Sadly, I'm beginning to feel that's true.  Gaming appears to be the primary focus these days, along with a couple of nick knacks that made Win 8 more user friendly, while many of the core apps that made Stardock a great place to shop for customisation tools have been left to die prematurely.  Now more than ever, with the butt ugliest UI and icons MS has ever produced, Iconpackager and even DesktopX are in great need of serious updating if Win 10 has a hope of surviving on any discerning user's desktop.

Sure, Windowblinds does a great job transforming the UI, but it hardly seems worth it if the fugliest ever icons are not within keeping of the overall theme.  Win 10 has enough off-putting issues, but there's no way on Earth I'm upgrading to it to be confronted with fugly icons that look like they fell out of a Fisher Price discard bin.

You were demoted? Stardock punishes OD subscribers for complaining about long-neglected products? Way to go, Stardock! More than ever I am pissed that I paid for an OD sub just since moving to Win10 -- Stardock is laughing, no doubt. "Look! We got another dumbass who still thinks we care about skinning! Or new customers!"

Based on the page I was advised to keep track of, NONE of these Object Desktop programs are being developed to work with Win10 at all:

Theme Manager      
IconPackager      
SkinStudio    
SoundPackager
IconDeveloper
Decor"10"

Others are not quite ready for Win10 but are evidently being worked on. But the above applications, I guess, are gone for Win10 users. Which is weird because Win10 has so few ways to customize its appearance. Doesn't that seem like a great opening for a company like Stardock? Win10's UI is the blankest slate MS has offered since XP -- I cannot understand why Stardock wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get skinning up and running again now that Win10 is here. Win7 was pretty nice-looking for a lot of folks, so it didn't need as much help as Win10, even though it got a lot more love from Stardock.

It's all about approach/attitude.

I too have complained about things (most recently yesterday and in the flesh face to face).  The world of skinning as we knew it from a decade and a half ago is long gone.  For all sorts of reasons.

The last 3 permutations of the MS OS required FIXING, not fancying up. And yes..Start8 or 10 are still GUI mods, just as Windowblinds is and more significant than an icon changer.

That's not to say that a particular app is dead in the water, only that others have stolen focus/direction.

In those good old days there was a plethora of alternate shells, skinnable media players et al.  Where are they now?

Spent an entertaining day yesterday at Stardock ..caught up with lots of people, some for the first time. .. namely Angie and a character known as Neil - all the way from the UK.

Between us we'd travelled about 17000 miles....

..but it was worth it.

Wish I could have been there. There are several WC/SD staff I'd love to meet.  

Yes, you're on the list, Paul.    

But which list?  Muahahahaha

Hi,

I do assume that MS does force users to accept the windows 10 icons. sooner or later

Its hard to say at the moment  if windows 10 itself is better than the versions before.

Just a small expirement i made with linux themes some tim ago  : combine a light flat theme with an neutral color very flat borderless  icon theme.Looks horrible. Don`t do that ! Use either a non flat theme or one that constrasts with the rest of  ui. flat icons can be nice too, b tu not in the way ms does it.Its a pain to the eyes and its more or less what is done in windows 10.Why can`t they add an 1 px dark grey bordered icon theme with a classical stable design in their huge installation image ( yes all my recent installations were directly from images -/ not from any installation media)?

Win 10 icons don`t even have the wonderful design of win 95 ( these icons were  very usable and looked nice on 16 colors-/ Not that i want them back but they were an wonderful genious invention compared to windows 10 icons).

Well i do really think  think  that Stardocks gets window blinds and Skinstudio working on win 10 (despite the fact skinning might seem outdated with the win 10 design) in 8 months at least but without working iconpackager most skins won`t fit with the icons.

will get perhaps some paid work to theme something in gtk2/3 soon -/  Have to think very much to be able to theme even a single button, so

i hope skinstudio will be still there on wiondows 10 to make theming easier on windows.

