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Konfabulator for Windows vs. DesktopX

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Konfabulator for Windows vs. DesktopX

The battle for the widgetfied desktop

from JoeUser Forums

And so it begins. The top customization developer for MacOS has brought its premiere customization program, Konfabulator over to Windows. Pixaria, the developer of Konfabulator previously had developed Kaleidoscope.  On Windows, Stardock, whom I work for, is the developer of DesktopX and WindowBlinds have shadow-boxed for years in friendly competition.

Mac advocates would argue that Kaleidoscope was better than WindowBlinds and PC users would argue the opposite.  And the same has been true of DesktopX and Konfabulator.  Neither program is a clone of the other. Both come to the table with their own ideas on how widgets should be done on Windows.

Widgets, btw, for the purposes of our discussion, are mini-applications that can be created relatively easily by end users. No compilers, no development environments necessary.  You just take your graphics and put them together with a few scripts and the host program (Konfabulator or DesktopX) takes care of the rest.  So here's my 2 cents take on Konfabulator and DesktopX for what it's worth..

The Konfabulator Journey

Konfabulator was designed with MacOS X in mind. It makes use of the Quartz graphics engine to deliver alpha blended visuals. That is, the edges of its widgets are blended into the background and can be semi-transparent. The point of Konfabulator has been to give users the power to create "whatever they want" without having to be professional software developers. As long as you know a little Javascript and have some art skills, you can throw together some pretty powerful mini-applications dubbed widgets.

Konfabulator came out in 2003 on MacOS X.  Its lead developer, Arlo Rose, had seen its last effort, Kaleidoscope evaporate as MacOS X did not support the APIs that Kaleidoscope required. Konfabulator generated even more press than Kaleidoscope did and was doing well until Apple announced Dashboard. Dashboard is a feature that is part of MacOS "Tiger" that provides very polished widgets of its own. Since Dashboard is part of the OS and thus "free", it was a significant blow to Konfabulator.

The challenge for Konfabulator as it makes its way onto Windows is to overcome the entrenched competition.  Not only will Konfabulator have to go head to head with Stardock's DesktopX on its own turf but it will also have to compete against a slew of freeware programs that offer much the same functionality such as AveDesk, Kapsules, and Samurize.

DesktopX the unlikely underdog

Since 1999 when WindowBlinds came out, Stardock has been considered the leading developer of Windows customization utilities. WindowBlinds on its own has over 7 million users worldwide and thousands of its own visual styles (skins) for it.  It too has had to contend with encroachment from the OS vendor.  But fortunately for Stardock, Microsoft, unlike Apple, has seemed more interested in supporting its ISVs.  Windows XP not only did not break WindowBlinds, it actually made it function better out of the box and vastly increased its market.  Since Stardock is a Microsoft partner, and Microsoft is a Stardock customer (Microsoft uses WindowBlinds for marketing purposes) it is likely that Longhorn will bring new opportunities for WindowBlinds as well as DesktopX.

DesktopX is far older than Konfabulator. But that's not been as big of an advantage as one might think.  DesktopX began its public life in 2000. But because of the limitations in Windows of the time (it had to work on Windows 95 for instance) and the hardware of the time, its objects were much simpler than the widgets of today.

Also, because the Windows market has a lot of competition in many areas, DesktopX couldn't simply be a program to offer mini-programs on the desktop.  So it had to do more.  DesktopX's philosophy has been to let users put objects on their desktop.  These objects can be used to create entire customize desktop environments.  Or they can be kept stand alone and made into "super icons".  Or they can be put together and exported as a widget.

The challenge for DesktopX is to make sure users realize what it can do and promote what it sees are its advantages over both Konfabulator and its entrenched freeware competition.

So how is DesktoX an underdog? Thanks to brilliant marketing by the folks at Pixaria, Konfabulator has gotten featured on the home pages of News.com, The Register.com, Slashdot, and dozens of other sites in time for its Windows debut. Pixaria was also able to exploit Apple's Dashboard announcement to gain a lot of attention for their program. Many an article has come out talking about Konfabualtor as if it were the only program of its type that exists -- despite DesktopX having millions of downloads.

 

Konfabulator meets DesktopX

So while Mac and PC users battled on Usenet and web forums over the relative merits of their chosen widget enabling programs, they always had to do so from afar. When Konfabulator announced it was going to come out with a Windows version back in November of 2003, it meant that eventually, the two would be able to be compared apples to apples (no pun intended).

