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Graphics Software

Themes.org Reborn at Freshmeat 148

Posted by timothy from the stick-candy-in-your-eye dept.
GSpot writes: "While doing my weekly surf to see if there has been any change in one of my favorite websites, themes.org is being redirected to themes.freshmeat.net and seemingly has been reborn yet again. The previous incarnation had a dreadful interface that was difficult to navigate and when it worked it was painfully sssssllllllooooowwwww. The current version is upon a first impression a much more pleasant experience. I plan on visiting often." Mirotrem points out this brief history of themes.org running on the site (written by Chris D.), detailing the moves the site has made to this point. (Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Software umbrella better known as the Sinister Andover Keiretsu.)
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Themes.org Reborn at Freshmeat More

Themes.org Reborn at Freshmeat

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  • Interface blew chunks. (Score:3, Funny)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @07:48PM (#3454492) Homepage
    The previous incarnation had a dreadful interface that was difficult to navigate and when it worked it was painfully sssssllllllooooowwwww.

    What, didn't like "Fetching Rover", or voting with marbles? How about The Scooter? Scooter? WTF?

    To think this was a site to make "X Purty" - MS Bob is laughing at us from the grave.

  • VA Linux? What's that? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joseph Vigneau ( 514 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @07:50PM (#3454499)
    (Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Linux umbrella better known as the Sinister Andover Keiretsu.)


    Hey, I thought the company was called VA Software [vasoftware.com]...

  • Doesn't look good (Score:1, Insightful)

    by datastew ( 529152 )
    Self-serving story and self-serving poll both on the front page. Although this may be "News for Nerds," I would rather not have Themes.org overkill. Then again, maybe its a slow day.

  • it sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) <MONET minus painter> on Thursday May 02, 2002 @07:51PM (#3454505) Journal
    What the hell was wrong with the old themes.org, not the previous one(what a disaster), but the one before? It was beautiful, each section had it's own theme(fitting, being a theme site), and in each section there were sub-categories, adult, people, anime, games, etc.. Now it's had two overhauls and has gained absolutely nothing from this. And where is the X resources section? Backgrounds, icons, tiles etc.? I'm just very sad, themes.org used to be an excellent site, the best themes site ever. Now it's just... blah. ;-(
    • I tried using themes.org last week for the first time and found it very unusable. I think themes.freshmeat.net is a big improvement.
      I am a little concerned about the homogenization of the OSDN network...themes.org looks identical to freshmeat.net, but it is a better interface.

      • Re:it sucks (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MrHat ( 102062 )
        I think he means the old old themes.org. It recently went through a very lengthly redesign in which all of the previously autonomous sites were brought into one giant database-driven site.

        I liked a few of its layout elements and iconic decorations, but the site had several structural defects that made it next to impossible to find anything in a reasonable amount of time.
      • I second the motion that sites on the OSDN network are punishing to look at. While Sourceforge does provide developers with some handy tools, its site completely defeats any project's ability to promote itself.

        Just because you can pump data out of a database doesn't mean you have to paste it onto a web page. It makes me recollect the Microsoft exec who tried to defend their Smart Tags travesty a few months back by saying that the majority of web sites were "underlinked." Hah!

    • Re:it sucks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rnturn ( 11092 )
      ``What the hell was wrong with the old themes.org, not the previous one(what a disaster), but the one before?''

      There wasn't anything wrong with it that the consultant that was hired -- probably with instructions to `clean it up a bit' -- didn't manage to make worse. On the plus side, I'll bet their bandwidth charges dropped after the facelifts.

      I tried to download a theme several times since those overhauls. What a joke. Click here and find yourself someplace else that doesn't seem to result in a theme being downloaded. Truly was one for the ``Interface Hall of Shame''.

      ``And where is the X resources section?''

      Right. Guess you're not supposed to know or care about those any more. In the headlong dash to become another Windows, both Gnome, KDE (especially KDE) and others have forgotten a little something. Is it just me or do most of the so-called themes that I see for KDE look very much like the ``Look! You can change the color of the window title bar and, voila, a new theme!'' crud that passes for a `theme' under Windows.

      And please... if the themes site is going to be usable again, here's a radical idea: howzabout filling it with some themes that actually make the interface usable instead of merely looking like promos for the latest cult movie or video game.

