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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:51 pm 
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Not bad, aside from the fact that when he was showing the different themes, he had them colorized to gray. :roll:

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:55 pm 
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winstep wrote:

Please watch the video and let me know what you guys think... My brain is already mush at this point, so all help is welcome (it always is anyway, but now more than ever, eheh).

DanDaBear wrote:
Not bad, aside from the fact that when he was showing the different themes, he had them colorized to gray. :roll:


Yeah, I noticed that too. That was a bit unfortunate lol

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:16 am 
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winstep wrote:

Quote:
Please watch the video and let me know what you guys think... My brain is already mush at this point, so all help is welcome (it always is anyway, but now more than ever, eheh).



I think the video is ok, too bad that is 4 years old, but I guess you did some digging to find the best review out there... And after all, the best tool to work with, is the tool that you have...
I really don`t know much about that, but one thing that pops to mind is that it could be useful to send a copy of the software for review to sites that do that kind of reviews. That could boost the awareness of the software and the sales.


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:38 am 
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Regarding the highlighted video, the fact that is a review of product video kind of took me in a certain direction. But there is a more important question: what is the purpose you had in mind for that section of the site? Because if a review video is great for helping someone to decide between different products, someone that is on the site and views this it is already half way there, so to help sales a more cinematic video is needed. If it is intended for new users, that have already bought the product, it is not informative enough.


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 6:08 am 
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Eye candy is already EVERYWHERE, especially in the Themes page of the website where the user highlighted video section is.

What is severely lacking is an approach from the productivity side, which is precisely what this video does well - especially coming from a previous Mac user.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 7:28 am 
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I think I'm going to add a new effect category to the Effects tab. Currently you have Mouseover, Launch and Attention, right?

Well, for quite some time I've been thinking about adding a fourth category: Delete Effects.

What happens now when you delete an icon from the dock or Shelf is that the icon quickly shrinks and then an explosion animation is *super-imposed* onto where the icon *was*. You can actually customize this explosion animation with an animated icon, but, other than that, there is no built-in alternative.

Some of the currently available mouse over effects would also be well suited for a delete animation (in fact, the explosion animation is one of those mouse over effects) or could be adapted as such (Explode, Teleport, Burn, Fire, Energize and Wormhole). There is also a new animation I would really like to add: Breaking Glass (would look like the icon is breaking into a million pieces). :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:50 am 
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winstep wrote:
seeker wrote:
anyway have you considered simplifiyng settings for a light user then adding a button 'show advanced options' as many programs do


That's what I keep trying to do, bury least used settings in secondary dialogs.

i mean like old spybot SD, few tabs an basic options for people who like it KISS, and then one obvious button/toggle 'advanced settings' which opens up new tabs for power users


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 8:53 pm 
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winstep wrote:
nexter wrote:
Now, surely a genius like yourself could pull that rabbit out of a hat in, ooh, a week or two? :P


Flattery will get you... everywhere! :) ...except on this particular case lol

I see no reason to develop a File Browser now. Unlike the way things were back in 1999, Explorer is more than good enough these days, and there are already some pretty good alternatives out there too.

Also, remember resources (in this case, my time) are limited. They have to be focused, not scattered.

Aww, spoilsport Jorge! ;) I've vaguely looked at a few (inc. the current WinBrowser, which perhaps I should investigate further) and so far they don't work the way I'd need them to, with often large file systems to navigate and often large numbers (and sometimes very large size) of files to copy/move/del. Windows Explorer just doesn't cut it here, even with all the improvements. Sadly, the file manager I've been using since almost the age of the Dinosaurs seems to have gone their way - it hasn't seen any new dev in about 8 or 9 years at least and is no longer as effective as it used to be given Win10. (In XP and 7 it's still perfectly fine, and though a million times pref to Win Explorer as fast at navigating a file system as File Viewer it is not.)

I do appreciate that your time is limited and that you have to stay focused, but if you look at it with just a few minutes careful thought I think you'd see that almost 90% of the code is already there in NS and WS, it's little more than the interface and themability (and even much of that could be taken from WS), plus ideally the archive support mentioned. The interface would consist of essentially three parts one on top the other. The topmost is basically just a bog-standard, non-tabbed shelf. (You put shortcuts (icons) there, like the root of your system, your user directory, and whatever takes your fancy. It can expand to several rows if needed, and a simple control lets you either collapse it to the top row or expand it. (You can also temp. place a whole bunch of files there that you want to copy/move, then drag and drop them on their destination when you get there.) The next part is another shelf of a single row of icons like a NS menu that displays and lets you navigate the current path. (I.e., let's say you select you home/user dir in the top shelf, then that is the first icon to appear on the second shelf, and you can navigate through its various sub-dirs from there. The third and final part is also a kind of shelf but divided into a configurable number of columns. Each column displays the content of the currently followed path's folders and sub-folders, and can be displayed as either plain (text) list, list with small icons, or icons only (standard size). The menus would be provided in the form of a NS menu outside the main body. IOW, the whole thing would be very similar to the current Mac File Finder and identical to the original NeXT File Viewer.

