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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 12:04 am 
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Well, I followed the link and visited the XWidget forums out of curiosity too. That is indeed a HUGE bug list. :)

As a developer, it is sometimes really hard to hear criticism to our products and not get upset with it, but we have to realize that most of the time our harshest critics are also the people who love the product the most - otherwise why would they bother writing such long rants?

Unfortunately what some people seem to sometimes forget is that companies are not big (or small) nameless things, they are made of other people just like them, so they deserve to be treated with respect.

As for Tony and XWidget (and even RocketDock), this is the typical story of what almost inevitably happens when a developer releases a project as freeware without a commercial side to it. The kudos you get from other people are great and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but you can not feed yourself and your family of them.

And if you try to turn your free product into a commercial product *after-the-fact* when it has already reached critical mass, you will quickly find out that some of your biggest supporters when the product was freeware have now turned into your most rabid critics. Such is human entitlement.

Some developers - like Tony apparently did at some point? - not wanting to go fully commercial fall into the trap of trying to monetize their applications by making deals with adware companies (I get contacted by those all the time for the free version of Nexus, and I don't even bother responding anymore). This is a DEADLY mistake - you may get some money for a while, but you completely trash your reputation and eventually people want nothing to do with your product.

A reputation is a very fragile thing: it takes years to build and it can be destroyed in seconds. Another case in point: Cnet's Download.com was, at one point, the biggest file repository site on the net - if you wanted to download something, that is where you went for downloads, user reviews, etc... Then they started bundling every file with adware and now the site - even though they eventually stopped doing that - is but a distant memory of what it once was.

So, what eventually happens to nearly all freeware applications is that the developer either gets a job that actually puts food on his table and no longer has time for his project, or he loses interest - he doesn't feel like he owes anything to his users, after all, and as the product gets more and more popular the constant demands start feeling more like unpaid work than fun, which eventually ends up creating resentment on both sides (the developer because he feels hounded, users because they are not being heard).

As for Windows, I completely agree - the only reason people aren't jumping ship in droves is because they have no real alternative: Apple is just as bad, if not worse, and Linux - even after all these years! - is still for techies.

P.S. Unlike the user on the 'slow start for dock' thread next door seems to think, I'm also quite nice (as long as people remain respectful). Or so people (and other users) tell me. :wink:

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:33 pm 
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Tony 'that' developer, just fell into every hole and committed every cardinal sin. I desperately tried to help him by digging him out of each hole he dug himself into. I shouted loud to get him to remove the malware bundling, I was the only one shouting... his reputation is in tatters and not just from that.

The worst sin though is not accepting help when it is offered, coupled with not be able to accurately assess one's own weakness. If he made his code open source we could have debugged his code and fixed probably 50% of the easy bugs. Those more complex bugs might have been fixable with some professional help but no professionals offer help on closed-source code.

I was prepared to dive in. Xwidget is still the only engine with potential that puts javascript on the desktop. Tony hasn't realised what a tool that is. He is still looking at it being a mere widget engine - but it puts native MS Jscript on the desktop. He doesn't realise that other companies are fighting to do something similar with their clunky javascript frameworks.

So short-sighted and blinkered too. As you can tell I gave up.

I have deep respect for the creative genius and/or dedication that allows a few talented people to create tools like yours. I never underestimate the dedication and the man-days that go into each and every change. The passion too!

When it is coupled with something that is akin to stubborn stupidity it makes me so frustrated! I think it may be a cultural thing and that Chinese character is so different from our own that possibly we are thinking differently or approaching the whole subject of creation from totally different standpoints. Frustration born of cultural clash?

When I talk to you I 'get' you without becoming frustrated. I can tell somewhat who you are - A VB5/VB6 programmer in the customisation field, creative and dedicated to a single task, possibly slightly crazy due to this :) a technically proficient expert in specific fields and a sufficient understanding of many others. A professional who understands communication and can verbalise/express very well in more than one language! Intelligent, western and culturally not so alien from my own culture (I'm obviously British).

