Greetings all, I have encountered some issues with WC recently that have given me a pause to wonder out loud. There appears to have been a major migration of effort and resources to make changes without informing the community. I visit the site almost daily for a look see.
One of the big changes that has been touted is “impulse”. I still am not sure what impulse actually is but my assumption is that is a replacement for “stardock central”, with a multitude of add-on stuff. In viewing some recent posts it seems that impulse is also flash dependent. I don’t think I am the only one out here that hates flash. There are good uses for flash but for the most part we are subjected to animated advertisements with every page we open, these are also flash driven. If your browser will allow you to manage its add-ons do this. Open wincustomise and look at what is presented. Go into your manage add-ons and disable macromedia flash, close your browser, re-open and go back to the wincustomize site. Quite a difference.
I, and others, have recently found out the hard way that WC no longer supports the IE6 browser. WC contends that IE6 is full of security holes and since MS will no longer support it why should we. I just don’t recall being informed that this was going to occur. Having been forced to upgrade to IE7, I find that my issues with the initial release appear to been corrected. So, if there was no harm done, what’s the beef?
Well the before the being forced to upgrade to IE7 beefs are; being recognized as Joe User instead of Wimpy, loss of identity going from WC to the forums, security alert that my log-in data was being transferred to another location, unable to post in the forums and unable to update my personal data.
Even having upgraded to IE7, I am still unable to update personal data and I have just recently uploaded a blind that I haven’t seen posted yet. Generally a blind is reviewed and posted within 24 hours, it’s now been more like 72 hours and counting and no see??? And yes, I still have “flash” disabled.
SO, thinking out loud again,
1. is WC losing it’s “joe user”/”community” focus with “sand box bully” antics?
2. is WC heading towards making the site “flash required”?
3. I didn’t see any notice regarding IE6 not being supported any more. Is there some logic to potentially alienating millions of users that were still using IE6 by not providing a “heads up”?
4. There doesn’t appear to be any WC stated official policy provided to the users before changes that took place were implemented, you know, basic “system requirement” information. how come?
5. is SD/WC ISO compliant?
Now, anyone that has dealt with “support”, the wizops or the community in general know this isn’t a people thing. The individuals are great. Whatever direction WC is headed is controlled at the corporate level. It would appear that these decisions are not involving the people that have to make the changes, deal with problems created or us, those that want to use the system.
Skinning is one of my hobbies, I enjoy it, I hope that I am able to continue doing that.
