New DX Categories needed B A D

RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

New DX Categories needed B A D

I know we have had discussions on new Gallery's but I really think we need these 2.

1. DX Gadgets - this would be for gadgets only, so people without DX could load these and know they would work, and people with DX would know that everything in the WIDGET Gallery is a widget that can be imported.

2. DX Weather/Clock - yes yes yes, anyone that has ever been in the DX Widgets gallery know that there and have done a "search" for "weather" will return you 7 pages of 32 widgets, or MORE. This is just weather, not to mention clocks. The problem is, these are almost all (not all Vad_M/Martin/Richard) the SAME widget, just with different "skins". Its getting old. you post something that you have spent a great deal of time working on, and in 2 days, its on page 3, behind 200 more of the SAME weather widgets.

If you agree, or disagree, please let us know. I think these could easily be added and would make things so much better. If DX is going to EVER evolve beyond a weather/clock widget maker, it has to be able to SHOW what is out there that ISNT one of these.

PLEASE PLEASE HEAR US!!!

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Protecting some scripts is also a huge concern of mine and perhaps most of the developers here

On the other hand I'm find no sense to export some of my works into standart DX Themes because I don't want see how somebody hacks my scripts which I have been working more than 2 years...

Yes! By all means the artists and creators and their works must be protected.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops and to see more input from the community here!

I am waiting to see what happens with DX 3.5 being able to export to VISTA SIDEBAR GADGETS

And, for those of us who wish to stay with XP SP2 for now, how the future will evolve with the best solutions for XP and Vista both, if at all possible...

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Vad_M

Join Date 08/2004

+117

To SirSmiley:
Are you plan to put these examples here? If yes it's very good idea. I have thought about something like this too. The problem is that I don't know English enough to create tutorials like RomanDA. For this reason I decided to send here a several articles with examples of usage FSO, WMI etc...

It will not be finished scripts. Just an examples which will show the easy way to get some results.

I think that it would be great if we will take our efforts not only for Skinning but for creation here a Knowledge Base with useful examples of DesktopX Scripting (may be protect it from non registered users?). I'm ready to help everybody who want to study DesktopX but I'm not ready to give my scripts for creation one more "weather" or "clock".

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SirSmiley

Join Date 06/2005

+38

Vad_M, I will put some of them here. I have a drop folder maker that is close to completion. You can make numbered folders eg. 000 to 999 or up two five (maybe ten)named folders in the folder you drop on the object.

Another one in the works is a file sorter based on file type or date. I may release a limited script widget and more advanced gadget. The widget maybe would be all internal script and the gadget allows people to create and save config files (ini or xml).

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Quentin94

Join Date 08/2006

+119

DX Themes - There are so many issues with Themes, most people have no idea how to make these work for THEM. I have tried to make several Widgets that allow customization without anyone having to know how to use DX, VAD_M's work is the perfect example of this, Look at the LAUNCH BAR it allows ANYONE to use it without ever opening up DX in "BUILDER" mode. Somehow we need to get THEMES to this level so that everyone can use them!!

aya RomanDA have you looked all Dxtheme... LOL Perso i try day after day to make mines for all users(it means without open dxbuilder lol) i think my last one is a good example.
I need to know more but i think that is a good beginning... I would like to learn more too allow users (not only developers) to change colors, and configure the theme like they would like.

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

Its a shame to me that no one from stardock has bothered to chime in on this thread. I was hoping we could get some input from them on this as well.

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ZubaZ

Join Date 11/2001

+917

David . . give them time. They may not have seen it, may not have a good response, may have something in play already.

Patience grasshopper.

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

Zu?? do you know who your talking to... LOL

PATIENCE <> ROMANDA.... LOL

I understand, just don't like it.

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PoSmedley

Join Date 04/2005

+788

Yes

and

My God, YES!

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Quentin94

Join Date 08/2006

+119

Yes

and

My God, YES!

to what Po' romanDA's patience ?

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

to what Po' romanDA's patience ?

or lack there of.

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Quentin94

Join Date 08/2006

+119

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

nothing to see.. move along...

Please lets get back to topic..

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PoSmedley

Join Date 04/2005

+788

To the gallery's. That's the topic.
Yes, Gadgets and YES to the DX weather/clock gallery.

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Quentin94

Join Date 08/2006

+119

Yes, Gadgets and YES to the DX weather/clock gallery.

oh yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes i agreeeeeeeeeeeee

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ZubaZ

Join Date 11/2001

+917

I'm going to take the "wrong" view.

I don't think that the site should "break-off" a section of the galleries just because it's "popular". I'd rather see more *customizeation* of the site and let the user hide catagories of content unless specifically chosen.

If your suggestion went through all of the sudden you would start seeing fragmentation of all the galleries into tiny sub catagories and good stuff might be lost to the casual user and there would start to bbe a demand for this or that "specialist" to have their own gallery. That would suck too.

My $0.02

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SirSmiley

Join Date 06/2005

+38

Zubaz, I agree that fragmenting existing galleries would perhaps be more confusing. However, Gadgets are deserving of their own gallery for a number of reasons.

One, sometimes you just want to show off your work not the underlying codes. Two, sample or limited versions would be a good segway to directing potential customers to desktopgadgets.com to purchase more powerful/feature rich versions.

I think I'll do my next upload of the "Folder Maker" like this. The object will be a basic example, to widget with a few more features, then the gadget will have skinned Message/Input boxes, etc.