At the time, I wrote on Konfabulator's forum, "Konfabulator is going to have some real challenges on the PC. Windows XP doesn't have Quartz.  Stardock had to spend a year and a half developing DirectGUI.  Without a DirectGUI Konfabulator would have to rely purely on layered windows and those take up a lot of memory and CPU -- and PC users are very sensitive to how much RAM these kinds of programs use."

The problem with DesktopX, however, is that for years its content sucked overall. There were real gems buried in the thousands of objects and themes. But most of it was awful.  Stardock envisioned itself as a technology company.  It just threw DesktopX out there and waited for skinners to pick it up and go for it.  While that strategy worked for WindowBlinds, it did not work so well on DesktopX.  The ease in which people could create their own content for DesktopX (DesktopX includes a GUI environment for making content) ensured there were a lot of poorly made themes, objects, and widgets for it.

By contrast, the Konfabulator team "got it" from the start.  They focused just on making widgets and they made sure that Konfabulator came with really polished widgets.  DesktopX lagged behind in that area for a long while.  Only in 2004 did Stardock actually assign its game development team to take a few weeks off and create its own DesktopX content.  You can see some of the results here.

So what are the differences between the two? I'm biased in favor of DesktopX but I also have an interest in trying to be objective on trying to understand what the perceived advantages are on both as users might see them.  Pride is the path to doom after all.

Advantages of Konfabulator over DesktopX

  • Straight Forward. It does widgets. That's it. Very focused approach.

  • Default widgets work well, are slick.

  • Simple user interface - since it only does widgets it can present a consistent, clean interface.

  • Where DesktopX makes new users fumble around with concepts such as "Themes" "Objects" "Widgets", Konfabulator focuses on one thing: Widgets.

  • It is polished to the max. It's just incredibly slick. (yes, this should count for two points)

  • It has better default widgets.

  • Konfabulator has a Macintosh version so it gains the benefit of having those graphics-savvy Macintosh widget makers.

  • Konfabulator has a very vocal and supportive development community for widget makers.

Advantages of DesktopX over Konfabulator

  • Far more configurable. Users can import a widget into DesktopX and tweak it however they want.

  • DesktopX widgets are EXEs. Which means they can have their own icon and can optionally show up in the taskbar, and can be individually set to auto-run.

  • DesktopX supports creating desktop themes. A concept that isn't in Konfabulator. Essentially a user can take a snapshot of their desktop and save it as a file to use later. Or they can completely customize the way Windows looks. See a DesktopX theme in action here.

  • DesktopX supports animation. The fish widget in the screenshot couldn't be done as a Konfabulator widget. The fish swims smoothly around the screen and does so using virtually no CPU.

  • DesktopX widgets support JavaScript (like Konfabulator) but it also supports VB Script and ActiveX controls. That means things like web browser controls, flash, and other things can be made into DesktopX widgets easily.

  • DesktopX has a Pro version that enables users to export their widgets as gadgets. Gadgets, unlike widgets, do not require the user to have DesktopX installed to us. They're truly stand-alone programs. Konfabulator has nothing comparable.

  • While Konfabulator has Konpose (F8) which will bring widgets to the forefront on the desktop, DesktopX has that (F9) but also a show all/hide all widgets feature so that users can hide all their widgets from their desktop (F10). Also, DesktopX's hot keys work as toggles. hit F9 once and your widgets come to the foreground. Hit F9 again and they go back behind your windows. Konpose doesn't do this.

  • DesktopX has a run-time version that is only $14.95. That's $5 less than Konfabualtor 2.0.

This is by no means a complete list for both. Just some of the main highlights between the two.

I don't think either one will knock out the other. I think what will more likely happen is that the two will end up creating more awareness of what is a quiet revolution in the world of personal computer - the migration of things that are more than icons.  Which one is the best or more popular will depend on you.

DesktopX can be found at http://www.desktopx.net

Konfabulator can be found at http://www.konfabulator.com

Related: Widget Wars - run down of programs to widgetfy your desktop!

(updated 5/27/2005 to support DesktopX 3 and Konfabualtor 2, original written Nov 2004).

desktopx
131,394 views 68 replies
Reply #51 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Wow, shame this article got dragged down so much.

