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Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the world!

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eclectic-tech
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by eclectic-tech »

Ah!... Memories of the "good ol' days" ...


"Nightmare" is an UNDERSTATEMENT!
Excellent point JSMorley, and lessons learned!
Thank goodness (meaning the RM Team) for rmskin packaging and restrictions
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Skinstr
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Skinstr »

jsmorley wrote:Just my opinion, but I am entirely opposed to allowing any upload other than a single .rmskin to any "Rainmeter" category submission. Any additional files, be they wallpapers, readme files, images, whatever, can be included with the .rmskin in the @Resources folder and a note made in the description that those files can be found there.

If you start allowing .zip files in skin submissions, then we run the risk of being back to the bad-ol-days on deviantART, when they allowed .zip files in Rainmeter. Guys will just post a .zip, and say "unzip this and run InstallMySkin.exe to install the skin.". When a new Rainmeter user who doesn't know any better does so, their computer starts sending Viagra advertisements to everyone in their email contact list. It then becomes a constant battle with the bad guys that I would not be interested participating in, and a reflection on Rainmeter itself. If a "skin" was to give a user a virus, who would they blame? The site they got it from? No...

This is the one of the reasons for .rmskin. It isn't just a convenience. It is also for the protection of our highly valued community of users. The Skin Installer with Rainmeter that installs the .rmskins can tell if a .rmskin has been modified in any way, and will refuse to install it.

When I say "bad-ol-days", I really mean it. It was just a nightmare of bitcoin-mining malware and system hijacking virus' for over a year until we were finally able to browbeat deviantART into only allowing .rmskin submissions.

Personally, I would just steer folks away from any site that hosted skins and allowed uploads of .zip or .exe or any other extension but .rmskin.
Thank you for a detailed explanation.

If that is the case, then certainly it makes no sense to allow anything other than a .rmskin for rainmeter skins category.

I will also try to come up with an intuitive way of linking several submissions together, so that one can easily recommend a wallpaper, or icon set etc. that he or some other user already submitted to the site.
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jsmorley
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by jsmorley »

Skinstr wrote:
Thank you for a detailed explanation.

If that is the case, then certainly it makes no sense to allow anything other than a .rmskin for rainmeter skins category.

I will also try to come up with an intuitive way of linking several submissions together, so that one can easily recommend a wallpaper, or icon set etc. that he or some other user already submitted to the site.
Up to you of course, but feels like it might be over-thinking it to me. Wallpapers and icons sets and the like are probably going to be included in the .rmskin so they are used in the skins and layouts. In the event that a user wants to additionally point folks to some other submission that is somehow related but not included, why can't they just put a link and an explanation in the description of the .rsmkin submission?
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Skinstr
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Skinstr »

jsmorley wrote: Up to you of course, but feels like it might be over-thinking it to me. Wallpapers and icons sets and the like are probably going to be included in the .rmskin so they are used in the skins and layouts. In the event that a user wants to additionally point folks to some other submission that is somehow related but not included, why can't they just put a link and an explanation in the description of the .rsmkin submission?
Yeah agreed.

Well maybe keep it simple for the start and then see how things roll out and wait for community feedback.
FlyingHyrax
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by FlyingHyrax »

Skinstr wrote: ...
I will also try to come up with an intuitive way of linking several submissions together, so that one can easily recommend a wallpaper, or icon set etc. that he or some other user already submitted to the site.
I rather like this idea. I have no idea how it would be implemented in the backend, and you might not want to try for it in 1.0, but it's interesting. It could be used for large "total conversion" suites that include skins for multiple pieces of software, to split a large Rainmeter skin suite up into optional parts (like Omnimo expansion packs), or for skin compilations where a user has pulled skins by many authors into a single cohesive setup. The last case is quite common, but when a third party distributes skin compilations you often end up with broken configurations, outdated versions of skins, or duplicate installations.

At one level there isn't much benefit over just keeping links in a description, but the integration with the site could be quite nice. It would be easier for authors to maintain (not having to keep links in descriptions in sync across several submissions) and users could view all the pieces on a single page with the option to download all/some of them at once. There could maybe be a way to browse just third party compilations, and/or see all the compilations that a submission is included in.

Which all sounds awesome but rather complicated.
Flying Hyrax on DeviantArt
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Skinstr
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Skinstr »

Thanks, I'll let you guys know what I come up with.
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Skinstr
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Skinstr »

Little sneak peek of the submit form: http://i.imgur.com/nLcToFu.png

Image/attachment editing is all done live via AJAX (with upload progress), so no hit'n miss uploading and guessing what uploaded etc.

Each image uploaded is shown as a thumbnail which has its edit modal for tagging certain image parts, as well as a 'captions' field which will, if not empty, be shown on the image in form of a description.

I decided to go with the 1mb per image, 15mb per attachment restrictions, enough for starters and can be tweaked later based on community feedback.

Everything related to submission/editing is already functional, today I'm working on the profile editing interface and if everything goes as planned, I am hoping to contact those interested in beta testing the site next week.
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Active Colors
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Active Colors »

Looks neat. Minimal yet productive. I like it.
However 1 mb I guess is not enough since many folks like making big previews. 3 mb should be enough.
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Skinstr
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Re: Skinstr - Share your creations with the rest of the worl

Post by Skinstr »

Active Colors wrote:Looks neat. Minimal yet productive. I like it.
However 1 mb I guess is not enough since many folks like making big previews. 3 mb should be enough.
Thanks, I'll increase it.

I have been working on the filtering system today, aim is for it to be simple but powerful enough to browse only what you want.

This is how it currently looks: http://i.imgur.com/Cu6nasA.png

It supports both 'positive' and 'negative' terms (represented by the checkbox state) meaning one can not only search for what he wants to see, he can also remove what he doesn't.

It's of course done via AJAX (results update when "Update" button is clicked on either of the boxes) and should be quite fast.

Feedback welcome.