      • here's a radical idea: howzabout you creating a theme that actually makes the interface useable and putting it up for all of us on themes.freshmeat.org?

        personally, I mostly stick with the default KDE theme. a few changes to the number of desktops and the taskbar, and it's all setup. pretty useable to me.
        • ``howzabout you creating a theme''

          Gosh sorry. I looked for any readable documentation as to how one might do that for most of the desktops (KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment) and haven't found anything useful (I have found a few documents that were about as useless as one could imagine). Apparently I'm supposed to pour over all the C sources to figure out all the oddball variables that have to get set to make a decent theme. Then spend endless hours fiddling with all those settings which seem to have all sorts of interrelations that you don't find out about until you change one. Who has that kind of time?

          My main beef with the themes is that, based on what I was seeing posted, 99% of them must have been deviced by people who think that black backgrounds on web pages are still k00l. `Dark this', `Dark that', `My Organic Theme', etc. and not one of them that anyone could stand to use for more than an evening without straining their eyesight. IMHO, the vast majority of them are a waste of iron oxide. FYI: I, too, have wound up sticking with mostly stock KDE... and found it about as aesthetically pleasing as Windows [gag]. The hell of it is that, at least under Windows if I increase the title bar font size I don't have to finagle some obscure variable in a file somewhere to make the title bar large enough to display the title without clipping (which happens too often with KDE).

          Looks like I'm stuck switching wallpapers and titlebar colors for now.

    • I can't comment on the move and X resources and all. But I found the last version VERY tedious to manage. I couldn't figure it out at -all-. I never figured out how to just get a real list of all themes or other items...
    • Topic::Desktop Environment::Theme Resources

      http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/973/?topic_id =9 73

      This is because someone actually wrote in to suggest/request this, instead of simply complaining about it on Slashdot. :)

  • Bah, bring back the old themes.org (Score:3, Funny)

    by G00F ( 241765 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @07:52PM (#3454507) Homepage
    What was wrong with the old themes.org? sure, do a rewrite, but keep it basicaly the same. Right now, I don't liek the freshmeat one for several reasons, 1, opening windows and taking away broswer compoments, like url bar?? grrr

    Ya ya, I can easily enough get arround that. But still, what was wrong with the old site? It was painfully obvious no one liked the new, why couldn't they just reverted and used some brains on how to make that one better.
  • I've been missing the old, active, vibrant themes.org since it was hacked (last summer?). This is fantastic news. Can't wait for all the themes and wallpaper goodness to come!

    • ``I've been missing the old, active, vibrant themes.org since it was hacked (last summer?).''

      You know? I think you've hit upon the reason that the previous site was so unusable: it had been defaced.

  • Sunshine in a bag [sunshineinabag.co.uk] is a new theme site specifically for Gnome-related themes (GTK, GTK2, sawfish, metathemes, etc.)

    There is also kde-look.org [kde-look.org] for all of your KDE theme needs. For those who use non-KDE desktops, still check it out for an excellent collection of wallpapers, many of which are very penguin-centric.

  • the poll was advertising :)
  • themes.org
    themes.freshmeat.net
    Mirotrem
    brief history of themes.org
    Sinister Andover Keiretsu
    More on Graphics
    Also by timothy

    And I thought they know themes.org redirects to themes.freshmeat.net. Please correct the mistake. :P

    • Re:Related Links (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MrHat ( 102062 )
      To the Slashcode people:

      I've always wondered this, so I'm just going to ask. Why is that box there? Does it really serve a purpose to repeat links directly to the right of the story? Perhaps this is just a Tacoism that was never taken out back and shot?

      If the box has to stay there, could we use the anchor tag's title attribute for the text instead of the contents of the link? At least that way, decently marked-up articles can put the box to good use.

      Just curious, not trolling. I'm waaay over the cap, so <moonites>moderating... is useless</moonites>.

  • Why bother. Seriously. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @07:58PM (#3454541) Homepage


    flog(if(horse=="dead")then return horse);

    Some alternatives to "Themes.org" are Deskmod [deskmod.com], Skinz [skinz.org], my own site, System 26 [system26.com], and numerous other sites in the skinning community. They all accept and support Linux windowmanager themes, as well as KDE and GNOME themes, and have been around for quite a while now.

    Cheers,

    • Re:Why bother. Seriously. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Damn, you are one arrogant bitch!
      Nice stuff tho.
    • So true. After two years of lameness, delays, and just plain mismanagement t.o. doesn't deserve our respect or our patronage.