Small update, Konfab is now using 2mb's per widget. They are cleaning up the memory much more efficiently (in terms of the all important task manager details )

I'd just like to say that DX has come across in a better light though thanks to Martin, Tiggz, and Mormegil. Their releases are making a difference.

The user friendliness of DX does need to improve, its hard to say how as I don't have many issues with it, but some users with little or no DX experience need to be quizzed by Stardock in a proper evaluation to improve it.
Reply #52 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Double post as the forum didn't update to show the start of a second page.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #53 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yea DesktopX 2.4 has a lot of new features that are designed to make it a lot simpler.
Reply #54 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ed Voas stated this on Konfabulator's forum on Nov 9th...
(He is one of the lead developers of the Windows Version of Konfabulator)

"In fact, we are right in line with Desktop X. I verified this this AM. For example, I looked at the Desktop X digital clock widget, and it's private memory was 4MB. A more complex K widget, The Weather, took about 4.5MB of private memory. Private memory is the memory actually allocated by the process. The number you see in Task Manager is the amount of total memory used in RAM, but this is not memory that is necessarily used. This memory includes shared libraries, etc. that are linked and loaded on app launch. Typically, this amount of space is not stuff that's actually used more than once (bringup) if at all. When the OS needs more memory, it will page this memory out and reduce the working set of the application to just what's needed. But if you have a bunch of free RAM, it won't get paged. But you don't NEED it to get paged.

So for example, that same Desktop X widget showed me:

4MB private memory
2MB working set (this is what you'll see in Task Manager)
10MB max working set

Note that last number. Considering our smaller widgets take around that or less (larger ones take more - and the more images, then certainly that's more ram), you'll note that we are not that far off. The Weather showed:

4.5M private
12 MB working
12 MB max

The difference here is that we aren't calling anything to force us to page out. When I do that, I get:

4.5 MB private
2 MB working
12 MB max

You'll note that our working set looks about the same as desktop X. If i call this API to page ourselves out every minute, I can get our working set to about 400K, but at that point, you have to page your application in every time something interesting happens. Plus if you keep paging out, you'll keep the disk access hot, potentially stopping a portable's hard disk from spinning down. So clearly that's not desired. So what I did last night was try an approach to flush ourselves to disk after we load a widget, and I don't call it again. This allows the widget to keep what it truly needs to run resident and removes the cruft from RAM.

What I am saying is true in any paged VM system. Mac OS has the same deal. If you look in top on the Mac, you'll see that some apps seem to take up ungodly amounts of memory, but a lot of this ends up being shared memory, or memory that can be paged out, RPRIV in top is the only number that really matters... it's the amount of RAM the app actually allocated. As mentioned, that number on the PC is currently around 4-5MB. And as mentioned, that number is the same as Desktop X.

In short, my point is that Task Manager shows you typically everything the process needed to run unless you got so low on ram that it needed to page the application out. On my system, that number is 12M because I have 1.25G of RAM. If you have less RAM, I'd bet that number might be lower because its paged some of the app out. And like I said, we really (from empirical evidence) only need to keep around 2-3M in RAM max to keep the app responsive and not hitting the disk. I've already made that change so that people can feel better about what they see in Task Manager, but it's just an accounting illusion. But if it makes people feel better, so be it."
Reply #55 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What do others think? I just an trying to debate on buying Konfabulator. I already am using Desktop X and have been for about 2 years, but have not had a good time with it, since it crashes alot for me. Errors with different widgets and problems with widgets looking funny on the screen. Konfabulator has be perfect for the first 24 hours of used. I like what I see so far.
Reply #56 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Regardless of what Ed says, Konfabulator does use more memory.

But I don't think any of the widget enablers use a significant amount of memory in the bigger scheme of things.

That said, you're comparing the widgets that come with Konfabulator with widgets you've downloaded for DesktopX. That's not a fair comparison.  The widgets that come with DesktopX are quite solid as well. It's when you start using widgets made by others that things get to be problematic. If you stick with just Stardock certified widgets, you'll likely find that your experiences are similar.

But that shouldn't stop you from buying Konfabulator. I am a registered user of Konfabulator. And I have no problem running DesktopX, avedesk, Kapsules, Konfabulator, etc. all together.

