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?

So why wasn't that done with the first 2 betas? Or are you waiting for us to tell you what doesn't work before stripping it?

May be I'm a fool but I can't understand about what compatible with Windows-7 you are talking? I've tested DX 3.5 on Win-7 x64 and it worked for me almost without errors.

Then I've returned back to x86 and continue its using till now without any fatal errors. I'm seeing only the old, known bugs which I can bypass around 2 years (from the beginning of using Vista).

Why DX 4 beta lost its compatibility with Win-7 and has stopped working? May be this is a first result of future stripping? If - yes, this is a wrong way I'm thinking...

The compatibility problems are with UAC. Prior to Vista you could write to Program Files without admin rights and so a lot of programs stored user data in the program folder. Starting with Vista you can't do that anymore (for compatibility reasons, all your data writing will get redirected to another folder in the user data directory, without you knowing about it).

This can cause all sort of problems (I think one of my bugs with objects using multiple plugins is directly caused by that). One such user visible problem is that DesktopX will list all the user objects in its UI, but when you go to the DesktopX folder, only the ones installed with DX are there (to see the other ones, you need to click "Compatibility files"). And when you turn off UAC, write new objects to the Program Files folder (you now have the rights to) and then turn UAC back on, I'll let you imagine the mess it ends up being with old versions of the object lingering in the file system.

Going forward, there was no way around it, this had to be fixed (and this isn't like those are sexy changes that you are happy to work on).

Have you tried the last beta? It fixed the most visible problems for me.

All the plugins available since 2007 have been mine and I've tried to keep them updated (with new versions scheduled for the next few weeks). Source code for most them is also available, but I haven't had much feedback about it (I got a few patches and feature requests for ObjectDock plugins though).

Sysstats source is available too, but nobody picked up the tab and so it doesn't have any maintainer currently. I'm not particularly interested in that kind of plugin (and working alone on it with no feedback is not exactly sexy). If Brad decides to open-source the existing Stardock plugins and commits to developping the DX core for some more time, that might change.

I don't think many people have been writing DX plugins in the last few years (actually I think I'm the only one, but I might be wrong). I can see that plan working (if you decide to go ahead and continue developping DX), as long as you're OK with there only being a handful of people contributing towards it (a few plugin writers and a dozen script developers). I already tried to add some missing functions with my DXSystemEx plugin (merging most of my old plugins in the process) and there is probably a lot more to do there.

It seems there are more people interested in doing Docklet development (unfortunately, a lot of them
"left" Wincustomize/Stardock to go to other sites). Having docklets as "full" desktopX objects might be a way to get some new stuff going (I wrote a plugin for that, but it's not as well integrated as it could be - the source code for that plugin should land on my tree on google code soon).

As long as you make things a little bit easier for plugin/script developpers, I think you can count on a (very ) small community to continue developping widgets. 

Things that will be nice to have (some I already sent to Curtis):

• Fix the widget launcher so that it doesn't eat its command line arguments (and I can stop binary patching it to make it work properly) => should allow full Win7 taskbar integration
• Add full script debugger support (you can even drop the old inside-editor debug functionality and rely on VS or the MS script debugger)
• Expose more of the internal object model to plugins (so that you can manipulate objects easily from plugins, add new object types, etc.)
• Add special Docklet object type to load Docklets (if not doing the previous one)
• Building on that, allow .Net plugins (a lot of that work is already "done", with scripting plugins being COM objects). It's not as nice as full scripting in any .Net language, but it will already make it much more easy to add new functionnality to DX (and there are a lot more C# or VB.NET programmers out there than C++ ones)
• Make external scripts easier to use (adding them to the widget on export, etc.)
• Make script components easier to use (registering them automatically, handling events, etc.)
• Add a command line utility to export dxpacks as widgets

Some of those things are relatively "easy" to add (and unintrusive).

That's right for Vista. But on the WIndows-7 DX is working like on XP (at least it seems to me...). I'm a single user of my PC with Administrator rights. As well as the UAC is turned off from the first starting of Win-7 (I don't know people who still use it...). So I'm using DX 3.5 without serious problems and the gadgets - WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS! The data is stored in the Program Files or in any other place which I want. I can modify the registry keys, connect to the services and run dlls...

No, I didn't because Impulse still show me the same beta... Okay. I'll try once again in the evening.

It was supposed to be. There was something lost between my directives on DesktopX 4 and what was actually released in the first two betas.  It happens.

Well, let me candid here: From here on out, the DesktopX 4 betas would be handled by Alberto, myself, and Nakor (the same team that did DesktopX 1, 2, and 3.0).  But I don't have the patience to deal with whining. Am I being clear here, Vlad?  If the beta reports are full of you and Phoon having useless whining then we're done. 

We have a lot of other things that we could spend our time on and as-is, DesktopX 4 would happen only because Alberto, Nakor and I would be working on it during over-time hours and I'm not willing to put up with bitching and moaning.

The first beta of DesktopX 4 was a mess. We agree. It was an installation issue not a program issue. Deal with it. Move on. 

If you want to see the kind of feedback and info we're looking for, look at LittleBoy's feedback.  It's people like LittleBoy that make this worth it.  

But if I see another whiney bitchey post from veteran users, then we're done. Any normal business would have canceled this long ago.  The only justification to do it is for the community.  It's a labor of love.  Do you understand?

This is a good news.

 Yes I do. But seems you couldn't understand me and my feelings... However, there are no any problems. From this moment I will be silent like a fish and you will not hear nor one word from me here.       

Brad, with all given respect for You, but what You seem to fail to understand sometimes is that we care because of love, too. Otherwise we wouldn't care at all. Sure, sometimes it sounds very bitter, but please try to see with the eyes of a long time follower also and how some things might look through these without proper information or insider knowledge.

That's my wish for Christmas.

When there's a dialogue, as there is now, I see more reasonable responses, less confusion, and generally more goodwill all around. It's good for everyone to hear exactly where DX stands and what to expect so we're all on the same page. Knowing that there are only 3 people working on DX, with all the problems it has and is facing, I'm just glad it hasn't been canned already.

These status reports are much appreciated.

I understand fully, Brad. I wish I had the technical knowledge that littleboy has so I could be of more help. I seem to be the most avid DX skinner out there, but I have no technical background.