More customization also sounds good and one thing I would definitely like to see is keywords added to the upload options.

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ZubaZ

Join Date 11/2001

+917

SirSmiley, I agree with you in that Gadgets need to be separate. Beyond that, not so much.

I like what you describe in your stages of complexity going with more secure types of "things". The next step is what RomanDA has done . . selling the best of the best.

You have my support and encouragement.

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

I'm all for being able to LIMIT what is shown when "I" look at the listings.. but that does nothing to the person who comes in to look at what's NEW.

The only solution is to get people to stop making 10000000 new lame weather widgets.
There are only a few of them doing it, and its ridiculous.

As I pointed out in another thread, there are ways to make 1 gadget/widget work with MULTIPLE skins/layouts. I think there would be a lot less bitching if instead of posting 10 new skinned widgets of the same weather widget in 1 week they made 1 widget with 10 skins, changeable via a button, or popup menu. I was trying to find it but I cant, there was a new CLOCK created that had multiple SKINS and looks, and it was very nice. That would be so much more preferred to the BOMBING of the galley with 200 copies of the same thing.

Ok how about this..

DX OBJECTS - CLOCKS/WEATHER/ICONS/ETC all the BASIC Items DX Can produce
DX WIDGETS - Programs that involve more work, Things that REQUIRE CODING, Things like menu bars, To-do Lists, FUZZY, things that are not a simple clone of something else.
DX GADGETS - GADGETS as discussed before. Programs that can be TRIAL versions, protected code versions of apps, etc. Look over what I said before.

This only adds 1 new Gallery, and make the OBJECTS gallery make some more sense.
Better compromise?

I also think that posting "TRIAL" or "LIMITED" versions of a gadget is a great way to let people look/use/try out your program without giving them all the functions of the PRO or FULL version. And yes, I took it to the next level by starting my own store/site to sell my own gadgets. I needed more control then DG was giving me. IE: the HC PRO I created has had 2 updates, and with the system I have in place now (IE my own site) I was able to contact the people who purchased the program, and send them an update. With DG.com there is no way to know who purchases your program, or have any way to contact them. And the 50% was killing me. But that's for another thread. I'm still looking to add people to the new site, with new programs, if your interested, email me.

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SirSmiley

Join Date 06/2005

+38

While understand the frustration with the weather widgets. I'm kind of split on this as my understanding is that a great deal of them are made to match window blinds. IMO skinnable widgets should resolve that?

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RomanDA

Join Date 12/2003

+147

IMO skinnable widgets should resolve that?

Yes, and i would love to work a way to read the WB skin and match the weather/clock to that skin. But since i know nothing about WB im not sure how this could be done.

As for this solving the situation, i dont see that, as even though a lot of the weather/clocks are to match a wb skin, they are not the same shape, size, layout, etc. and i can people still making these that have nothing to do with WB skins. The reason we are seeing so many of them right now is because we have several people who have made a hobby out of taking a wb skin's graphics, and pasting them into a common weather widget. Without any real knowledge of how DX works, or how to MAKE graphics.

I'm done.. i have said all i can, and it seems that there has been no input from SD/WC admins (except Zu) so who knows.. its not worth beating a dead horse.

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Vad_M

Join Date 08/2004

+117

David, you have finally told I thought about but couldn't verbalize! These galleries will be a great steps onward. But it seems to me that it may solve only a half of problem.

Look at the gallery with DX Themes. Many of new additions have more than 1000 downloads per day. Why? Because this gallery is very popular as well as because DX Theme unlike a widget allow to its user a lot of different functions.

Now look at the Widget's gallery. Weather, weather and again weather. I think that popularity of this gallery may definitively fall down if we will not do nothing. So we need make something greater than clock, calendar, todo etc... to return the past Glory for this Gallery. (And Stardock could help us with this if they really want to see more visitors here).

About DG.com. I think the main problem of this place is not in percents. I can work 50/50. But only if summary sales will more than 200-300 per month for each new gadget. But this is impossible because DG have no enough visitors per day. On this reason I don't see any sense to make gadgets for sale. So I'll send their simplified versions here and wait until this situation will not be changed.

I Agree with your words about dead horse...

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Bebi Bulma

Join Date 04/2004

+209

Wait a minute, I'm confused. I thought there was a fundamental (if slight) difference between the widgets and objects. Widgets only require DX to be installed (good), and objects require it to actually be running, right?

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Quentin94

Join Date 08/2006

+119

right Bebi and Gadgets no need DX on your computer

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sViz

Join Date 04/2006

+508

Okay, I've just gotta say this because it's been bugging me for a while. I don't see any demand. As much as we'd like to see the galleries filled with mind-blowing widgets, you go to the most popular hall of fame and you will find weather, clocks, to do lists, and wallpaper changers. It is evident that this is what as vast majority of people want. They need to know the time and date, they need to know the weather, they need to make a list, and they'd like to change their wallpaper and look at family photos.

There's a difference between what developers/coders see as extremely important and what the end-users see as important. As a coder I want to see DX make great advancments. I want to see all the amazing things it can do. As and end-user I have a grand total of 2 widgets on my desktop right now. One of them is a clock.

How do you reconcile the fact that we need to continue to make advanced developments in DX and the fact that the average user (the non-coder) just wants to know the time and weather? No matter how superior the coding or ingenious the idea, doesn't it come down to whether or not this is something the end-user will want/need?

Thoughts?

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