Reply #57 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I just got around to downloading DesktopX 2.4. Wow, it so much more stable than before and a cleaner interface. I think I will be running both Konfabulator and DesktopX for the time being. I am just worried still about the weather object/widget erroring out again like in the past. (One reason I like Konfabulator so much, the weather widget there has never caused any errors and it have been running since last week on stop.)
Reply #58 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Obviously that several Konfabulator widgets dont use total 8 megs of ram but saying that every widgets constantanly for sure needs 10+ megs and so 5 widgets it is 50+ megs is what I can't agree with.
I use Konfabulator 1.8.3, I dont know maybe previous versions were that ram hog but ver. 1.8.3 is fine for me.

I have 4 widgets running (Chrome Clock, Picture Frame, mini CPU, Platonic Solids) and they occupy from 20 to 30 megs (5-7+ megs per widget, not small but I can accept it).

I've never used DesktopX so I refrain to comment this product. I use AveDesk and Konfabulator. AveDesk uses less memory and has more features in tuning of widgets/desklets (though you can't run desklet by double click on it like in Konfabulator). But widgets on Konfabulator looks slicker, more eye catching (but, imho, AveDesk apearance is still solid).

Some desklets don't exist (or simply I can't find them) on both platforms. For instance I would like to see Picture Frame on AveDesk or Animation, Folder, Shortcut widgets on Konfabulator with opportunity to change PNGs and the size of the widget.

Skinner CerebroJD

YzDock uses very little memory and since it doesn't have some functions of OD I wouldn't risk to claim that YzDock is some kind of ram hog comparing to OD. When both apps uses so little ram, ram is not an argument in "who is better". As a dock I prefer YzDock (I don't like OD magnification and how it reacts on a mouse), but I use OD plus as a tab.
Reply #59 from WinCustomize Forums Top
None of these programs use that much RAM compared to stand alone programs.
Reply #60 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Article updated for DesktopX 3 and Konfabulator 2. 

Whether you use DesktopX or Konfabulator even Kapsules/Samurize/AveDesk, these programs can be truly useful. Widgets, by their nature, aren't just visually slick, they tend to use less memory than a full blown stand alone program.

The challenge is for the development communities to create widgets that demonstrate their usefulness.

Reply #61 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Brad, I love your products (paid subscriber, etc.) and I think this article is a fair and neutral comparison, but I have two hopefully helpful comments:

1) You should get into the habit of disclosing that Stardock is your company in your articles and posts. While I think you do an excellent job of presenting both sides, I think this disclosure is the "right thing to do." By not doing it, people in the know will assume you are playing favorites, just *because* you didn't mention it. But if you do, then they will be pleasantly surprised upon reading your article and find themselves thinking more favorably about you and your opinions, as well as your company and their products.

2) Most importantly. Konfabulator is eating your lunch for one reason and one reason only. They have clearly invested in a proper, A-list PR firm. If you have a PR firm, fire them. I suspect you don't and that you spend a lot of your own time and energy on these posts and articles as sort of a grass roots way of doing PR. That helped you get started, but you have real multiplatform competition now, and they're not stupid, preoccupied, or sluggish (as MS has been with their own GUI experiments). You have a superior product, but they are smartly paying a PR company, which is how all those articles get placed with all those magazines.* It will cost you $5,000-$10,000 per month for one of the good ones, like BWR. I know that this is real money to a small company like yours, but if you don't, you're going be betamax and they're going to be vhs. That's as simple as I can make it.

Best regards

*Yes, for those of you playing at home, all these PC/review magazines, etc. are funded by ad dollars, who have PR firms paid to call the magazines to "place" their products in whatever articles are coming up that they can get their products into. It is how the game is played so that you, the consumer, see articles about the "new amazing!" Konfabulator that never mention "what's that?" Desktop X. It's not that they place one over the other, but simply that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If the reviewer (who more than likely knows more about grammar than PCs) only hears about product A from the editor, and never hears about product B, then the article gets written with only product A in mind.
Reply #62 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I do disclose I work for Stardock.  Secondly, we do have a PR firm and our software gets a lot of coverage in print. If you look through most major publications, you will find we are covered extensively and this is due to the good work our PR firm does.

I also think you are vastly underestimating the amount of coverage they've gotten because of Apple's Dashboard.  Arlo, Konfab's developer, has gotten immense coverage by claiming Apple stole Dashboard from him.  I don't think Arlo's got some mega PR company, I think they just managed to milk their situation to the max.