I haven't a clue who Tony is. In another world he would have benefitted from close co-operation with someone like you but in this world he would be unable to take the help.

PS. I too am always respectful but when cardinal sins are being made (bundling malware, never communicating, abandoning the community and the product and leaving it rot whilst trying to monetize it - ie. Tony and Xwidget) I am prepared, unlike many to stand up and state the truth. I cannot ever imagine ever needing to do so unless I felt it was important.


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:15 pm 
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yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
You are right that customisation is plummeting in popularity, all that creativity has been stifled by Apple and MS, the latter not realising that customisation of their platform was its strength. MS wants to be another Apple, Windows all locked down and closed from the GUI to its apps. It won't work, it will just kill the platform.

Well, I'd be quite happy to lay a wager that MS and some form of Win will be around long after 'The Dark Side' (speak Apple) has become a mere footnote in the annals of technology.... :) (Well, give or take a bit....)

But yes, you are right,, customisation, starting with the fairly complex UI options offered with Win9x/NT4 up to XP, had been one of the great strengths of Windows. Much of that (well, most really) alas fell by the wayside with Vista and Win 7 already, and Win 10 certainly has pretty much put an end to it. (Unless you want to mess with third-party software that hasn't seen any serious development for a number of years and that seems to only mess things up further....) But it's not that that is killing off customisation - that started even before Vista and 7 in the days of the more 'liberal' XP. It's more a case of people gradually at first and more rapidly later losing interest in such things and making do. Smartphones and tablets aided that in no small way, esp. as they 'liberated' a lot of people from using desktop computers or even laptops. Not to mention also that most people spend most of their 'computing time' using so-called social media, one of the greatest evils of our age, and have neither time nor interest for anything else.

Winstep has managed to survive only because it already had a solid user base and because it is such an immensely versatile and powerful suite of apps. And long may it continue to not only survive but prosper.

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:57 pm 
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yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
I think it may be a cultural thing and that Chinese character is so different from our own that possibly we are thinking differently or approaching the whole subject of creation from totally different standpoints. Frustration born of cultural clash?


Oh, I hadn't realized Tony was Chinese (although I did notice his broken English). Now I understand why someone in his forums was complaining about xWidget communicating with a Chinese site. :)

Well... Chinese culture is very, very, different from ours, that is for sure. And Mao's 'cultural revolution' didn't help at all, putting all intellectuals in prison or worse and completely stifling Chinese creativity for years despite Asians being the group with highest IQ in the world (106 on average).

yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
PS. I too am always respectful but when cardinal sins are being made (bundling malware, never communicating, abandoning the community and the product and leaving it rot whilst trying to monetize it - ie. Tony and Xwidget) I am prepared, unlike many to stand up and state the truth. I cannot ever imagine ever needing to do so unless I felt it was important.


I totally understand you, believe me, but at the end of the day, it is HIS project and there is nothing you can do about it. When I burned out some years ago and had to step out for a couple of years, many here also got really frustrated with me. This 'stepping out' hurt myself more than them, though.

Anyway, you seem to also be proficient at coding, why don't you try giving it a go at doing something like xWidget? Your designer skills would give you a tremendous starting advantage. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:01 pm 
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nexter wrote:
Winstep has managed to survive only because it already had a solid user base and because it is such an immensely versatile and powerful suite of apps. And long may it continue to not only survive but prosper.


Thanks for the kind words.

As for the decline in Windows customization, one of the reasons it started in the Windows Vista era is because that was a time where design started taking over everywhere, remember?

Vista was gorgeous to look at, so was Mac OSX, computers cases no longer were donkey beige but started popping up in elegant black cases, etc...

This brought along with it the 'good enough' age, where the OS was good looking and elegant enough NOT to need 'skins' that, more often that not, actually made it look worse than the original.

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 4:31 pm 
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winstep wrote:
nexter wrote:
Winstep has managed to survive only because it already had a solid user base and because it is such an immensely versatile and powerful suite of apps. And long may it continue to not only survive but prosper.