Great that development of windowblinds/skinstudio  seems to be anounced. Thats always the first step.!

regards bluedxca92

Nobody was punished for speaking out. Their demeanor, attitude, and the words some choose cause them problems.

Two of the top products for Object Desktop, WindowBlinds and DeskScapes, are in active development. We have a beta out for Fences 3, and working on a few more things.

So no, nobody is laughing at any customers. We read the feedback even though we can't always respond to everything. 

I don't have a status about IconPackager at this time. When I learn something I will share, but as I said, WB/DS are two that are being worked on right now, and we'll go from there.

Makes me wonder how popular Deskscapes might be. I for myself never found any use in an animated wallpaper, but that is maybe just me, therefore the question.

Regarding my demotion: I was very, very angry at that time as I saw my favorite company and skinning apps go down the drain for me. If there wouldn't have been real passion for that matter I would have been much calmer. And there where so many complains, questions and bug reports really ignored at that time, not given the fact that attitude is a 2 sided perception. Also bear in mind that I am not a native english speaker/writer, so some tones nay have been not as they read.

But that is over now, shouldn't have mentioned that. I guess a piece of that pasion when it comes to Stardock and their products is still left and flashes up from time to time like when I have to let go another app I really loved. And there are plenty yet.

The most popular "customizing" is the simple desktop wallpaper .... always was ... always will be.

Deskscapes is a wallpaper with bling. Needless to say it's also popular.

Windowblinds needs no description.  It's essentially THE Windows customizer...

play with Google Trends to find out what people search for on Google:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Windowblinds%2C%20DeskScapes%2C%20IconPackager%2C%20%2Fm%2F0b6k34t%2C%20ObjectDock&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2

there's roughly the same interest in WindowBlinds, Deskscapes or IconPackager in the last twelve months. so maybe it's just not possible to change certain icons without resource hacking, or maybe the IconPackager developer (if such a person exists) has not found out how to do it yet.

ObjectDock seems to be the most popular of StarDock's skinnable apps (RocketDock gets way more searches though). add Rainmeter to the query to see what's really popular.

Stardock's cash-cows seem to be Fences and Start8 nowadays.

That may be true, but without Iconpackager the job is incomplete... especially in Win 10.  Dressing up the Ui with WB skins goes just so far, and without a utility to change butt ugly system icons [especially in Win 10], there seems little point applying a nice dark theme when the pastel/pale icons remain unchanged.

Even applying a fantastic looking wallpaper is ruined when MS' system icons cannot be changed.  Win 8/8.1 icons aren't that flash to look at, but those of Win 10 have to be the absolute worst OS icons ever created, so some word as to whether or not IP will be updated is needed.  It would allow users to move on to find alternative apps should updates for the last 2 OSes not be forthcoming. 

I mean, how hard can it be?  It's either yay or nay.

Question?

I'm going to assume something and I do know what can go wrong with that. So maybe I should say make a guess.

My best guess is when WindowBlinds is released for win 10 and it works. After that SKS will be modified to what ever changes are needed to allow WB's to work on win 10.

Is this a fair guess?

and working on a few more things.

I don't have a status about IconPackager at this time. When I learn something I will share, but as I said, WB/DS are two that are being worked on right now, and we'll go from there.

Uhh now im exited that is like a hint hint hint, that gives me hope, that iconish something, shall it rise from the ashes and brighten up our desks!

Things are about to get really cool again on the customization side...

...you will see 

danioc

reply 54

Things are about to get really cool again on the customization side...

...you will see 

We can only hope.  Promises have been made before.   

Hi Philly,

I'm not making promisses, I'm just saying based on things I see and hear

In my opinion things got slower because Microsoft made lots of radical changes in the recent Windows versions.

The rad in 8 went belly up. Some improvement in 8.1 but 10............yikes!

Hey. I happen to prefer 8.1 over 7 or 10.  So there...