It's also an issue of resources.  There is no evidence that there's even a significant market for these kinds of things. For all the coverage Konfabulator has gotten, their widgets typically only get a few thousand downloads.  That indicates there's probably an active user base of say 20,000 users.  That's simply too small to justify any massive PR effort.

I think gadgets are more the future anyway -- not widgets.  Widgets are neat but requiring users to have to download a 10 meg program, install it, run it in order to use some widget is not going to have the same appeal as a gadget - a true stand alone program.

Reply #63 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I also want to add that I don't think it's quite as cynical as you make it out to be.  PR firms, which we do have, are in the business of making magazines aware of a given products and trying to get them to review them.

But when one looks at the broad scope of print magazines, you'll find our software is covered pretty thoroughly.  In my view, Konfabulator has gotten immense coverage thanks to the Mac-coverage.  If you go onto say Google News and search on Konfabulator, you'll find that nearly all its coverage is from Mac or Dashboard-related coverage.  It's not like it's getting big reviews in say PC Magazine while they act as if we don't exist.

Reply #64 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Brad, my point was that I feel that you need to DE FACTO disclose it in every article you write that pertains to this subject and market. You disclose it occasionally, but not regularly, and certainly not in the article above where the CEO of a competitor is "reviewing" a competitor's product.

Note that you show a tendency to respond like this to whoever posts a contrary opinion, only to "come around" again in a few weeks time. This is dangerous for a CEO (but at least you eventually do come around, unlike, say the CEO of our country ). For example, you posted an "article"/"post" a while ago wherein you said (roughly) "I went to Konfabulator's site, and it isn't even in our league, and they're widgets are crappy looking." That position looked to be defensive posturing, because it was pretty clear to the professional graphics designers around here that you had no asthetic credibility on this issue. Konfabulator had much nicer, cleaner, easier, prettier, default widgets/gadgets. I'm glad you've listened over the past month and now recognize that those who said so in the first place were right in the first place.

On the PR issue. No one knows you or your products exist outside of "the scene". I show people my desktops and how I use your products and I say "stardock" and they say "who? what?" I point them to your site, and people download and buy your products. You are part of the WINDOWS market and your products make WINDOWS better...period. If people were getting exposed to your product in the A-list magazines you would be SWAMPED with orders and money, since Windows owns 95% of the world's desktops - the ones you could be improving. You'd have no problems with retail channels or box distribution issues, etc.

A few years ago, Stardock's products didn't work reliably, weren't particularly attractive, and were resource hogs. As such, I cancelled my first subscription. But today, with modern $500 machines more than capable of running your now very reliable products, you have a golden opportunity to exploit a lead that others are going to take advantage of if you don't. All someone has to do is create a viable enough alternative to your product line and then say yes when Microsoft (or some other Big Fish) comes calling. From that moment on, you're Netscape. I would prefer not to see that happen.

If your PR firm is not out of LA or NY, and isn't one of the big three, it's time you stepped up to the majors. That means a PR firm that can get you into Newsweek, Time, etc. etc. not just limited run, limited appeal, vertical targeted geek rags found only on the shelves of Fry's. Only you are reading those...or people who already are in the 99th percentile of techdom - like everyone here. You should be getting the COVERS of those rags instead of publishing your own press releases on your own sister web sites. And yes, you need to buy full color, full page ad(s) to keep those magazine wheels greased. It is indeed the way the game is played if you want the CONSUMERS (re: $$) to see what your products can do. A real PR firm (and/or real rep) would know this and be working with you on these issues.

This is just free advice from someone who's been working with the A-list for 20 years, simply because I believe in your company, people, and products. Feel free to ignore it, of course. It's your company and its future will rise and fall on your shoulders.

Thanks for listening.
Reply #65 from WinCustomize Forums Top

First off Exalpius - I challenge you to find an article by me where I criticize Konfabulator's widgets as being "crappy" looking or that it's "not in our league". I have NEVER criticizied Konfabulator's widgets.  I have stated over and over (including in this article) how nice Konfabulator's widgets look.  I've been a Konfabulator user -- a registered user -- since 1.0, long before there was a Windows version. 

