I'm sorry if you're upset by our comments Brad, but honestly, how can you sit there and even classify this as a legit Beta. This thing is barely Alpha with the issues it's had.

Stardock betas have always been pretty well top notch with some occasional hiccups now and then but this... is in a much lower class league all by itself. As for using it... well, who actually COULD use it for full functionality?

I think the overall theme of this thread is the overwelming desire to have a great DX 4.0  something that people could use to make some really great things. And yes as always there is a lot of bitching, but thats normal.

I think the concern is 2 fold, first is the quality of the beta (something i have not used as i need to work on some things still in 3.5), and secondly and i think the main thing is the lack of imput from SD.  

We all have the desire to see DX 4 be great, and obiviously there are a lot of people who want to use it, and work with SD to make it better.  But it only works if its a 2-way street, and as of the past few weeks (or longer) its only been us talking to ourselves.

I think most of us just really wanted someone at SD to give us a status update.

I only speak for myself.

Brad, maybe the word 'garbage' was a bit strong but it was certainly not up to the usual Stardock high standards. It's very rare that I've had any major issues with one of your betas but this one didn't even make the program useable to test.

Nicely said and well put, Dave

I'm not sure why you're thinking I'm upset.  I'm simply saying that if you're not prepared for problems, don't run beta software.

Depends on the beta.  I don't think Elemental beta testers would agree with you.   That beta makes DesktopX look like perfection.

DesktopX isn't like say WindowBlinds or IconPackager or what have you because fundamentally, it has the challenge of having its very guts ripped apart by Windows UAC and we have to find a way to transition it to the Windows Vista/7 world.

Moreover, for all the complaining I see, there aren't a lot of specifics. Just complaints.  

I think when we get back we'll have to re-evaluate whether it's worth the effort to do DesktopX 4.0 at all and retire DesktopX at 3.5.  That is what I'm leaning towards right now.

I love DesktopX but I'm not convinced it can be economically updated to Windows 7 given the "security" features. It's not acceptable to require users to turn off UAC to make full use of it.

BTW, don't get me wrong, I love DesktopX. It's my baby.

I don't think people realize how wrenching it's been to watch Microsoft basically abandon some of the technologies that DesktopX relied on over the years and then throw up UAC to add insult to injury.

The thing that kills us in supporting DesktopX is backwards compatibility to an era that simply doesn't exist anymore.  DesktopX was designed in an age where it was no biggie to embed executable code into content or read in system tray or task manager or system info data and display it.  

Moreover, the market for something like DesktopX has dramatically dropped in the last few years.  If people want DesktopX to be enhanced, they are going to need to help us with real bug reports and not empty bitching and moaning.  Otherwise, it's just not worth it.

I.e. a bug report would include what OS you're running, a problem you ran into, and steps to reproduce it.

The initial release of DesktopX 4 beta had problems with installation due to the very very complex nature of handling so many different OSes. It should have been handled better, I totally agree.  

But the latest update to DesktopX 4 beta should be working. It "works on my machine" anyway. :) 

Brad....this will kill me. Say it ain't so!!! 

Oh, I remember the first few ObjectBar betas. Those were "special" .

I personally don't care about crashes and problems in betas. What I think was lacking was more communication when the betas were made available, to explain what the aim for those was. Something like: "Here is the first DX 4.0 beta, we did a lot of work on internals to bring the codebase up to Vista/7 standards and deal with UAC. Our plan is to test those changes and then proceed to fix script/UI bugs and add features either in further betas or in 4.1" would have gone a long way.

Now, I know why this didn't happen, but it might explain why there are so many complains.

Here is the list of bugs I reported in the past which I re-tested against the first beta. The full details and repro-steps should already be in your bug tracker. You can also find a list of old problems on thomthom website.

I'm no expert on this but, why make it backwards compatable then? Make it work in Windows 7 and maybe Vista and be done with XP. By the time it comes out if beta, there will be even fewer XP users. Move forward with it, not backwards.

I, for one, and I suspect many others, keep UAC turned off anyway, just because it's a pain in the ass. I realize you can't expect that of everyone, but UAC is crap.

Littleboy: Thank you!

You're welcome . Good to know all these test objects and bug reports will end up being useful.

Not if he retires it at 3.5!!!

Whether it makes any difference remains to be seen, but at least I did something about it (that and writing plugins to add missing functionality that was needed). Most people on this thread did the same at some point, it's just that there aren't many of us

I appreciate the more in depth explanation, it makes all the difference and it does change the outward appearance of what is going on.