Thanks for the kind words.

Just stating the truth Jorge. I don't know what we'd do without Winstep. I think personally, for all my real computing needs, I'd go back to using older hardware only and XP and/or Win 7 perhaps, and rarely if ever go online. (I could quite happily survive without the web, never use (anti-)social media anyway, even email is infrequently used.... And what do I need, really - wordprocessing, GFX (some older apps are far better than anything around now [even with all plug-ins etc. you still can't do a lot of things older apps can, or not as easily and quickly, with Photoshop], the odd bit of audio apps, and that's about it. I've got pretty much all I need and more on the XP and Win 7 sys really, so don't really know why I'm bothering with this Win 10 laptop sometimes.) The only thing that makes using Win 10 usable for me is Winstep.
winstep wrote:
As for the decline in Windows customization, one of the reasons it started in the Windows Vista era is because that was a time where design started taking over everywhere, remember?

Vista was gorgeous to look at, so was Mac OSX, computers cases no longer were donkey beige but started popping up in elegant black cases, etc...

Indeed I remember. Though the look of MOSX did nothing at all for me (and I can't really comment on Vista, not really having had any experience of nor exposure to it - but that move already started in XP in a small way). Black cases etc. - well, I'm sure you remember NeXT boxes and paraphernalia were all black from the start and that was about 1988/9, and then of course there were the very tastefully variously coloured SGI boxes also - already started coming along well before Vista certainly (one of my ancient systems, if I can get it to work again, dating from about 2004/5, I housed in a black case). But, yes, in general you're right....

winstep wrote:
This brought along with it the 'good enough' age, where the OS was good looking and elegant enough NOT to need 'skins' that, more often that not, actually made it look worse than the original.

Indeed! Though, at least in the general consumerist world, the 'good enough' age started well before then. Looking at photography for instance, in the 80s/90s suddenly 35mil (far from running down the format, it has its uses where nothing else can touch it) became good enough for some things where previously you wouldn't have used anything less than medium format and even large format. Then, in the mid-2000s, suddenly bloody digital became 'good enough' for almost everything even though in real terms it was (and still is, compared to film) totally shite. But, 'good enough' is good enough now, in everything. We have become the totally mediocre society and therefore, much diminished.

And so it is with OS looks and people's disinterest in customisation. It's all 'good enough' out of the box as far as most people are concerned. And win 10 is about as ugly as one cares to imagine a UI could look today, whereas Win 7 still looked OK at the very least. And it's with Win 7, as far as I can see, that skins really started to make it look worse than the original in most cases. And what I see on Wincustomize wrt Windowblinds generally makes me want to puke. But, it's 'good enough'. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:21 pm 
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"I am an angry passionate soul screaming out in this torturous mediocrity"

I read this painted in three-foot letters (90cm), on a wall leading from Paddington station in the 1960s, I was a boy, but even then it struck me as being vital.

It has stayed with me ever since. I now know how the writer felt.


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:23 pm 
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winstep wrote:

Anyway, you seem to also be proficient at coding, why don't you try giving it a go at doing something like xWidget? Your designer skills would give you a tremendous starting advantage. :)


I am flattered and I am proficient at coding what I know, DCL, VB6, javascript and I can debug in more or less any language given a headwind and some documentation. The trouble is I also know my limitations. My skills are less than yours with regard to the intricacies of the Windows API and programming in general.

To create a whole javascript desktop engine (which is what I'd want to do) that emulates the functionality and power found in the Yahoo widget engine and the practicality of the IDE of the Xwidget version would require more resources than I have access to. I could easily be the Project Manager of such a team as I have the PM skills and the technical knowledge to design requirements documents, create the initial IDE designs, set up testing, write the documentation &c and I'd know how to implement it to some sort of completion. I do have intimate knowledge of the product I'd like to create consisting of a XML and jscript interpreter with graphics output using GDI and Cairo or similar. The product is already documented and examples ready to go in the form of the abandoned Yahoo widget engine and the Xwidget IDE.

