What I wish every Newbie knew about LiteStep...

I can think of some things: <BR> <BR>1. If you want to try it out, you can run it over Explorer <BR>2. If Windows says you need to reinstall, it&acute;s lying <BR>3. Read that bloody manual

Crae: <BR>1. yep, but newbies won&acute;t see the WHOLE picture until they take the full plunge. <BR>2. yep, but if newbies knew that having a shell switcher was installed BEFORE they took the plunge, they&acute;d have an easy way out. <BR>3. yep, but the manual is getting easier to read. <BR>:) <BR> <BR>Grim: <BR>You tell me. You know this was really YOUR idea. I just started this thread while you were on the New Years Bacchanalia... :P <BR> <BR>Scarebear: <BR>A little blue pig whispered in my ear on New Years about how Skinbase ought to be more receptive to Litestep. Not the real tech stuff. That could be left to the regular LS sites. But the skinning side, and especially a place to post those skins should be more prominent here on the Base. <BR>(I&acute;m not only relating this to you, but hoping that that little blue pig remembers what he said come light of day... {:p )

I await word from the little blue pig....... :) <BR> <BR>And the shell switcher (I think) is THE most important advice you can give.

heh.. yes guys, I am working on a page with simple step-by-step installation procedures and customization for newbies. Some foundamental FAQ&acute;s and the resources such as more &acute;user friendly&acute; distros links, shell switchers and even systray fix for W2K/XP. <BR> <BR>When I&acute;m done, I will get my granmother to install it... If she can&acute;t, we will keep improving the instructions until she can 8)

{:p

What&acute;s Litestep?....;)

By the way *cough* I was working on an article for Tek on shell managers *cough*, still need to finish that.

Cool. I say you should finish that indeed :)

You want a LS help section at Skinbase Elwin!?! I&acute;d like to see that happen. And one of our BluePig admin&acute;s here is a bit of a guru ;) If he can get me working properly in LS he must be good :) <BR> <BR>Actually, there&acute;s a pretty good looking theme just uploaded recently here (and no - I don&acute;t know the person who made it) :) <BR> <BR>This theme is a good looking example of what you can achieve in LS and it has a link to a distro of LS in the skin description. <BR> <BR>http://www.skinbase.org/rate.php3?id=3016

Either that or take something for that nasty cough. ;)

Hmmm... I think the Dutch usually handle a cough with a High Colonic... <BR> <BR>{:p

I&acute;ll finish it alright, but you&acute;ll have to wait till the end of the month before the next issue&acute;s out. And even then, it&acute;s <b>me</b> writing it, so it won&acute;t be very objective.

Pitkon: it is hard for me to believe that you have downloaded more than 2000 themes (as you said in the Demented Forums) and still diss OTS. OTS themes still require reading the readme files that come with the themes. and if a theme requires a recent IndieStep build, the directory structure (OTS is nothing more/nothing less than that) is not to blame if it does not work on older builds. most of the old themes require much more tweaking than setting up a few lines in themeevars.rc. <BR> <BR>Chichigirl: LiteStep is indeed hard for beginners. HoverDesk is pretty easy. Honz12 has written an excellent tutorial on that. http://honz.hoverdesk.net/hvdtut_welcome.htm skinning HVD will be easier than skinning WindowBlinds, and HoverInc. is a completely different company than StarDock. <BR> <BR>Bugzlitey: a great tutorial on LiteStep themeing can be found at Paul Haines site: http://joeblade.com/litestep/tutorials/theme/index.php there are many other helpful tutorials as well.

I have never used Litestep...but I think a tutorial website for any skin that someone can write on is more than over due....I&acute;m afraid of skinning things that take hours...lol...I guess that&acute;s why I stick to wallpapers...

I&acute;m surprised /hobnobber: you did not tell /grimspoon: where to stick it LOL nice to see you again /grimspoon: and you too Robohead :-) A tutorial and help section would be great, between LitStep and HoverDesk seems difficult and thats why I have not made up my mind on either........

Man, you&acute;re dragging out the antiques, ain&acute;t ya? <BR>:)

Newbies should know two basic things: <BR>1) Don&acute;t do anything before u install a shell-switcher. <BR>2) Search for a self-contained (stand-alone) theme. Many times OTS or LSDistro or whatever themes don&acute; work. Unfortunately, stand-alone themes seem to get fewer and fewer...