My issues at the moment are centered around the broken built-in performance meters. Even the widget included doesn't work properly. Memory reads 100 all the time and CPU is highly overstated compared to the windows performance monitor.

I reported my bugs (so far) in reply #3 of this thread. I've not tested further but will be happy to continue and report if I know someone is actually paying attention. It did seem that no one cared and that was the biggest bug of all.

I would hate to see DX die, it is the only think out there like it.  I would love to see DX used in schools to teach students programming, can you imagine the influx of gadgets?  But im also a realist, i know that the market isnt there like it was years ago, and i know that Win7 has added a lot of problems for DX. If there were easier ways to make some more complex thing, i think DX could sell a lot more, but again, who knows. 

whohoo! someone has noticed my bug reports!

It would be nice if there would be any feedback on these bug reports that I, and others has mentioned. My biggest frustation with SD the past years is that I've not heard anything in return to my bug and issue reports. As for my frustration with DX - I could not find any info on what was fixed, and what was planned to be fixed. Which is why I felt lost and disapointed when I tried the DX4 beta - I found no issues addressed.

I can understand that the UAC and Windows infrastucture is causing pain for the SD developers. But, can't we, the users get some feedback? I have given my spesific issues - a number of times, over several years, in any channel I've found -besides calling up SD support on the phone.

Phoon: The big problem is that when DesktopX was created, it was assumed the community would create the plugins, not Stardock.

In the "old days" of skinning, the skinning community made this kind of stuff.

But now, it's largely end users who expect us to make all this stuff.  I can tell you right now, there's no economic justification for us to make new plugins for DesktopX to deal with Windows 7.

I can happily open source as much of our plugins as possible so others can start playing with it but the idea of hiring a full time C++ developer to work on DesktopX plugins is just not economically viable.

If we had that kind of budget, we'd still have Zubaz here full-time which, as you have seen in this thread, the consumer desktop enhancement market isn't large enough to sustain that kind of thing anymore.

I've talked about this in the past -- the evolution of the skinning community from being skinners to consumers.

It was never sustainable for us to be making all the plugins and such for these programs, that's why they were plugins and not native to the core program -- the idea was the community would do it.

I don't really have an answer to this because you were supposed to be getting feedback from us.

What I can tell you is that I'll be posting in the Object Desktop Blog with status updates.

I did not realize that these plugins were developed by third parties and/or end users.

as the idea was surely that it would be the community who have to find most of buggies in any Stardock programs by testing all the beta's (well, in fact all programs are always in beta's   )

As soon as Impulse began i was sure that Stardock will turn his back to the Customization software ...  

Well the problem with third party plugins always is that at some point when dx goes further plugins won't work anymore because of deep changes made, or the author just stops working on it for other reasons (real life, etc.). Remember that old sysstats plugin, that was great while it lasted and then caused big problems (don't remember the name). It would be nice to have a reliable source at least for sysstats and other popular things.

Neophil : Can You imagine what the price of any Stardock software would be if they had special beta testers employed ? That's something I am okay with.

I'm also okay with, it was just to point it out that Stardock has not ever been clear in intentions

I see Brad's points. Everything has a price and if the work involved exceeds the income and benefits then something has to give. Sad but that's true life economics. DX is a wonderful piece of software with so many different uses but sadly the work involved to take it forward looks prohibitive. Thanks for the update, Brad. At least we know your position and the reasons behind some of the tough decisions you've had to make and will have to make in the future    

Sure. It would be nice if there were full time developers making plugins.

But someone has to pay for them.  DesktopX 1.0 came out in what? 2000.  Users have gotten 9 years of free updates to DesktopX.  

There just aren't enough DesktopX users (and never was) to support that kind of support.

The idea was that Stardock would provide the foundation and then the community would take it from there.  For a few years, Konfabulator and other such programs provided enough "competition" that Stardock developed tech was extended but Konfabulator is dead now along with all other gadget/widget movements (even Microsoft and Apple have largely abandoned their own techs).

What I pictured with DesktopX 4.0 was that we would strip out the pieces that aren't compatible with Windows 7 and then slowly build it back up with new stuff via collaboration with the community.

But if the community is going to become "consumers" then as a practically matter, either DesktopX has to be priced at a level that justifies the cost of doing the work (i.e. think $5000 or more) or it needs to die off.

Neophil, that's idiotic. 

Consider what's been released in the past 60 days for Object Desktop.  And you talk about us abandoning customization software? Why? Because the DesktopX 4.0 beta is rough? Really?