Fun with LiteSTEP

Where did I go wrong......

from JoeUser Forums
One of the 'fun' things about shell themeing is that if, or rather, WHEN you are in the middle of converting a theme from one standard[ish] LiteSTEP format that you are used-to, to the OTS standard, 'things' can go wrong....

There you are, staring at a 'stuck' cursor, waiting for the theme to load...there's a thrashing of drive action, but nothing happens....
Ctrl-Shift-Esc and you discover that litestep.exe is zipping along merrily at 100% cpu and 650 meg of ram....now THAT'S LIGHT...;p
You kill the process, and ShellON pops up to get you reloaded, while you do the 'right thing'[tm] and comment out various module lines in the step until all that's left is a popup and a desktop.....STILL no luck.
Hmmm...curiouser and curiouser...
You pop your head back into the images folder and....where's a4.png...otherwise known as the 'PopupBottomPix'?
It's conspicuous by its absence.
You deftly comment out one line in the step , et, voila!
One missing image and your whole shell can be fragged.
I've been using LiteSTEP exclusively for over 6 years.....and STILL screw up.
[Damn I must be thick]....;)
skinning
8,341 views 23 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I need to start playing with LS again. I lost track when the development stalled and the whole theme format seemed to splinter everything. Sounds like things have come back together fairly well.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
hehehe i heard that Jafo. every day im still adjusting stuff... last week i named the step.rc to step.rv.. fortunately hitting crtl/alt/del.. brought up the windows security menu which i used to launch the window explorer and go in to the file and rename the step to the proper extension and reboot :) yes us old timers can still goof up;)
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
LiteSTEP doesn't suck....idiots who fail to Read The 'Fine' Manual are a bane to its existence..

I started with LS back with b21 and b23.....when it was still in its infancy...and when we started logging Users I had number 77.

Since then it has grown to be the Number One alternate shell.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
well TC lets hear your basis on this arguement .. or is it just more of your incessant trolling ? you sputter many things but never state a lucid or even well thought out responce to things ...if you have some actual valuable information then share .. if not go away...
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Look at what Jafo wrote in his article. That is reason enough that LiteStep sucks. What he wrote and my experience is what brought me to the conclusion that LiteStep has no consistency and no set standard like proprietary software has.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
true litestep may not have "set standards" or be as consistant as other programs" but that in my opinion is the appeal ,it can be as much or as little as i wish .. i build it ,i modify it ,i tweak it,if it fooks up its my fault....but i also took the time to learn how to run it. most of thoes who hate LS actually tried it expected instant results and couldnt get it to work. and gave up frustrated. most of us who took the time to learn its abilities and how to use it would never switch back..

the nice thing about LS is that it can be built to do what you want and look how you want , and you can build it to be personal. im in to true customization , and theres things litestep does that you just cant get from windows default gui.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Since embracing fully the OTS2 standard...and as moderator for the LS section at WC I've had to load a lot of themes to check them....so far only 3 have failed dismally ... often due mostly to a minor typo error .... though the last one to go belly-up may have been a language issue...but I gave up on it as it wasn't submitted to WC anyway.

Once I'd tweaked Antares II to within an inch of its life I have been using it almost universally since.... several months ... longer than any other theme, whether mine or anyone else's.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for animations...

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I recently decided to give LS another try (first experience......could have been better. went back to Explorer pretty quick)
I DL'ed a few themes, Antares II among them. Beautiful work, though I don't care for animation most of the time. I've been using the tenjo theme most though. Nice and unobtrusive.
I was starting to think LS had been forgotten until Jafo (mighty standard-bearer of Litestep ) resurrected an 11-month old thread.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
LS isn't forgotten....some use it as a permanent choice over Explorer.  I'd average about 1 day in a month that I'm not using LS...
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Once I got the hang of it, I've been having a blast with LS. You betcha, I get the occasional 100% cpu with high RAM, but that's the excitement of the programming!!
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Huuuhh, I can still remember my first (and only) experience with LS about two years ago. I downloaded "Plava", installed LS and booted up. All I got was a very nice looking wall, but nothing else. No way to interact with my PC. I rebooted and the same happened. I tried to boot into safe mode, but the PC froze again. At this time I started to break out in a sweat. I inserted the XP disk and tried to use the system restore from the disk, but somehow that would not work either (can't remember now why). My knees started to get weak, and my hands started to shake.....with my heart pumping at a greatly exaggerated rate, I booted into command prompt and removed LS from there......

...... I think I should have read the manual

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That is the absolute truth about LS. You MUST READ THE MANUAL first. You really can't just jump into LS, that's asking for trouble. There is a great installer program (Omar) now with a stable 'default' theme (austerity). Anytime you load a new theme, you will be given the opportunity to switch to the default theme if things aren't working as you were expecting.

Go here if you want to try again: http://beyondconvention.net/ohussain/lsinstaller/
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks werewolf, I might try that. After all, Jafo's themes are just too tempting

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Well....all's been quiet on the LS front [for me]....not a great deal of messing around...till yesterday.....

Along came this one.....

Obsidian 1.0 by NBI-Studio

Now this thing is good....darn good....annoyingly good....[makes my stuff look neanderthal]

I'll just have to poke and prod and work out how they did what and where...and drag my stuff screaming into the 90's....

Anyone contemplating a first foray into Litestep....this may be the push you need...

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

On a 'slightly' different tack....mention was made of a new LS ver...RC4...a few days old [or so]...so off I went to hunt it down...and came across a whole bunch of oldies....early LS releases...so I fired up one from the dawn of [skinning] time....b23c  [May, 1998].....here it is in all its 'glory'...

Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Anyone who says LS sucks has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Show me anything more beautiful and functional. And I have tried them all. Now that "Obsidian" is here there is no reason to go back. Someone's "experience" is very limited. But, of course, you have to be able to read.
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think in order to clarify Litestep for the masses, they are going to have to just declare it a scripting language with add-on mods or something. Trying to package it like an app is killing it, I think. The last 10 or so themes I downloaded simply didn't work. Nothing was missing, I don't know if it was a matter of the resolution being wrong, or the new theme system deciding things weren't up to snuff.

I like the fact that it will download the dlls for you, but damn, if the average theme doesn't work even after you go through the motions, no one is really going to tackle it. I think LS was at its height when novices were scared to deal with it, and people who did knew that you basically had to take the theme you downloaded as a suggestion.

The only machine I really bother with it with now is my old 266 laptop. For me, DesktopX is a better answer for machines that can handle it. All I figure is that I am going to have to make a theme of my own for the lappy, because I'm tired of editing shell back to explorer in DOS. Most themes seem to leave me sitting there with no popups, no nothing but a few fragmented graphics.

If they put anything in, I wish they'd put in a hard-coded, keyboard shortcut commandline, so that when you are left that way you can at least launch a way to fix what's broken...
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Baker...XP's Task Manager gets you out of most dramas with LS....

Things get a bit 'difficult' if/when that crashes too....then starting/stopping services isn't so simple....but 'reset' solves that....

Reply #20 from JoeUser Forums Top
My old 266 won't hand't 2000, much less xp. We're talking about a grand total of 48 megs of RAM. I'd be using Linux on it if I could get my wireless to work.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
BakerStreet: if it can handle windows95+ie4 it can run litestep (just per pixel alpha-transparency wont work).
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hey Paul.... I'm running that Obsidian theme...... very cool!! thanks for pointing it out to me. Still trying to figure it all out, (only had it running 5 minutes) but I'm sure I will have fun with it.
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Read?...that's what you do only after you can't make it work by hitting it with a hammer! Please don't tell my computer that LS is no good, it runs a lot faster than using Windows shell.