And just think of the endless fun that you would give skinners in skinning this beaut! :P

I don't think the situation is all that different from 1999 today in re: file management Jorge. I find File Explorer still to be a PITA to use, and I'm sure I'm far from alone in that. I'm convinced there would be a market for this today, particularly also with its great flexibility and yes, skinnability even if that side of things has greatly diminished over the years.
winstep wrote:
ANYWAY, in other news: I have confirmed that the crash is related to GDI+ on Windows 10....

....Thing is, I already wasted an incredible amount of time on this too. Although annoying when it happens, it is not a 'critical' crash and you can recover from it with absolutely no ill effects just by clicking on Retry. I might just leave it as it is for the time being while I re-direct my focus to other important things which I have been neglecting because of this issue.

Yep, I think you can safely leave it at that and focus on more important things than such a minor issue.
winstep wrote:
AND IN YET OTHER NEWS, I am thinking about replacing the highlighted video on the Winstep web site (sorry Windy) with the following video:

....Although it already has some years, it refers to the Winstep application from a productivity point of view.... ....but I think his enthusiasm and clear unbiased review more than make up for it.

Looks good! All in favour, esp. as it puts emphasis on productivity which is sorely needed on Winstep web site IMO - I'm convinced more people need to get to know about the productivity gains that Xtreme has to offer and if they did, sales would increase for that. Go with it!

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:04 pm 
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seeker wrote:
winstep wrote:
seeker wrote:
anyway have you considered simplifiyng settings for a light user then adding a button 'show advanced options' as many programs do

That's what I keep trying to do, bury least used settings in secondary dialogs.

i mean like old spybot SD, few tabs an basic options for people who like it KISS, and then one obvious button/toggle 'advanced settings' which opens up new tabs for power users

I can't see it being quite as simple as that with something as complex as Nextstart, Workshelf and Nexus. Otherwise, you'd end up with something like a KISS button - go with all the defaults, give or take - and a Custom button, presenting something like we have now. As ever, it's a case of no pain, no gain. :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:15 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Eye candy is already EVERYWHERE, especially in the Themes page of the website where the user highlighted video section is.

What is severely lacking is an approach from the productivity side, which is precisely what this video does well - especially coming from a previous Mac user.

That in a way is like the cherry on top really. :D (I have known a few Mac users who over the years gave up on struggling with a totally dumbed-down OS and shortage of anything but music apps, and/or were fed up of the exorbitant prices and hype.)

But yes, agree totally with you Jorge, which is why I felt bound to point out the lack of productivity focus in my email that time. The eye candy market is surely a much more limited one these days than the productivity one.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:30 pm 
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nexter wrote:
Sadly, the file manager I've been using since almost the age of the Dinosaurs seems to have gone their way - it hasn't seen any new dev in about 8 or 9 years at least and is no longer as effective as it used to be given Win10.
[...]
I do appreciate that your time is limited and that you have to stay focused, but if you look at it with just a few minutes careful thought I think you'd see that almost 90% of the code is already there in NS and WS


The fact that your File Manager application is no longer supported or developed should also tell you that the need for that type of applications has declined so steeply over the years that it is no longer profitable to develop (or keep developing) such a thing.

Also, you're wrong about how easy making a FM would be, because you're looking at it strictly from a UI perspective. File Management these days is EXTREMELY complicated to pull off successfully from a technical POV. Long gone are the days of the OS and the file system being a simple thing, now you have Cloud Storage, junctions, security up the wazoo, etc...

nexter wrote:
But yes, agree totally with you Jorge, which is why I felt bound to point out the lack of productivity focus in my email that time. The eye candy market is surely a much more limited one these days than the productivity one.


You have no idea how bad things really are. For instance: Wincustomize used to have upwards of 50 times more traffic than it has today. According to SimilarWeb, Winstep.net is now the TOP referring site to Wincustomize with 31.66% of all the referrals. Other than WC, all the other Windows customization sites and forums I know of are either dead of are veritable ghost towns, and have been so for years.

Interest in docks and other productivity/eye candy tools of its kind is at an all time low. I can't remember the last time some blogger or tech journal wrote an article about docks for Windows. Nexus is the only dock still in active development, and has been for years.

