Thats weird...I ran out of disk space the other day on my second internal drive...I was going to buy a bigger internal but thought "Why not get a big external drive and then install this copy of VISTA that has been collecting dust". So that's what I did. I'm on it right now too. So far so good.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

What caused you to dual boot?

Darkmatter - Ended up not dual booting, putting the theme on the laptop instead.

Which one? Subspace?

Yep, sorry forgot each color had a different name.

Jeff...very rarely [these days almost never] an installer falls over if it cannot find the Explorer.exe process running [which isn't...when LS is instead].

In this case when it got to 'it is normal for your cursor to freeze for a while'...'a while' meant as in rereading War and Peace - I boiled water, made a coffee...drank the coffee...twiddled thumbs....watched grass grow and it was true to its word....frozen....hence the reset. [it did manage to remove the current wallpaper...leaving blank grey instead].

Years ago...back in Win 95/98 there was a greater need to be in the default shell to install things, but not since XP came along [and I have a LOT of things installed].

I'll switch shells some time and get it right...;)

 

some thoughts on hyperdesk and mycolors, i use my colors and love it, i have purchased 11 themes so far,( maybe a silly addiction) but i like the hyperdesk suites too, and when they go vista i will try them, think of me as "average joe consumer" you people that create them nitpick them (rightfully so) but the average person like myself just likes the end result, you as the creators have the option of being fussy about things, because its your work, but believe me the end user (myself) just loves these themes. so in the end maybe all this bashing back and forth is a blessing in disguise, to both TSF and Stardock, please do keep up the good work, cause i am sure happy about the end results, and i do believe i speak for a lot of people

^
Yup

Glad to see things have calmed down.

Sorry Jeff, my invite must have gotten lost in snail mail.

Regarding uxtheme.dll.  My concern isn't that you're not using WindowBlinds. It's that uxtheme is not a good foundation. We (all of us) should be very conscious of providing users with a truly seamless experience.   Even ignoring the fact it's primitive, it's an engine that isn't under your control, isn't authorized, and explicitly not designed for third-party use. Plus, the fact that to get access to it, you have to disable system file protection.

I would have liked to have seen you guys create an engine or something. A genuine competitor to WindowBlinds. Now obviously, as Stardock CEO, I shouldn't like competition, but I prefer competition over patching uxtheme because I know that it's going to have serious support problems for users and serious user experience problems and users won't discern what the tech was, they'll just remember that when they tried to change from the default look of Windows that they had a bad experience.

You've got the art team, you've got the icon tech, on Vista you have the gadget  tech (Windows Sidebar).  It's the skinning tech that's the issue. Anything but uxtheme. Anything that doesn't involve patching out system file protection or passing around patched msstyles files. It doesn't have to be WindowBlinds. But it needs to be something that doesn't compromise the user experience or system integrity.  I really wish Chroma hadn't died off.  At least then you could have gone to them if we pissed you off and licensed their stuff.

Now, with that said, here are some pictures from up north:

 

More here.

 

Nice pics. Looks like everyone is enjoying themselves. Where's the Stardock yacht? 

I dont see any Corona's   

Too many kiddies - can't be having the boozy times with them afoot.

I have to say - That is a classy comment from Brad. And I believe he honestly means it. We all want to see a lot more people enjoy what we enjoy. The more people that get into customization, the better it is for everyone........there are huge plus's for everyone.......The companies and Masters in revenue, the users with more choice and more budding artists to make the products - to mention but a few. A 'win win' for all. If the engine running the art is flawed or not up to par with other products like the MyColors or Windowblinds engine and people have problems then it will put a lot of customers off and the potential influx of users, artists etc. will be dwindle. Here is a fantastic moment in skinning history which we need to seize by the scruff of the collar. Some of the most outstanding customization artists in the world - in TSF, Jesh, Bill and Kol etc - have thrown the gauntlet into the arena with an outstanding product that only seems to lack the best engine around to run it. I'd love to see Jesh and Brad get together and come to some arrangement where Jesh licenses the MyColors or Windowblinds engines to run his themes. Maybe it's more complicated than this - and I'm a simple soul with a lot of wishful thinking.

Jesh - I'm a Disney fanatic, having worked for the company for years. I spoke to a couple of colleagues in FL and CA this week who had the theme and they are thrilled and full of praise for your work. Man, you guys have got talent and as anyone knows - who has worked for Disney - They only take on the best and by god, are they fussy. Everything has to be perfect or it goes in the bin. I will purchase the theme from your site over the weekend and I know I'm going to be thrilled too.

And finally, Jesh, whatever you decide and whatever the future holds for you.......Good Luck and God Bless you...........for all your artistic talents and in your personal life too with that 'bundle of joy' that's about to change your life forever.   

Leo: We just finished up a huge project for them and we're about to start another one. They're definitely perfectionists, but that's a strength as far as I'm concerned and a trait Billy and I share. Same with Kol and the others at TSF. We don't like to match what we've done before, we try to beat it. Are we always successful? Who knows, but not for lack of trying. I grew up 3 hours south of Disney World here in South Florida, so they have always been a part of life.

If Brad has no objections, we'll offer a WB version of Hyperdesk. Kol is all ready working on a port of DarkMatter: Subspace to Vista. I haven't seen it yet so I don't know how its going.

It will probably work like this:

I will need to unban my IP on my real account so i can buy WB

We'll use our own Hyperdesk software for everything for the XP version. You'll have to own WB to use our themes and like Yahoo! Widgets, we'll install the WB theme file on the desktop and the user can simply click to apply. Icons, wallpapers and rest will be controlled by Hyperdesk. For Vista, we may just Zip up the WB, Icon Package, Walls and media players and have a thin Hyperdesk app that uses a product key and just installs the elements to a folder. If the response is good, we'll work on the Vista Hyperdesk version when we work on our own installer.

That's if there is no objections by Brad. If there is none, then we'll see how it sells. Before we port the rest. Still debating it.

Can you do that with XP too? Because I already have iconpackager, I don't want to use another app to apply icons. Truth is, I don't want to apply the icons to Windows anyway, just png's would be fine for me (to use with Avedesk on my desktop). And just a plain .wba file would be great, I'm avoiding MyColors (or any other theme manager) like the plague.

Speaking of WB...when the skins are ported to WB, will they take full advantage of all the WB6 features (per-pixel, shadows, trans where possible/appropriate, animations, layering effects, etc?) *crosses fingers*

There's no extra app to apply icons, it's all part of the same thing. I think we probably do it the same way as icon packager. Besides I normally include the pngs for all the icons in the extra folders so people can use them in their docks.

Not sure about the animations. I imagine it will have full alpha and we'll re-skin certain elements.

Phew, i thought i was the only one. Thought it was taboo around here

If it does come out on WB... well... gahhhh...*drooool*..

+1 on both accounts.

hehe I avoid it too ... nice that the themes are .zips

Jeff...I love most of your themes and the icons are awesome. The only thing that keeps me from buying any of them is because of how they are applied. If you came out with themes that could be applied through WindowBlinds...rather than MyColors...not a big fan of encrypted skins because of creating docks for themes...that would be great!

It wouldn't be MyColors that we used. Most likely it will just put a special installer the deposits all the theme elements to a folder. So your WB theme, icon package, wallpaper, wmp 11 skin and the widget would all be served up a la carte so to speak.

Why does it need an installer at all? Why not just a plain .zip file?

1. Zips are easy to pirate
2. Branding is lost with zips.
   

Bleh.

I am not running a Hyperdesk theme, I haven't run one in several days. But there is a service running in my task manager called HDThemeEnabler.exe. This sux.