      What irks me is the year it took to get a suck-ass, painfully slow replacement online and then they put the original one back online anyway at classic.themes.org. WTF? Why didn't you do that like a year ago? So it's got some security issues - just fix them and get it back online.

      When you set yourself up as *THE* place for anything in the OpenSource community you are making a commitment to the community that should not be taken lightly. You have a responsibility to either honour your agreement, or pass it off to someone who will.

      The managers of t.o. did neither and should be ashamed of themselves for taking so long. What's worse is that the person responsible (Chris DiBona) has never taken responsibility for the mess or even appologized, just offered 'sometime real soon now' platitudes and lame excuses.

      One of the coments on themes.freshmeat.net was <paraphrase>So why the hell didn't you do this a year and half ago?</paraphrase>. I couldn't agree more.

    • Dude, I am not sure what language you're using, but I think if horse=="alive" you're gonna core. You might want to rethink your logic.
    • Why bother? themes.freshmeat.net has over 2500 windowmaker themes. your site has... i can't tell wtf your site has! the other two you mentioned looked like they might be remotely navigable, i might look deeper into them. but seriously, what does system 26 offer? i saw a couple images and a single KDE theme before i got fed up with your site.

  • Mac OS themes (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What i would like to see:

    macos.themes.org
    macosx.themes.org

    Pity that apple's managed to disperse all work on reverse-engineering their themes format, so we won't see anything like that. Sosumi has been a lifesaver and i'm so happy with it, but it would be nice to have a couple of choices (beyond "look! it's aqua, but with recolored Close Window widgets! dammit, i'm looking for themes because *i don't like aqua and it hurts my eyes*, why would i want an ugly recolored version?), and it would definitely be nice to have a central repository that functions the way the old Mac Themes Archive used to.

    I guess now that winxp also has a themes architecture, and that's been reverse-engineered with a bit more clarity than the macos themes architecture, you could make a winxp.themes.org too, but i don't really care about winxp, so oh well :)

    Basically, this isn't too ontopic, but i'm just bringing this up because i would like to see a thread on trying to merge the macos/winxp and UNIX themes community, or at least just tap to see if there's been any recent news on the subject of Mac OS X themes, any new work on tools or the ongoing reverse-engineering of extras.rsrc or any themes developed recently at all. And this seems like a relatively germane forum to bring up the issue in. (Of course, i'm sure anyone with real information will keep quiet, to ensure The Man isn't listening..)

    Does anyone think it would be a worthwhile project to try to create one uniform format for themes containing all possible theme-related information, and then create a tool capable of converting that one uniform format into a theme for GTK or Enlightenment or Wmaker or Mac OS or whatever your system has installed, throwing out the information that's more complex than your theme system can handle? It would be a little more work to make such a theme system, but it would surely be less work than duplicating ALL those theme-making projects.. and someone could just develop this one mega-theme and distribute that, with no porting to take place.

    Anyone have any thoughts?

    Thanks :)
  • If you want to revamp a site, making it faster and prettier, more power to you! But why would you throw the site into another domain, instead of just keeping the known, loved and trusted host/domainname? Are we perhaps becoming too consolidation-obsessed?
    • Actually, I would respectfully disagree. Window manager themes are becoming more and more complex which leads to many revisions of said theme. I believe that the setup for freshmeat would be perfect to track different revisions and releases. Plus, in this period of economic downturn and unrest, companies are spread pretty thin in the employee department. This leads to a lack of available web programmers to do the job. I am just glad to just have it back.

      I see your point, but I don't believe they just threw it there. They are actually using that site's code base which makes this different....
      • Point very well taken, thank you.

      • I believe that the setup for freshmeat would be perfect to track different revisions and releases. Plus, in this period of economic downturn and unrest, companies are spread pretty thin in the employee department. This leads to a lack of available web programmers to do the job.

        And that requires them to be on freshmeat's domain how? I'm sorry, but the original poster was asking why they redirect to a site on freshmeat.net rather than just staying at themes.org. I agree that the current freshmeat codebase (which in turn was originally adapted from sourceforge) is a good fit for themes, but that doesn't mean that they can't use that codebase on their own domain, rather than going over to freshmeat.net.


