WinCustomize
Encyclopedia : W : WI : WIN : WinCustomize
WinCustomize is a website that provides content for users to customize Microsoft Windows. The site hosts thousands of skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, and other graphical content to modify the Windows graphical user interface. Content is mostly all free to download.
Site history
WinCustomize was launched in March 2001 by Brad Wardell and Pat Ford, both of whom work at Stardock. After the dot-com recession had taken down many popular skin sites, WinCustomize quickly grew in popularity due to a combination of wide variety of content, uptime reliability, and being the preferred content destination by Stardock customers.The site has grown at a far greater pace than its founders had anticipated. It has managed to avoid having to put many limitations on users or having to resort to pop-up advertising because of its corporate patron Stardock subsidizing its costs.
By the end of 2004, WinCustomize's traffic exceeded 10 million visitors per month. Stardock had the site re-designed using ASP.NET to try to decrease the server load and prepare the site to become more self-sufficient. Premium subscriptions have provided a way for users to contribute to supporting the site's continued growth, and have resulted in additional features (including the WinCustomize Browser).
At the end of 2004, WinCustomize "2K5" was launched which provided a whole new interface, personal pages for the new "premium" subscribers, and other features to expand the site's mission to include articles, tutorials, and other information on how users could get the most out of their Windows based PC.
At the end of 2005, site traffic had grown to over 20 million visitors each month and is ranked by most third party popularity monitors (such as Alexa) to be in the top 5,000 most popular websites in the world. It has over 3 million registered members and is, by far, the largest skinning site in the world.
Forum Criticisms
While nearly all users visit WinCustomize.com to download skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, and other content for their personal computers, WinCustomize does have extensive forums and articles areas. As with most large sites, WinCustomize is not without its critics with regards to how the forums are run and the content in the articles and forums area.Some users feel that the editorial content of WinCustomize.com has an anti-Apple bias. On occasion, editorial articles are written that are critical of Apple's products or the Mac community. Much of this stems from the long rivalry between Windows advocates and Macintosh advocates that often comes to a head on sites that enable users to customize their computing experience to take pieces from other operating systems.
In addition, the forums themselves are moderated by volunteers. Some users feel that the moderators behave as a kind of "clique" in which users are not always treated equally. While this sort of thing is common in on-line forums, particularly ones run by volunteers, it is a perception that the WinCustomize staff say they are trying to rectify.
Other criticisms of WinCustomize include its close association with Stardock which owns the site. Some feel there is a conflict of interest in the world's largest skinning site (over 20 million visitors monthly) being operated by a software developer that sells skinning solutions.
Popular Skinning programs
Programs heavily associated with Windows customization include:
- WindowBlinds - enables users to customize the look and feel of the Windows GUI.
- WinAmp - A skinnable media player from Nullsoft.
- IconPackager - A program that enables users to change their Windows icons.
- Rainlendar — A skinnable clock program.
- DesktopX — A program that enables users to build their own desktop with objects and widgets.
- Windows Media Player — Microsoft's skinnable media player.
- ObjectDock — provides a dock for Windows similar to that in the Mac OS X Aqua GUI
- CursorXP — replaces existing cursor functionality with animated, resizable cursors and optional click effects
- LogonStudio — alters the Windows XP welcome screen
- BootSkin — alters the Windows 2000 and Windows XP boot screen
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.