Fool for the City
A look inside "Shell Extension City"
by Kenray

There are a lot of sites out there. There are so many, that you can even find a great number of sites pertaining to the comparatively small niche activity of skinning.
Many of the sites out there are great, and some just suck.
So, it is always a great joy when you run across a great site.
Especially if that site is just so doggone good that you have to go back to it ...
day after day after day...

Just such a site is Robert Helmer's "Shell Extension City".

I first ran across it thanks to our beloved editor, Jumbles, who recommended it.
Now, mind you, I am not a programmer. I am just a fixated artist who likes to customize the way things look on the desktop. But....

I was overwhelmed by my first visit to SEC. But overjoyed at the same time. Much of what was available there was "over my head" programming stuff. But there was a whole lot that was directly related to my personal interest in skinning.

Lo and behold, I quickly learned that the content at SEC was updated daily, and there were so many surprises coming every 24 hours, that I put a special icon on top of my browser for SEC, so I wouldn't forget for even a single day...lest something really cool slip past me...

I asked Bob how he got started with his online metropolis:

" I've been obsessed with PC's since about 1990," he answered,"and I loved, most of all; tweaking systems. It's kind of the greatest computer game. It's much
more time consuming, but also more gratifying.
At any rate, I loved system utilities. Used to buy all the collections for sale in the backs of computer magazines. Heh heh---10 floppy disks full for $20. And there was this thing called PSL, which would send you 20 or 30 floppies full of shareware each
month. I was also a member of local users groups, and my buddies and I
shared techniques and progs with each other.
Then I got on the Web in 1994, and while there were plenty of shareware sites out there, none really specialized in exactly the kind of utilities I wanted. Now remember, this was 1994, and we were using DOS and Win 3.1.
The stuff I was after were the shell replacements for Win 3.1. Those that took the place of Program Manager. There were lots of them out there too,for example, Backmenu.

(Tin Omen at Desktopian.Org has an archive full of Win 3.1 replacement shell by
the way. They're well worth looking through.)

Bbut once again no sites were really devoted to them. In addition, there were shell extensions--for example--you could add menu items to File Manager, or you could add
functionality to Program Manager. And as I said, no sites specializing in these things.

Then Win 95 came out, and of course, the customizers at first had their
hands full figuring it all out, but pretty soon stuff started appearing---Litestep, for example. And I remember a Microsoft whitepaper, where MS seemed to indicate it was surprised that coders were trying to reverse engineer the calls for shell extensions, so MS decided to release them--Hmmmm...it seems to me that was 1998. And then the shell extensions really started flying...

It was then I decided to put together a website. At first it was just
pretty much what you'd call a "personal" site, pretty unsophisticated and
disorderly, but I had some gems of software there.

That's when the name came up: Shell Extension City, because that was exactly the kind of software I was trying to find and present. I puttered along, with friends and relatives visiting now and then, but the site was really not moving forward in terms
of visit numbers.

But I must have been doing something right, because after a month or two, before I had even 1000 hits, Chris Pirillo stumbled onto the site, and I guess he liked it, because he featured it in Lockergnome, and I got 18000 visitors over the following week.

Many of those visitors immediately became regulars, and I suddenly had a base of loyal visitors who'd let me know when I was doing right, and would really let me know when I was doing wrong.

Really Chris was the one to give Shell Extension City it's start. Without that bit of notice, I'd have surely given it all up. After all, it's a lot of work, and without some reward now and then, it's very difficult to remain motivated..."

Lockergnome had turned the world at large on to Bob's project.
And the world would not stop coming...

SEC consistently "turns on" it's visitors to hot new items, many of them being the kind of thing a skinner would really love to get his or her mitts on... I asked Bob if he was out there in the trenches, sending out inquiries and haunting newsgroups.

It turns out he is..." I have a very widely-scoped daily rotation of sites, and it's from them that I glean a good deal of my info about the newest things", Bob told me.

"And I get a lot of emails--submitted programs, feedback. I appreciate them all; they're very valuable in doing the Shell City thing."

Which begs the question: "How many submissions, per day, is Bob looking at?!?"

"I get maybe 20 e-mailed submissions per day," he answers, "the rest of the programs I hunt down...that is, I view their descriptions. I pick the ones I think are of interest and put them on "the list." Then, each evening when I'm preparing the next day's update, I go to the list and run through it, picking the best, or the coolest, or the most useful.

