Pixelfuckers

I have to say, finding one submission that stands out among the list on the front has been hard recently. This isn’t because of a lack of quality submissions, but quite the opposite; almost all the submissions to this site have been above average to excellent. This is a great thing to see and evidence that our little community here, is blossoming. I’m going to try to feature all those who have been nominated by the community in my last news post in chronological order, one at a time.

Off topic, but also wanted to let you know that the forums are progressing nicely. I put a good chunk of time into them yesterday and hope to get some quality time in with them tonight and all throughout the week. Thanks for your patience there!

Who should it be featured?

They are coming.

Good friend of the site and second place finisher (by a hair) in SSC ’10 MangoSango has just had his desktop featured at lifehacker.com!

Please consider visiting the post over at Lifehacker and showing your support not only for Sang but also for PF and quality desktop customization.

Also, Sang’s desk is the second of the SSC ’10 finalists to be featured on LH. I was lucky enough to have my desk chosen for a feature a few weeks back. Now if we could just get novoo to submit his SSC entry into the mix…

As of now the Gaia Teaser is online along with a shiny new teaser animation. You can think of the annual Gaia projects as customizing for climate change awareness. I’ve personally decided to donate the the third in my AON series to the project and I encourage everyone in our community to go over and donate some of your time and talent to the effort. Its a notable cause and they would love to have you on board!

SSC 10 was a huge success. Congratulations to the winners Nitzua and Mangosango, who will be receiving their prizes shortly! Their scores were separated by a mere .08. They’re well deserving, and set the bar high.

We had 25 submissions overall: 1 OS X, 4 Linux, and 20 of some breed of Windows. The scores were determined by an average of the user and admin ratings, and ranged from70.6 to 96. See this histogram for a nice smooth bell curve, peaking around 88.

We had a few first time submitters, and new visitors to the site this week were up 300% from the average. Traffic as a whole nearly doubled.

Thanks to all who participated! Here’s to next year.

Firstly, thank you to all of the participants and all of the staff who helped continue our tradition in grand form. We’ve had an excellent turnout with a lot of new faces and ground breaking screenshots.

At this point entry to the contest is closed; however, voting will continue until the 27th, 11:59 pm (EST). At that point we will tally up all the scores, rank them, and create a final chart showing everyone’s score and ranking.

I urge you to get out and rate the SSC 10 shots. The more ratings, the more accurate the scores will be!

To access a list of the of the entries simply go to Browse and in the first drop down box select SSC 10. This will bring up all the entries.

Looking forward to the final results and of course the awarding of the prizes! May the best shot win =)

The annual spring screenshot contest has thus far been a huge success, with new participants, solid shots and some innovation. We’re just a couple days away from SSC 10 finishing up, so make sure you get your submissions in and make the rounds with your comments and ratings. Again, it ends at 11:59pm EST (UST -0500) on June 24th.

Update We’re going to tally the votes on Sunday, June 27th. This way some of the later submissions get some votes and the ratings have more time to stabilize. We want to do our best to make sure the best man wins =)

1st Prize: $50 and a pixelfuckers tee shirt, hot from the printer.
2nd Prize: a pf tee

Replaced JS text tips with HTML5 text tips (for the rating box).

Also fixed the review moderation so any review with a rating can be moderated.

It’s on. We’re pushing the deadline to June 24th since we were a little slow on the formal announcement, so get your submissions and comments/ratings in before then (starting now!)

The rules: submit a screenshot to the newly created “SSC 10” category, and list proper notes, as always. The screenshots will be rated on overall aesthetic, cohesion and innovation. There aren’t separate categories for different OSes, but we have a pretty informed community who I’m sure will be factoring difficulty and limitations into their ratings. Scores will be determined by an average of the admin and user ratings. Votes will be tallied at 11:59pm EST (UST -0500) on June 24th.

1st Prize: $50 and a pixelfuckers tee shirt, hot from the printer.
2nd Prize: a pf tee

Be sure to browse the SSC 09 category for inspiration, spread the word, and let’s see your best!

Let’s have em’!

Also, announcements regarding SSC 10 prizes will be coming shortly.

Well with ssc ’10 around the corner and the influx of new users, I thought it would be nice to throw out some pointers for those just starting out and presenting those beautiful setups.

1. Authenticity

This is important. Don’t photoshop it, don’t fake it, It’s never okay (unless it’s a mock-up, and in that case that doesn’t really apply here). And although ripping is not so common anymore, if it ever was. It’s still important to point out, if not too obvious.