    • 26d6173bbc9af7cfdb7ce60600e6aded518bfe51acca9a84ad 9da92b9735564f5905b7e16ea883431b12806d150c2ba2a174

      I'm just wondering. How the heck do I decode that?
  • On a related subject: there used to be a great site at http://torment.ntr.net/xdm/ that had all kinds of cool xdm themes - really slick, beautiful stuff. Typically these themes were full-screen background images, paired with a modified xdm that was transparent, so that the login text appear to float over the image. Some themes also used a transparent xconsole positioned over an appropriate part of the background image. The themes were very impressive.

    But one day, before I got the chance to download some themes, the site disappeared... hard drive crash or something cratered it. Since then I've looked for a mirror, or similar themes, with no luck. There was an xdm section at themes.org, but it didn't have anything interesting in it. I've come across some versions of xdm like xdm-photo, but never full themes.

    Am I looking in the wrong places? Does anybody know of a mirror of the old torment site hiding on the net somewhere? Does anybody have any of the themes from torment to upload to themes.freshmeat? I'd really like to add some spice to my login screen.

    --Jim

    • Try this other? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      XDM at house.cx [house.cx] They have docs and some themes, like those you talk about with things placed in funny areas (B5 ones, for example).

  • Why? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People keep complaining "i want the older design back".. some people like the new one. I think it's kind of pretty, but i miss the sorted "sections" (anime scifi etc)

    Why can't they just offer both? Both the new design and the old design, i mean. If you have a properly abstract database system, which i assume these people do, it should be relatively easy to do. Hell, this is being done by the Blockstackers people, go find Nate and have him explain how he did the themeing in the Everything2.com web engine. His system is clever, abstract, and doesn't hurt your functionality at all. Shouldn't one of the main advantages of database-backed websites be that you can offer a range of options of frontends to the same content to your viewers?

    Can't we just have themes for themes.org?

    What's the big fight over?
  • I'm all for some good themes for Linux, as it is my only OS that I use exclusively on my box for about two months, after getting fed up with windows.

    But browsing through some theme sites, like kde-look.org, the most downloaded and better rated themes are OSX or Windows look-alikes... I want a good looking GUI, not a clone of some other GUI. For that I might as well have stayed with Windows, or sold my PC and bought a Mac.

    I never cease to stop admiring the keramik kde style. It's simple, good looking and best of all, original...

    I hope that the revived themes.org has themes with all the things I want to see in a theme.

    Of course, IMHO...

  • OSX Themes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mlknowle ( 175506 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @08:17PM (#3454593) Homepage Journal
    How about carrying themes for Apple's Mac OS X? Expanding the platform reach is never a bad thing...

  • Themes.freshmeat.org (Score:1, Insightful)

    by rawg ( 23000 )
    2002-04-16 03:42:18 themes.freshmeat.net (articles,news) (rejected)

    I submited this news a few weeks ago, but I guess I was too quick on the gun.

    The new site is way way way way way way better though. Good job!

  • I for one (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @08:28PM (#3454616) Journal
    am glad they finally did something with the garbage heap that t.o had become. I remember back in the day when t.o was a very neat place with some talented people running the show. Then they turned into something really, really, bad....(worse than the OLD fat, dieing on the toilet Elvis). Freshmeat has always been cool --- thanks to the Freshmeat team. And to the people that let t.o die in the first place --- what rock are you all under? The aquisition by OSDN should have made you better -- not killed you. But at least it probably sold a few panner ads for the rubbernecks that would drive by to look at the carnage.

  • The rating schema would have been great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DocSnyder ( 10755 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @08:28PM (#3454617)
    A lot of theme creators were motivated to make really good themes, and many of the themes-org-since-last-autumn submissions were actually very artful and usable.

    Yet after some time, it was no longer a secret that only one person - the "reviewer" - set the marble rating according to his or her taste. The reviewer who constantly rated my themes didn't like my style (as it differed quite a bit from his design), so I didn't have any chance to get more than 4, at maximum 6 out of 10 marbles. Other submissions which more or less imitated a reviewer's style got 8, 9 or even 10 marbles even if they were at most average or a remake of a former theme.

    Very soon the number of daily submissions decreased significantly, and many people complained about the unfair rating system. I made a few more themes even before themes.org became unusable but refused to submit them before the reviewing system gets redesigned.

  • I'm just glad the fucking "marbles" rating scheme is gone. How incredibly lame. Ooooooooh! I've got SEVEN marbles!

    Not to mention the petty little ratings wars that it spawned.