The trouble is the task is more than one man can seriously undertake and expect to finish. It is a job for a team of 5 serious coders at least and even then it would be serious piece of work for at least a year. To code it in a later variant of c++ to make it platform independent, to separate the graphics calls to make it work on different graphic engines but still be fast enough to operate, all these take skills that I do not have at the deep technical level. I am not proficient in c++, I do not have the immersement in the tools required to do all this, even though I know what needs to be done. It is simply beyond me and I would state beyond just one man, even he knew what to do and how to do it. That is why Tony so comprehensively failed. It is a big task.

On the positive side however, it is entirely possible for a dedicated team. An existing codebase would be a good starting point:

Kludgets exists as open source and might be a good way to start (though some might argue it would be better to start from scratch and simply steal some of what kludgets does). http://kludgets.com/
https://code.google.com/archive/p/kludgets/

Xwidgets was mature enough to warrant continuing from as a basis but Tony simply will NOT let it go. He'd rather let it rot.

So, thanks for your flattery but I'm not currently up to the programming part of it. I should get a team together I suppose but as always cash intervenes and the realities of undertaking such a project without remuneration.

The end result would be a javascript desktop engine that allows you to develop and run javascript apps on the desktop. Multi-platform potentially, graphic or traditional apps. If only.


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:28 pm 
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I have just downloaded the kludgets source, code blocks and mingGW with an idea as to significantly improving my C++ and possibly making some modifications to kudgets. This is merely an investigation to see how far I could get in adapting Kludgets to take on some Yahoo widget characteristics...


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:55 pm 
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yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
I have just downloaded the kludgets source, code blocks and mingGW with an idea as to significantly improving my C++ and possibly making some modifications to kudgets. This is merely an investigation to see how far I could get in adapting Kludgets to take on some Yahoo widget characteristics...


If anything, remember this: Rome wasn't built in a day.

Starting is the most important step, after that is building block after building block. It's surprising the amount of stuff a single person can do given enough time and persistence. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:37 pm 
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Quite correct - "foam wasn't spilt on a tray". :)

I have to identify the build environment, it seems to have been a QT project, unsure as to which version but attempting to download a few versions and also attempting to make contact with the original dev too. I was in touch with him a while back but lost contact.


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:21 pm 
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I have made some progress only to realise that I cannot even recognise and create the build environment. If I had some pointers from the dev then perhaps I might make progress. Just dumping the source on a repository is not enough. Might be enough for an expert but that - I am not.

I am now removing QT/code blocks and ming though I'll keep the kludgets code somewhere handy just in case...


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 5:26 pm 
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yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
I have made some progress only to realise that I cannot even recognise and create the build environment. If I had some pointers from the dev then perhaps I might make progress. Just dumping the source on a repository is not enough. Might be enough for an expert but that - I am not.


Start small. Choose a first objective, something simple that you can quickly see results from (that will keep you motivated), and keep building on top of that.

You have several advantages already: you have a clear picture of where you want to go, and you have an amazing graphical expertise.

Knowing where you are going in the future prevents you from wasting time later rebuilding code (like I just had to do to support multiple Shelves, because I didn't plan for that when I started all those years ago) and allows you to keep the whole thing clear and structured from the get go. Just don't let the big picture overwhelm you, we all have to start somewhere.

Also, comment all your code. It may be clear what it does now while it is still fresh in your memory, but you will look at it later like a bull looking at a palace. ;)

Also, if you are working with an unfamiliar programming language, know that it will take at least a year to become somewhat of an expert at it, even if you are already a prolific programmer: each language has little tricks and features that you will only get to learn about with experience.

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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:19 pm 
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When I talk to you I feel positive...


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 Post subject: Re: Rocketdock gallery is closing - a sad day
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:42 pm 
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yereverluvinuncleber wrote:
When I talk to you I feel positive...


Good! Now get to work! lol :P

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