Secondly, this is our site, the post says "Brad Wardell". People know who I am. And I can assure you that over on Konfabulator.com they do not announce in every post what their positions are.  I made clear in this discussion that I work for Stardock.  If someone else wants to write a comparison article, I'd be happy to feature it.  I can assure you that the Konfabulator forums have had plenty of comparisons made by Konfabulator's authors about the relative merits of both.

Thirdly, we just won PC Magazine's Editor's Chocie Award for Object Desktop LAST WEEK.  Our software has been covered in US News and World Report and last Fall I appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, and CNN.  We were in Time Magazine last Fall btw.  And WinCustomize.com gets over 3 million UNIQUE visitors each month. 

If you think our PR is so bad and the market so huge, perhaps you should start up your own company and compete with Stardock to put your theories into practice. But just because you aren't seeing where we appear doesn't mean it's not happening.  I would like to see front page articles on this stuff too.  It's not from a lack of effort or meeting in person with many of these people.  It's simply that not everyone shares yours and my enthusiasm for this kind of thing.

If Konfabulator had come out for Windows with no MacOS version, you'd never have heard of it. You'd have had a bunch of Windows users sniffing that they shouldn't have to pay $20 to $25 for something like.  I've looked at the coverage Konfabulator gets and it's nearly all because of the Mac version (Konfabulator vs. Dashboard for instance).

Reply #66 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have been part of this community for a long time now. I am also a full-time Macintosh user since graphics design is my day job and the Mac just is better suited to that. Konfabulator is a program that I have used extensively on my Powerbook since the early 1.x days of the program. I have first hand experience of seeing the Konfabulator authors make incredibly biased, false statements on their forums about other programs. Arlo Rose, for example, has repeatedly claimed how other programs "steal" from him even when it's pointed out that said programs predate his program. He has stated that DesktopX has ripped him off. He has stated Samurize rips him off. He has said things to the effect that before Konfabulator, there was nothing like it out anywhere which he knew was wrong. I've seen people politely and unpolitely correct him and then they delete the threads as if to hide the evidence.

This article is very objective. It's very unlikely any reasonable person would find it biased or unfair in any way. Perhaps the so-called media would have their own desktopx vs. konfabulator articles if the program's authors stopped claiming that there's nothing else like Konfabulator now or ever before.

As for Stardock's "PR". I've seen Stardock's products covered in a variety of computer-related sources. I've not seen them in the so-called "A-list" magazines but then again, I don't see anyone else in the customization world in there. It is rare to see even Microsoft Windows products mentioned at all. I don't think I've seen Konfabulator mentioned in a non-Mac related magazine either.
Reply #67 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The complaint that someone from Stardock wrote this on WinCustomize, a Stardock site seems odd. It's like going to say MSN and complaining about a Windows vs. Linux article. Except in this article, no conclusions are made. Brad never implies one is better than the other. He just spells out what they have in common and what's different and I've seen no one say that it's not accurate. If this article were appearing on PC Magazine and it was written by Brad that would be one thing. But it was written on a Stardock site by a Stardock person. And let's be fair here, if someone else would have written it, I don't think anyone would have issue since it casts both products in a positive light.
The PR thing strikes me as odd. Stardock so dominates the customization scene and has for what? 6 years now? that there are Stardock detractors who think Stardock dominates too much. I agree with others who think that Konfabulator got its attention because it started on the Macintosh. Other than some pretty widgets, there's nothing really special about Konfabualtor. DesktopX IMHO has good widgets but is also fun to create things with. I put my daughter's picture up on my desktop in like 3 minutes with DesktopX. Try that with Konfabulator or anything else without using a specialized widget.
Reply #68 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I've been writing articles on skinning and customization since the start. And indeed, I agree - there's a conflict of interest issue. What I try to do is draw no conclusions and try to point out where I work.

But I would much prefer if someone else wrote this stuff.  Why hasn't anyone else wrote a skinning primer for instance? Every year, I update the Skinner's primer and inevitably someone complains that I shouldn't be doing it. Fine. I'd be happy if someone else did it. But they don't.

At the end of the day, Konfabulator's success means Stardock's success.  Every person you get into customizing their computer is a new "potential" customer.  Look at the download counts.  Widgets just aren't that big of a deal.  objects and themes and skins still dominate.  So even if we took the widget feature out of DesktopX, it wouldn't make a huge difference to its popularity. People use it to customize their desktops.