Sometimes I'll pick something that maybe isn't the coolest, but the
author shows some promise. I do this fairly often, trying to encourage
developers by showing them they do have an audience out there, and please,
just keep plugging at it. "

The breadth of info and resource available at SEC would suggest that the "good vibes" policy was paying off...

SEC offers a lot that is directly related to skinning, yet also offers
much that is past the "skinning area". That being the case, I asked Bob:

"What are some of your "favorite things" that you have derived from your own site,
and why?"

Bob wasn't going to play favorites...

"Well, I love shell extensions," he replied, " whether they work with explorer, Litestep, or any other shell, these are my favorites. Give me some little program that saves me a few steps in some oft-repeated task, and I'll keep it every time."

Knowing that SEC was putting Mr. Helmer in direct contact with a lot of talented people, I asked him if he had any favorites in the field of skinning...

" Well, if I may, let me talk about a broader category of digital artists," was the reply.

Again, Bob wasn't going to play favorites...

"Phong, Misery, Shinter (is he still around? I've lost touch with him). Not
only skinners, but Thematicists, Wallpaperers.... I know you realize what a
huge effect digital art is having on the art world" he said.

"While I don't think it's reached the world of so called "fine" art yet, but 2 years ago it reached "commercial art"--remember when TV and magazine ads started taking on the look of web pages? Exaggerated fonts, splashing colors, ideas conveyed by icons
instead of words. And it's certainly reached the world of commercial design--try to buy a pair of Nike's. Every one of them looks like it has a neo-art nouveau skin. It's no wonder Converse went out of business. They were out of touch."

"I'm not sure I have a favorite," he concluded, "what I do have ,though; is this overwhelming sense that the world of design has changed more over the last two years that over the 25 prior years."

Bob's insight was not lost on me. I have sat in amazement as little FLASH movies took the place of what used to be "filmed" commercials. And the TV looks more and more like the web every day...

And with the world apparently beating a path to the web, I wondered what Bob had in mind for the future of his busy and growing site..

"We're working on a section for shell programming. It's almost ready. It'll
contain programs for creating shell extensions and replacements, tutorials,
articles, that sort of thing. Also programs for customizing code--reversing
and resource hacking" he told me.

"We're also contemplating a section for so called "software-overclocking," that is
radical os or bios hacks to really push your system to the limi," he added, "and also one for security matters---since this seems to be becoming so overwhelmingly
important as broadband comes more and more into play. And finally, maybe, an
email newsletter---we'll see."

Email newsletter? Well, I would have to get hooked up on that one...

And seeing that I was such a big fan of what he was doing, I asked Bob if he had any groupies/stalkers, as is the case with almost anyone who gains even a smidgen of notoriety..

"Heh heh---I need some groupies!", he said.

"No, I don't have a 'fan base'," Bob admitted, "but I do have some regulars. If you go to the Shell City message board you can meet some of them. Mostly coders, sysadmins, hackers... All pretty bright people. They are always giving me good advice. In fact, if you follow some of the threads, you'll see I almost always follow their advice about how Shell City should be moved forward."

Part of his brightness showing through. It is always good to see another site where the operator is listening intently to the thoughts and concerns of the participants. I was happy to hear this.

I asked Robert Helmer what he did with his free time, if there was any...

"Heh heh.... I do a lot of things. One of my favorite things is art restoration."

As in "Digital Restoration"? I inquire..

"That is I restore damaged artworks," he responds.

"I learned the trade from an old fellow at the Kansas City Art Institute. He knew everyone, a resident of Paris before WW1, he drank with Picasso and once had a fistfight with Chagall. He took a liking to me and really fed my famished curiosity about
the processes involved in cleaning and repairing oil paintings."

"You see," Bob informs me, " it's a kind of secret trade---no practitioner will tell you the tricks. They like to keep it in their families. I got lucky, and now I've got a very fine
hobby. I'm pretty handy at it."

Was Bob working on a new career choice?

I asked about what he did "in the real world".

"I taught for a few years, and quit that. Now I'm on my second profession", he told me, then added:

"Don't ask what it is. It's secret."

I accepted this at face value, and didn't press the subject.
I just hope that secret won't mean "lights out" in Shell Extension City...

Click here to go directly to Shell Extension City now...