Man... the air in here is thick...
I have added some articles and skins as stuff to take a look at. Here are some of my fav or fav article picks as of recent (You can view all my selections and favs on my Wincusto website eSM @ Wincustomize):
PDC 2005: Vista Game Screenshots!
The games that come with Windows XP are pretty dated. But with Windows Vista, Microsoft has gone back to the drawing board. Included in Vista is a whole slew of updates to classics along with some new games including a pretty nice chess game. Check out the screenshots below.
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Mac Zealots: Get a grip
Over at MicrosoftGadgets.com, Mac zealots are giving new meaning to the term uninformed fanatic. This week, Microsoft announced Microsoft Gadgets. As has been discussed, gadgets are similar to widgets except they do not require the user to download a run-time in order to use them. They're stand-alone entities.
Microsoft's gadgets are designed to be used on Windows Vista (and on XP via Avalon) and can sit on the desktop, be placed on the Windows Side-bar and be put onto the web.
mormegil says: These are from 2000. Two Friking Thousand!!!!
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The Cartman Widget example
Our friends at OSX-E have a great widget tutorial for Konfabulator put together by Herd, talented widget author.
It's a very well written tutorial that walks the user through how to create a widget for Konfabulator. Since its release, Konfabulator has gotten a lot of great publicity on its ability to create widgets. As the product manager of its primary Windows competitor, DesktopX, I can appreciate Konfabulator as both a technology and as a popular phenomenon. Its existence has forced us to get a lot better at our own marketing and developer support.
DesktopX precedes Konfabulator by years. But being a Windows-only product, we haven't gotten anywhere near the press that Konfabulator received so often times Mac users believe that user created mini-applets on the desk originated with it.
DesktopX is object-oriented in nature. Users make their creations with objects. When they are done, they can export their creations as widgets or as entire desktops. For that reason DesktopX has a disadvantage -- it seems more complicated than Konfabulator to a new user. Because it can be used....
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Microsoft Gadgets understood
Our story so far..
In 2000 Stardock released DesktopX 3.0 which gave Windows support for desktop objects. These objects could be used to build entire desktops or exported as mini-applications called "widgets".
DesktopX became pretty popular with millions of users downloading it and trying it out. Unfortunately, most of the content created by developers looked like it was made by developers. 3 years later, a Mac developer released Konfabulator which also created mini-applets. They wisely included a series of incredibly polished looking widgets that showed off what could be done. Combined with excellent marketing, Konfabulator became very well known.
In 2005, Stardock released DesktopX 3 which also came in a Pro version that could create gadgets. Gadgets are like widgets except they don't require the user to download an enabler. The gadget contains the executable code within it it needs to function.
In July 2005, Yahoo acquired Konfabulator rebranding it Yahoo Widgets. The question came up, what is DesktopX's future? Why would developers create widgets/gadgets for DesktopX over making them for Konfabulator?
The answer came...
More posts on what the haps are on WinCusto later...