2. System monitoring

Rainmeter – Okay so like, rainmeter is the ish for stuff like monitoring your torrents and mail-checker configs, unnecessary monitoring is tasteless, if you’re on a pc where you need to watch resources, that’s completely understandable, but if you’re only using it because it looks fancy, then that’s a little pointless and redundant (using resources to monitor resources). Also it’s on too many lifehacker featured desktops which rarely impress.

Samurize – I hardly see it used anymore but it’s great if you’re not using an alternate shell and you’re still in xp, check bernds shots here nitzuas old shots back on custo for some great examples.

Geektool – (See issues with overcompensating on rainmeter^^^^^)

Conky – Linux users generally use conky the same way that I stated was unnecessary in rainmeter, but for some reason I find it to be more acceptable, I’m not the authority on what’s legit and what isn’t, I’m “just sayin”.
In short, don’t be too try too hard with rainmeter and geektool configs.

3. Usability

Don’t sacrifice too much usability for a sexy setup. Function and form should always be as balanced as possible. This should be fairly self explanatory.

4. Don’t be too trendy

Styles come and go, for some people they have their own style, and for others they may tend to change their desktop depending upon the most popular recent styles. For good ideas on original content, visit your favorite design sites and portfolios, or a site designed by your favorite studio, pick out elements from the site itself and build something around that to practice, for examples check out nuuvo’s older stuff, like monc which was based on monc.se

5. Consistency

Colors, fonts, icons, fonts, fonts, I often don’t follow my own advice but, fonts.
If your setup is a relaxed setup based on usability default app icons are generally acceptable, though slight modifications are even better.

6. A good wall a day keeps the critics away

Okay well not a wall a day, what I’m saying is use a nice wall

- photowalls are more and more common, and how could they not be? there are plenty of great ones out there. Just make sure it fits!

- patterns/tiles aren’t a bad thing, especially when paired with a nice gradient.

- don’t make it too busy, you don’t your windows to awkwardly blend in with your wall because of a wall that’s too noisy and busy.

- as much as you liked to look at attractive females, they don’t always belong on your desktop.

- contrast is a great thing, dark walls with a light visual style/guikit/gtk theme almost always work out.

7. Mac emulation

If you’re not on a mac, don’t make it look like a mac (too much). Influence is okay, but you can never really emulate the feeling of os x.

8. Browsers

Chrome – not much can be done here.

Firefox – custom stylish scripts and tiny menu are your best friends. Minimalism while maintaining usability is always great, It looks slick and gives you more screen real estate to see what’s in your browser.

Opera – I don’t know much about customization in opera, as I’ve never really been a huge fan of the browser myself, but the gperfection suite opera skin showed me that (attractive) customization in opera is completely possible, as well as mangos shots.

Maxthon – why would you do that to yourself?

9. Your OS is always observed

The operating system you’re on, and it’s capabilities and limitations in relation to the difficulty of changing things is almost always taken into account.

10. Don’t over-do it.

I know I’ve already said this about multiple things but it’s very important in my opinion, I love reading lifehacker as much as anyone but seeing their featured desktops often makes me snort with derision, a busy desktop doesn’t always mean aesthetically pleasing.

11. THINGS THAT GO WITHOUT SAYING

RESHACK EVERYTHING.
DON’T RIP.
DON’T RIP.
IT’S A 99

Feel free to contribute to things already stated in the comments below.

Hey All,

Sadly, there were no submissions to the PF Improve contest :(. I will continue to offer these sorts of contests in the future though and see if we ever get any takers!

Moving on – Its time for SSC 10, folks. Any objections to the same format as last year? SSC often changes formats, so I’d have no problem with switching things up if you guys like.

I’m also thinking of creating a creating a special section on PF that only showcases the winners of all past SSC’s. Maybe, maybe not. What do you think?

Just a heads up, today is the last day for the PF improve contest. If anyone has anything to submit, please get it in before the end of the day! If there’s anything to judge, we will start on that tomorrow.

As for my submission to the contest:

Fixed User page so all of a user’s submissions and reviews are paginated

Enabled comment and review moderation for moderators and admins

Added a rating scale clue to the rating box (first javascript on the site!)

Changed the submit review button to an edit button when a review is being edited as opposed to being created.

All these updates should be live, so if you see any bugs with them just post em’!

Cheers!

Just sayin’.

:-D