    Nothing like slashdot, of course ;)

  • VA has done pretty damn well.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchaseNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday May 02, 2002 @08:47PM (#3454680) Journal

    > Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Software umbrella

    I know this was said in jest but it kinda struck me. For news, themes, and software these are three fantastic sites. I know we all lamented when /. fell under the control of a corporation but altogether things have worked out quite well. Although /. can't be said to be identical to when it was privately owned, it sure hasn't been forced to make too many concessions. I think the staff at Slashdot, Freshmeat, Themes.org, and even VA Software deserve an honest "thank-you". Sappy I know, but well-earned.

  • Great but.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tutal ( 512222 )
    It's been some time since Slashcode 2.25 has come out (which has the ability to import themes), yet I have not found any slash themes. It might be a good idea to add a themes section to freshmeat (or maybe sorceforge, or even on the slashcode page).
  • Browsing the site, I saw several Aqua-esque themes for Window Maker. How long until Apple decides to bully them into censoring these images? [slashdot.org]

  • A poll and a spot on the frontpage... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by not_cub ( 133206 ) <slashdot-replies&edparcell,com> on Thursday May 02, 2002 @09:05PM (#3454725) Homepage
    ... Wow, this must be really important news for nerds.

    You know, when your masters at VA tell you to get some eyeballs on another of their sites, you might want to communicate and decide who is going to do it, rather than all rushing off to plaster it all over slashdot.

    not_cub

  • Slashdot Slashdotted by Slashdot. Since FM sits in the same cage as /., and slashdot slashdotted fresmeat, might the traffic of everyone whacking freshmeat slow slashdot down? A self-slashdotting.

    Evidently not yet. If it does, well, see you at Exodus!

    I know it won't happen with their feed, but it would be worth seeing. I'm waiting for those guys doing their build out in the adjoining cage to whack something and forever be pariahs for causing the Great Blackout of '02.

  • I just checked what was changed on the site really quickly, but found it great. I used to wait for a long time for the homepage to load, now on FM it was loadead in seconds. I just need to make sure the themes can be downloaded and not be 4k all of them.
  • I feel like the only person on the planet who actually liked the themes.org that was born post-crack. Sure, it had lots of images on the site but that's why browser cache (or better still, caching proxy servers) exist! It takes two or three pages and then the site is quite snappy and looked good.
    Sure, there were still problems but those problems were never going to be fixed esp. considering the extreme lack of communication from OSDN with the staff, so long as the rumours of them being usurped still floated.
    What I found the biggest problem with that site was, was it was updated very slowly and I think because it took so long before it came back, the people creating the themes had given up and found other sites like deviantart.com, skinz.org, customize.org, and so forth. So there was little content, rarely being posted, and people wonder why it sucked?

    The new freshmeat version bugs me more than any previous incarnation of themes.org. Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog up the already over-clogged apps site. If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3" picture that's only marginally more viewable than the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button - BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many other pages you have open in other tabs.
    On the bright side its nice they were able to reuse the freshmeat code for this purpose, its a testament to the good design and work Scoop has put in over these many years.
    • > Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog
      > up the already over-clogged apps site.

      If you want to see software without themes, use software.freshmeat.net. For just Palm stuff, use palm.freshmeat.net, etc.

      >If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3"
      >picture that's only marginally more viewable than
      >the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button -
      > BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many
      > other pages you have open in other tabs.

      I have no idea what you mean here. I'm using Mozilla 1.0RC1, and I don't have any problems with the close link. Also, all of our screenshots are sized to 640x480. At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.

      This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.

      • It looks great, Autechre. Given the amount of time I watched Liedra enter themes I feel almost as pleased about the launch as you should be. :)
      • At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.
        This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.

        Well I sent an e-mail, but i'm impatient so.. =)

        Will you (in some time and place) add a 'X resources' tree? Like icons, fonts, cursors (yeah, there's my own horse, look my soi.)..
      • And if you want to see everything BUT themes on the front page of freshmeat, can you go to everything-but-the-themes.freshmeat.net ?
        This problem has a nasty scalability issue ;)

        As for screenshots, your post there is larger than the screenshots are (for me) by 1/4-1/3rd. It's just too small, and many of the screenshots I've seen have been extremely fuzzy - hence my comment that they're not much better than the thumbnail.
        The Mozilla issue I'm not sure what the cause is, I just suspect that the javascript on the close button is assuming a one-web-page-per-mozilla-window-instance thing which isn't true for me using tabbed browsing - I had 6 tabs open and pressing the close button blasted away Mozilla. Not a segfault, it was a clean close of the application (rather than simply removing that tab and leaving me with the rest of my work up ;)

        My third complaint is that its not easy to tell at a glance what theme belongs to what application from the front page, there's some tiny text under it with an extremely long path pointing out which section, but IMHO it should be up there with the title of the theme. Just a UI thing, and IMHO.