Stardock's decision to price all their Windows customization applications to ridiculous/phone app levels was also a really d*ck move as far as I am concerned, it universally lowered the perceived value of these type of applications: they milked all of it for years while they could and then initiated a scorched earth policy once it started drying up and Stardock no longer had specialized developers to be able to keep up. It ceased to be healthy competition.

I always really admired Brad, but that was, IMO, one of his worst decisions EVER, for EVERYONE. I didn't fall into the trap of following up on a price war I could not afford and kept my prices the same, and that worked for me.

I'm pretty sure their pricing policy is now biting them in the rear end whenever they make a promotion, as, unlike 50% off $30, 50% off $4 is not a real incentive for impulse buys - if you didn't buy it at $4, you likely won't buy it at $2 either.

To make matters worse for them, they now have to sell 3 times more units just to make the SAME amount of revenue they did before - and every experienced developer knows that lower prices do not in any way shape or form lead to a proportional increase in sales (the law of diminishing returns). In fact, it can even have the opposite effect: if it's that cheap, it can only mean it's crap.

Also, a customer who paid $1 will feel just as entitled to tech support, hand holding, QA, etc, as the one who paid $50. They paid so now you have an obligation to them. Fail to meet that obligation, even if that means your $1 profit with that single customer immediately goes into the negative at the first phone call, and they will vilify you as much as the customer who paid $50. Customer expectations remain the same regardless of price.

Anyway, going back to Windows customization: the whole landscape is very bleak. Even the future of Win32 is at stake now - if MS had its way and they could, they would have already replaced everything with those bloated, slow as molasses, UWP apps, and Win32 with Windows RT... and we developers would all be paying Microsoft 30% of all our sales just to have the 'privilege' of developing applications for their Operating System.

This feels me up with warm fuzzy feelings inside... NOT! lol

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:31 pm 
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nexter wrote:
As ever, it's a case of no pain, no gain. :)

well i dont know the numbers of people who complain that its to complicated. myself i do fine as it is


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:50 pm 
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seeker wrote:
well i dont know the numbers of people who complain that its to complicated. myself i do fine as it is


They still complain in the uninstall surveys, although nowhere near as much as before. The fact is that you can't please everyone.

Sincerely, I'm obviously biased, but I don't think it's THAT complicated, I just think there are a TON of options, and it's the sheer quantity that makes it look complicated.

That's why I try to make the defaults settings 'ideal' for new users. But from then on people start wanting different things: for instance, the user who doesn't like the balloon tooltip and wants to turn it off, the user who does not like the dock control icon and wants to remove it, the user who thinks the dock is too slow to pop up, the user who thinks instead that it's too easy to activate the dock accidentally, etc...

It's only with time and usage that we build a mental model of how an application works and what it does, and it's only at that point that all the settings begin to make full sense and we become familiarized with them. Until then most of those settings are just 'clutter', because we don't know what they do or what they affect.

The more an application does, the more there is to learn, there is simply no way around it. If all you want is to draw a circle, you're probably better off with MS Paint - but if you need to do REAL work, then you can't go wrong with Photoshop - you just won't get anywhere with it until you learn how to do the most basic stuff.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 9:06 am 
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The video is okay. What I didn't like about it is that it lacked showing what Xtreme is really capable of.

Like others mentioned, his use of only using gray doesn't help. Since he doesn't like colorful themes, a better way would have been for him to show the "gaudy" stuff, and then show his preference to compare and contrast which would have shown the full power of Xtreme.

As far as uninstall reviews saying it's too complicated, a couple of years ago a friend of mine did the same thing. I had him install the trial version, and he uninstalled it after the trial period ended.

He didn't try to make use of it. I kept calling him about it, but he never had the time to tinker with it. I told him I can show him how to use it via remote and phone, but no dice.

I even offered to set it up for him, but he never found the time. I guess someone that prefers to use double-click for navigating Windows instead of single-click might not like more advanced options and would find Xtreme overwhelming.

Some people just aren't wired to use it. I compare it to people that prefer to use a flip phone instead of a smartphone.

And like cellphones, after using Xtreme, I wonder how I got along without it. When I have to navigate on a PC that doesn't have it, it eventually becomes unbearable.


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 10:21 am 
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Windy wrote:
Some people just aren't wired to use it. I compare it to people that prefer to use a flip phone instead of a smartphone.


Which is one of the reasons Nexus Ultimate exists. Winstep Xtreme, with its optional replacement of Start Menu and the Windows taskbar, etc, is more for power users. Nexus and Nexus Ultimate, on the other hand, can be considered as simple application launchers (of course, there is much more to it than that, but...)

Anyway, in other news I am going forward with adding that new 'Delete Effects' category. Been doing some experiments in here and I like the results.

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