[shell-coding] Re: WinShellEx

As Stephen said, he's done pretty much all of the coding work himself on WinShellEx, and you're certainly right, we haven't made any specific posts about it since the release of GeoShell R4 11 beta 10, which depends upon it. I'm working on a Masters degree right now (on top of working full time, of course), so that hasn't left a lot of time for GeoShell, however, I am taking the summer off of school this year, for the first time in what seem like forever ...

So anyway, my expectation is that GeoShell R4 will hit 12 within the next month or so, and that should include the final 1.0 release of WinShellEx...

As far as demand for alternative shells ... my personal theory:

One of the primary reasons people have always come to the alt-shell community is to personalize their computers. There is no marketing pitch more powerful than when someone walks up behind someone's computer and sees something "cool" they hardly recognize (note the astonishing uptake of OS X among geeks). Although since Windows XP, it has been extremely simple for anyone to purchase WindowBlinds or download a "hacked" uxtheme.dll and give their UI a complete new look ... that's not really enough for most people. Having GeoShell on TechTV last year generated thousands of downloads in the course of a week, most of those by Windows XP users.

I think the future of "alternative shells" is *not* the minimalist approach. My proof? www.phatbits.com, kapsules.shellscape.org, www.konfabulator.com, www.desktopx.net ... the list goes on. The interesting thing is that none of these is actually a shell. Stephen mentioned that "geo" has said Explorer is good enough for him, and yet, he's the one who's creating phatbits. In the old days, those things would be plugins on your litestep desktop ... now it's easier to "sell" them as applications that run alongside Explorer, instead of replacing it. Part of that is the complexity of replacing explorer correctly, part of it is the desire to appeal to non-geeks who are intimidated by the idea.

So it seems like alternative shells will "sneak on" as utility/eye-candy applications. That is: you get a "widget" app on their computer, running alongside Explorer, and they later find out that they can do without Explorer... That's why one of our goals for WinShellEx is for it to be able to run "on top" of Explorer without problems, and transparently "take over" when you run without Explorer.

As far as Longhorn: it's _at_least_ 2 years away (the current release target is "sometime in 2007"), and given the system requirements, I think: A) No companies except software developers will upgrade in the first year (and maybe not all of those). B) No companies, and very few people, will actually be upgrading, but will simply have to get Longhorn on their next new PC. That pushes the "significant" presence of Longhorn out to sometime in 2008 or 2009. I don't know about you, but I'm not planning that far ahead yet.

Avalon, on the other hand, is just around the corner. The new display technologies of Longhorn are mostly already here in Avalon, so I've started playing with some display ideas with the current beta 2 of VS 2005 and the Avalon "CTP" release from March...

Well, I've run on long enough for now ... but let me just suggest: the killer desktop toys can't just be eye-candy that provides information. You have to provide something new different and useful enough that they'll actually miss it if it's gone.
--
Joel "Jaykul" Bennett
qotd: Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!' . . . until you can find a rock.

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