        Anyway I wish the site good fortune, it looks like there's already been more themes posted in these few days than the old t.o had in the months after it came back from the crack! Nice work.

  • E17 is coming, watch out Microsoft & Apple (Score:4, Informative)

    by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @09:24PM (#3454778) Homepage Journal

    E17 is improving drastically.

    I think you all should check out a few of these pictures

    http://desktopian.org/e17/screenshots/

    Theres an example of themes. I'm Glad Themes.org is back, now we have a place to show off our linux desktops and help kill the whole "Linux is hard to use" myth.

    Its hard to configure, but its easy to install and use, it DOES have a GUI, and the GUI is better than XP (even if its alittle bit slower due to xfree)

  • Left out on history (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Monkeyman334 ( 205694 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @09:36PM (#3454807)
    What I don't get is why OSDN decided to cuts its *volunteer* staff. First, developing for themes.org was a pain as it was. They had a VPN and wouldn't give access to new comers, even though I feel I'm a part of the community enough to be trusted. But if that wasn't enough, they decided to cut their *volunteer* staff. Which included developers and maintainers. They might start asking for volunteers again, but a lot of the staff I talked to were a little bit bitter and I doubt they will be rejoining. So Chris (who seemed like a nice guy the couple times I talked to him) decided to develop it on his own, which took months even though it seems he's just using the freshmeat code.

    I think one of the mistakes was getting a company to set the deadlines. There was an occassion "No later than this" date, but since it was all volunteer, people wouldn't make long decisions on whether to go out a saturday or develop all night for nothing. So I guess the choices were "Cut the staff", "Pay the staff", or "Stop letting the company make the deadlines". I guess they chose 1 and 3.

    I didn't spend much time on the project, but kept an ear out on things, and never got an explaination for this. So I would like to know, why the staff was cut?

    • Re:Left out on history (Score:2, Informative)

      by Aaton ( 216314 )
      First, developing for themes.org was a pain as it was. They had a VPN and wouldn't give access to new comers, even though I feel I'm a part of the community enough to be trusted.

      The way we have the setup here is nothing like what VA had when t.o. was on the West coast. No shell servers or public spaces. Also after the defacement of t.o. and all the r00ted systems on the West coast there was just no way the company would set up another shell's box for t.o. Plain and simple, access had to be restricted.

      So Chris (who seemed like a nice guy the couple times I talked to him) decided to develop it on his own, which took months even though it seems he's just using the freshmeat code.

      Actually he did work on his own version (he showed it to me once) but as time went on there were decission made about how many different backends people/company wanted to support. A good number of OSDN site have been moving over to uses either slashcode or freshmeat code bases...

      So I would like to know, why the staff was cut?

      You and me both. I don't know the whole story but I have never been one to follow company politics and such things... I just disable accounts when told to.

      -- Yazz (one of the OSDN BOFH's)

  • attitude adj. please (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @09:43PM (#3454840) Homepage Journal
    Freshmeat, Themes.org, and Slashdot are all part of the world-controlling conspiracy under the VA Software umbrella better known as the Sinister Andover Keiretsu

    Now, I'm not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but is the sarcasm really necessary? It is common practice for journalists to acknowledge up front any potential conflicts of interest, just so that the reader is on the right page. Slashdot readers were right to point this out, and whining about it is frankly not appropriate. You do claim to be real journalists every now and again, so let's stop acting like we're in kindergarten, hm?

  • and if you have trouble downloading several themes like i did then you can always get your themes the fastest way possible with the link below.

    http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/mirrors/themes.o rg /

  • Why not? (Score:3)

    by Polo ( 30659 ) on Thursday May 02, 2002 @10:14PM (#3454953) Homepage

    I remember when looking at the old themes.org that I would look at a lot of themes, but have to download each one individually. It was such a pain that I just gave up on the site. Not that I don't want to see the credits of who created the theme and the description, and seek out just the right theme, but it became tedious to implement them. It would have been great to check out all the themes, then download them all in one go.

