From technology to politics to video games; these are the random thoughts of a geek with too much time on his hands
Yes, we want your complaints!
Published on February 12, 2008 By Zoomba In WinCustomize News

This March, WinCustomize turns 7.  For seven years the site has grown in terms of visitors, bandwidth, quantity of skins etc.  And the site itself has gone through several revisions in that period.  Today, we're on the 5th iteration of WinCustomize, and on the whole it still bears a striking resemblance to that first site launched back in 2001.  For good or ill, a lot of the decisions that went into that first site determine direction to this day.

While there have been a lot of improvements, there are probably a lot of places where we've failed to meet expectations.  WinCustomize 2007 was focused on a solid foundation, code that was stable and expandable.  Now we're in a position to focus on the UI and the presentation more, to improve the user experience dramatically.  This is where you come in.

About a year ago, we sought your opinions on how Stardock had failed the community.  Your comments on what you felt we could be doing better has helped us make a lot of changes and improvements to our products.  Well, we want to try that again, only this time specifically with WinCustomize.  We want to know what doesn't work, what sucks, what you hate, what you want fixed about WinCustomize.  We are looking for very specific critiques of the site, it's functionality, layout, user interface etc.

This thread is about critiques, it's not about defending the site, it's not about telling us how much you like the site.  If we are going to improve the site in the future, we need a very clear picture of what is broken and needs to be fixed.

A week from today, I will be going through the comments on this thread and compiling a master list of complaints and critiques.  We will use this list when we start the requirements and design work for the next WC update later this year.


Comments (Page 2)
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on Feb 12, 2008
This might fall under the header of "New Features/Wishlist", but it goes to how I utilize the site (and how I imagine many other casual users sue it as well):

We need a Personal Favorites page (like a My Yahoo-type page), where we can define what new skins or themes are shown (by type, date, popularity, etc), along with any new articles posted in the past (however many) days. I would also like that page to not be naviagted away from (have any link clicked form it open in a new tab). I know this would personally save me much time and many clicks each time I visit the site. Maybe we already have that and I just don't know how to sue it.

As for actual complaints, I have to agree with the Star Ratings drop-down; it gets in the way or causes me to start downloading (again) a skin I'm rating more often that not.

The text editing for forums and comments needs to be udpated. There is a great deal of good code out there that would allow the formatting of these things without the [tag]'s. It's a little ole-skool. And an in-line spell-checker for posts would be great as well (maybe we could get it to automatically Capitalize and punctuate everything that needs to be, as few things bother me more than people who write in all lower-case and neevr use a comma or period...).

Other than that, nothing else comes to mind.
on Feb 12, 2008
Better search in the skins categories. If you don't spell the word exactly right you get a Cannot Find window.
on Feb 12, 2008
Too much multiple posting of the same topics. ID's picks of the month is a great thing but we don't need another thread pointing to ID's thread. Same goes for almost every announcement Frogboy makes. There are multiple threads and trying to follow things is confusing. I am sure you all have your reasons but..I'm just saying.
on Feb 12, 2008
Sort by color PLEASE!
on Feb 12, 2008
What is for me the most desapointing part is all what's concerning forums: it's (for me) a big jumble where i'm just unable to find if something has already been posted or not ...   
on Feb 12, 2008
Hola Zman,

It would be nice to sort WB skins by WB6, WB6XP, WB6Vista or both WB6XP/Vista. This would allow users wanting WB6 skins to find them easier. The sort by last updated doesn't necessarily mean that the skin was optimized for WB6. I'm only talking about windowblinds here. I'm not sure but it may help in other skin galleries too.

By the way, it's almost Wednesday, which means, it's almost Friday so smile and have a great week.
on Feb 12, 2008
I would love to see all gallery items at once standard.
on Feb 12, 2008
When it comes to customization, Wincustomize is the ultimate site for new ideas and total customization. The content and the idea of the site is a PC enthusiasts dream, so let's have the website interface reflect this, with custom buttons extra colors or chrome, shiny black, 3D designs, image backgrounds or anything that gives the site a professional look that says WE KNOW CUSTOMIZATION.

Check out some sites like the Computer Graphics Society website, as well as some of the website interfaces on deviant art. These are the kind of interfaces I'm talking about. Who knows, with a new paint job, you'll probably attract even more people to your website, that's always a plus!

This website has the potential to look as good as it can make your computer look.
on Feb 12, 2008
Ok....I know some people aren't going to want to hear this again and it will more than likely get shot down...again...but since you asked.

Give dock backgrounds they're "own" library! That has been my pet peeve for a long time. Yeah yeah, I know...pngs/icons are used with Objectdock...and icons are used with WindowBlinds but you don't see that library flooded with icons. And it really sucks doing all that work creating backgrounds only to have them buried under tons of pngs/icons...many of which are repeats of similar pngs/icons that have been done over and over.

And I call them png/icons because as far as I'm concerned the only difference between them is about 2 seconds to convert them from one to the other.

Then there's the theme png/icons that "should" be zipped up together but are spread out as single uploads...AND they are also allowed to be uploaded to the Misc icons library...and its only because of they are now icon/pngs. The fact that they can be converted so easily either way makes it unfair to those of us that take the time to create backgrounds for people to use and kinda stifles our motivation to continue creating them when we know they will only get buried...I know it has for me.

Creators of icons should simply include a png version of their icons along with them...its done on other sites...why not here?

on Feb 12, 2008

WC is... fugly. The internet's premier skinning site looks like it was designed by a 4 year old.

How I long for the old, old site with it's changeable skins. Skins which were made by skinners...

The forum needs a dramatic makeover. There are so many categories it's just ridiculous. It's as though on a whim someone says "I have a topic called XYZ, lets create a XYZ category". Then, two minutes later, there's a WXY category too, because, even though its in the same alphabet, WXY isn't the same as XYZ... Does my head in   

The little icons bottom right in every post. Anyone know what they are? Thought not! A text 'report thread' etc makes more sense. Rate this reply? What is that for?

A 'report this comment' and 'report a rip' buttons on skins so us mods can get to the action fast 

Most important, a list of moderators, and some indicator of who is currently on the site. With a big shiny PM button so folks can get hold of someone in an emergency.

on Feb 12, 2008
Small complaint: when I go from the "My skins" page into the forums, I can't get back to "My skins" again without going back to the home page and clicking My skins again.

I think I'm trying to say that I would like those links: My: Site, Skins, Watchlist, Settings, to be across ALL the site.
Does that make sense?
on Feb 12, 2008
Oh...based on some of the replies here...how about a site map? I myself have been here for some time now and even I don't know about a lot of the other features the site has to offer. Thats pretty much because I've always been busy creating dock backgrounds...but for new people coming here it might be a good idea to have something like that.
on Feb 12, 2008
Give dock backgrounds they're "own" library!


  
on Feb 12, 2008
Small complaint: when I go from the "My skins" page into the forums, I can't get back to "My skins" again without going back to the home page and clicking My skins again.


Yes. From my personal site I have to either click on "home" or "my settings" to get to the "my skins" page. I don't mean the gallery page, I mean where I can see downloads, check if any new comments are written etc. This link should come up as soon as you log in and follow you everywhere on the site.
on Feb 12, 2008
Greater visibility of the Wiki would be nice. Adding a link button to the topbar and perhaps link in the gallery sections for their respective areas on the Wiki would be cool.
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