Can any of you translate it to polish??? I could better understand it that way.. I think well maybe... I sure hope so! lol lol

....gasp....stammer.....groan.....CPR......quick....;p

:snow wish he could Jafos face when he reads brian4s post <BR>dang he must be getting a heartattack LOL LOL ;) hehe

isd ave the news french sites to litestepand is call <BR>http;//www.litestep-production.org <BR>and is need the members and the skins is the excelent ans very good sites

Many years ago I created a LS theme with 2 Wharfs....back when wharfs were still popular...by running 2 instances of Litestep.exe at the same time...one as shell and the other as a wharf loader. <BR> <BR>I had to employ &acute;tricks&acute; to get around any issue of &acute;recycling&acute; but it worked like a charm....and that was back around 0.24.1 or there-abouts. <BR> <BR>Some modules have stand-alone exe&acute;s with them as well, so LiteSTEP is even more versatile than just another shell replacement...;)

Elwin: that´s not really a big deal. i am running HoverDesk as shell and also run a very barebone LiteStep theme. no need to install LiteStep, double clicking LiteStep.exe or starting it with a script at logging in is enough. <BR> <BR>it is also important to set LSNoshellWarning to true in step.rc, so you won´t get an error message that there is an other shell already loaded. <BR> <BR>i am only loading the LiteStep modules i really need (no desktop or popup module for example). HoverDesk has no own system tray when running as shell, therefore i want the most eyecandy and flexible systray there is (LS of course). i also want a hotkey to hide/show the tray. <BR> <BR>basic example: <BR> <BR>=================================================== <BR>LSImageFolder &quot;$LiteStepDir$images&quot; <BR>LSNoshellWarning <BR> <BR>LoadModule $LiteStepDir$systray2.dll <BR>LoadModule $LiteStepDir$hotkey.dll <BR> <BR>SystrayX -100 <BR>SystrayY -35 <BR>SystrayAutoSize <BR>SystrayWidth 94 <BR>SystrayHeight 28 <BR>SystrayDirection Left <BR>SystrayIconSpacingX 4 <BR>SystrayBitmap tray.bmp <BR>SystrayBitmapTiled <BR>SystrayBorderLeft 20 <BR>SystrayBorderRight 6 <BR>SystrayBorderTop 5 <BR>SystrayBorderBottom 5 <BR>SystrayAlwaysOnTop <BR> <BR>*Hotkey CTRL T !SystrayToggle <BR>================================================== <BR> <BR>drawbacks: the systray is not draggable as in LiteStep. i guess it needs a LiteStep desktop for that. <BR>i can´t use the CTRL+W hotkey to toggle the tray as this key combination is occupied by HVD. <BR> <BR>the big advantage is LS´s modularity. i only load the stuff i need and therefore the resource use is very low. :) <BR> <BR>

hehe watch it Mr. Martin there&acute;s more where if came from!! 🌙 (<-- not there btw) ;) <BR> <BR>Well yeah oki.... moshi envolve us ya lill &quot;secret&quot; :) <BR> <BR>:snow blows a kiss to /Elwin:

Moshi: want to give us (actually, ME) a hint on how you&acute;re doing that litestep module thing? That sounds outright facinating. :) <BR> <BR>Jafo: wipe your cheek - Snow&acute;s lipstick is still smeared on ya&acute;... :P <BR>

Egad...I&acute;m still recovering from being kissed by Mr. Snow.......Ew....LOL <BR> <BR>

HvD breeding LS?! <b>yikes</b>..... HoverStep?! LiteDesk?! hehe ;) <BR>Well I&acute;m having no plans for useing HvD as shell. Exploder is good enuff for me :)

btw: i have even some hybrid desktops, where i run LiteStep modules on top of a HoverDesk shell. that is possible without installing LiteStep.

Snowman: i love and use both. so i get the best of both worlds first, without having to wait for a port :) once again: if you want to set HoverDesk as shell (that is possible with version 2.50) you have to do EXACTLY the same operations as with LiteStep. that´s just the nature of things if you want to replace exploder and not only spice it up.

Jafo I ain&acute;t sayin that LS is crap (bee&acute;s knee&acute;s) in anyway! I just think is blantantly stupid that you have to alter like a kazillion systemfiles to get a program working. (yeah I know there are certain &quot;installers&quot; available). <BR>I also know I really can&acute;t &quot;be a part of the conversation&quot; cause I haven&acute;t actually had a serious try at LS. I&acute;ve actually only tried it once and it took me ages just get the silly thingy running close to &quot;normal&quot; and even longer to get the thing of my system again. But hey that was like err... three or four years ago and alot has happend since then, not only to LS but also to my knowledge about what goes on &quot;behind the desktop&quot;, and I won&acute;t say that I will never try LS again.... but I use/love Hoverdesk at the moment so I see no reason/need for me to have a swing at LS right now :) <BR> <BR>PS: all that sh*t I spew out about LS being EVIIIILLL ;) is all just for the fun of it (but I reckon you&acute;re a smart enuff guy to have figured that out by now) <BR>Hell.. there prolly are alot more peepz that preferres LS over HvD (for some reason unknown to me ;) ) <BR> <BR>:snow gives /Jafo: a big fat kiss - you silly Aussie type person you :p hehe

Thanks moshi, I&acute;ll check your link out :-)

Well...here I am at the moment, chatting with Thibaud on ICQ, and responding to Mister Snow that LiteSTEP is the &acute;bee&acute;s knees&acute;...and listen to moshi....I&acute;m rapidly becoming a total convert to OTS...after developing my own theme system...and even adapting that to OTS [bit of a headache that one]...;)

LOL @ /Snowman: <BR> <BR>your not making friends Snow!

Kids, don&acute;t try this at home, untill you have tried http://www.hoverdesk.net first 🌙