    Why doesn't someone just package up all these themes and add them to a distribution? I think it would make Linux really popular with people if there was LOTS of customization you could do to your computer out-of-the box. I mean, really put EVERY theme in, and EVERY screen saver and EVERY splash screen. Or maybe every one that passed a simple published QA process.
  • It went back to the site layout that works and doesn't suck as opposed to the disney-like suck based one that never actually worked correctly. Good move themes.org!
  • I took a look at a few dozen themes, including the "most popular". My god there are some no talent people putting this crap together! Someone please take away their theme editors before they repeat their crimes!

    Here's a very simple formula you must learn:

    programmer/geek != artistic talent

    Just so you don't think I am all negative. There were a few very nicely done themes, but the majority are utter crap or a clone with the basic colour changed.

    • Re:Some butt ugly themes (Score:3, Informative)

      by psavo ( 162634 )
      I took a look at a few dozen themes, including the "most popular". My god there are some no talent people putting this crap together! Someone please take away their theme editors before they repeat their crimes!
      Here's a very simple formula you must learn:
      programmer/geek != artistic talent
      Just so you don't think I am all negative. There were a few very nicely done themes, but the majority are utter crap or a clone with the basic colour changed.
      In one word: Bull!

      I for one don't always use themes to make things 'candy'. They are my primary way to customize my desktop to make what I want to do. If I find that I use some functionality of WM, I add it as a button to toolbar, If I find something annoying, I remove it. If I find that my eyes become restless with colors, I change them to less annoying.
      So repeat after me: Themeing is not only eyecandy, and programmer/geek can design WAY more functional theme than any s.c. artist.

  • blah (Score:2)

    by dwlemon ( 11672 )
    I stopped visiting t.o when other t.o users would post screenshots of their IRC sessions while talking smack about my themes.

    Yeah, I'm bullied easily. But there is such a thing as constructive criticism.

  • Some "history", DiBona.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Friday May 03, 2002 @01:04AM (#3455464) Homepage


    Rather nice of Chris DiBona to neglect the people who busted their ass behind the scenes for most of Themes.org's useable lifespan (1998-2000) in his recent "history of Themes.org" article.

    What about the guys who were administering wm.t.o, bb.t.o. e.t.o, kde.t.o, and other subsites? Did these sites run themselves, Chris?

    For the record, I used to be one of the site maintainers during t.o's heyday. In the year and a half I contributed, DiBona was never involved in any aspect of development process, did none of the planning, none of the maintenance, none of the administration, and none of the backend coding. DiBona had nothing to do with t.o's success back then, so don't let him try and take credit for other people's work. (Gee, that sounds familliar, doesnt it?) There were alot of people who poured enormous amounts of time and energy into that project who never recieved even a passing acknowledgement from anyone at VA. In short, VA turned their back on them.

    Be sure to add that lovely pattern neglect to your "history", Chris.

    • This is so true.

      Credit is a big part of any free software project. Why do you think t.o has been down for a year and a half? Why does everyone like the "old" t.o section better than the redesign? Because all of the people willing to work for free got burned.
  • i found it pretty weird that the home link in the main navbar on the top links to freshmeat.net, while all other links go to some variation of themes.freshmeat.net. if it's a themes site, shouldn't the home link go to themes.freshmeat.net?
  • The themes are very nice. Really. Some look really good. But why are all themes basically the same? It's a little different background, a little different colour on the windows, but basically the same.
    Is it at all possible to create a theme that doesn't look like a variation of the MS-Windows-Experience(tm)?
    Perhaps I'm way off here, perhaps themes can only change these things?

    How about windowmanagers then? Are there any innovative windowmanagers out there? I heard someone talk about a windowmanager that looked more or less like a timeline.

    I also heard of/dreamt of a desktop which had a focus point in the middle and documents "floating" away from them the older they got. Now that would be something new and innovative.

    .haeger
  • I was trying to look at some GTK themes, but the screenshots provided have been scaled down and look blurred. That sucks. To watch a GTK one has to look close, to the pixel level!

    If they're trying to save bandwidth, it's better to crop the images instead of scaling.

  • Just wanted to say that the recent repetative statements that this or that site belong to OSDN combined with statements that are supposed to be funny is getting old quick.

    I could see saying 'such-in-such is a member OSDN' and leaving it at that. But constantly reminding us that that Slashdot is also, and so are this that and the other isn't necessary. We know of OSDN, and we know what sites are a part of OSDN... so please stop going to such lengths to tell us.

    *TheDarb

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