why no Talisman themes?

Tried Talisman about 5 years ago ang got bored of it. DesktopX is way better and more flexible. As far as no Talisman themes here at this site, it is a direct competitor with Stardock(owns this site)and I believe that is the reason.

Object Desktop ROCKS THE NATION !

jarget

Tried Talisman about 5 years ago ang got bored of it. DesktopX is way better and more flexible. As far as no Talisman themes here at this site, it is a direct competitor with Stardock(owns this site)and I believe that is the reason.

Object Desktop ROCKS THE NATION !

jarget

Hey Vanilla Ice why in the hell would you want your nickname asociated with the ex-rapper. He sucks and is a big joke.

There are hundreds of different shells 'out there' [apart from Exploder], and LiteSTEP is one of the oldest, most popular and supported.
The curious thing is that the Wincustomize LiteSTEP theme archive has probably been online longer/more consistently than any of the LS-specific sites which tend to fall over frequently, partly due to the high band-width demands of themes which are generally 500k and often are multi-meg in size.
LiteSTEP is also freeware, and therefore bodes no 'significant' impact as competition for Stardock's products, whereas a number of the other, relatively popular shells do.
Hosting a competitor's product and paying for its bandwidth use is a little counter-productive.
When was the last time you saw a Coke truck with pallets of Pepsi on it?...

I didn't know Stardock owned the site I just thought there was a partnership of sorts. But if the last time you tried Talisman was 5 years ago you really should try it again cause think about it, Desktop X wasn't even around 5 years ago, so it has to be a lot better than it was then. The reason i like Talisman better than Desktop X is cause for one you can use it as a shell replacement, and two it uses less resources (probably cause Explorer isn't loaded too), and I think it's easier to customize themes, cause you can make a list object which contains all the shortcuts in a folder and use the button template (or just icons which can be used as zoomers as well) which came with the theme instead of adding all that manually. desktop x 2 sounds good, but unless it can replace explorer i'm gonna stay away from it.


as far as the Vanilla Ice remark goes, 1)he's not an EX-rapper, 2)if you gave the new music a chance i'm sure you'd like (if you like hard rock or rap), cause i even thought he sucked til i actually heard it (and yes To The Extreme and Ice Ice Baby do suck). He's had three good CDs since his crappy one you've heard and he is great at both rock/metal and rap. His latest CD is full of guest stars, like Jason Brainard who was in Slipknot, Chuck D from Public Enemy, La The Darkman from the Wu-Tang Clan, ICP, Roy Mayorga from Soulfly and Sepultra, and Billy Milano from S.O.D. I actually have a V-Ice website too so if you wanna sample the new music stop by http://kickass.at/vanillaice

He might still be a rapper, but I'm sure that his career as a boxer is quite over.

yeah, he sure got his ass kicked. but supposedly the whole thing was fixed, which is why all the winners had the advertisement on their backs. i'm not really sure i believe that but whatever. he wants to box eminem next, but eminem won't do it. they've got the same lawyer or something like that and ice is trying to make a deal through him.

eminem is scared...

anyway, I tried Talisman also about 3 years ago and it messed with my computer. I am sure it is better now.

You should give NexTStarT a shot too (By WinStep). I want to try LiteStep but I am scared I will mess something up and boom; no more computer

I guess I will give Talisman a try again. I will have to put it on my list of what to learn how to skin.

Talisman is *nice*; don't let anyone tell ya different. I've put a bit of automation behind it and it is doing everything but bringing me coffee There's some work yet to be done, but this is a very, very different beast than it was 3 years ago.

LS could outpace it, but not without an organized, professional effort, and frankly I don't think organized or professional is what LS is about, now or ever. Mod-functionality is the meat of the app, and the best are always gonna be in the hands of the masses. Not to say they haven't worked as hard as anyone else, it just doesn't seem to be about creating a finished product. Some of us are tired of waiting for something besides 'daily builds' and dubious beta.

Arkadiy has put some quality time into Talisman, IMHO. There is something to be said about monetary interest in a product. I haven't tried Stardock's product, so I can't offer any comparisons there.

P.S. 5 years ago!!?? 1997? was it around then? My first experience with it was early 1999.

that´s the point: LiteStep is not a "product", it´s a geeks´ toy and it evolves freely. and i happen to like that

moshi...I am NOT a geek......please tell me I am NOT a geek....oh, poo....I guess I'm a geek....

Such is life....one day you are just a normal person, then, without warning, you DL the 'wrong' proggy and instantly you're a geek...

First there was 'Phil the Greek', now there's 'Jafo the Geek'...

I just wish more Litestep people would make the move to Talisman cause Litestep has TONS of modules and Talisman just has a few. I wrote a Talisman module myself but i can't get it to not show in the taskbar. i posted on their forum and never got a reply.

I agree with moshi to a point, but what we consider perks are terrible drawbacks to most people. You can't get people to download drivers, much less reset the shell, hunt down a working LS site, and find the exact build of the exact module they need to make your theme work.

I really got miffed when they imposed a half-@$$ed standard on LS themers when the usability problems were 99.9% in the hands of developers. If they are gonna make it accessible to the unwashed with installers, etc., 'they' have twice the responsibility to make sure it works, regardless of the theme. The problem is, who knows who 'they' are? Or if 'they' will be around next week, or if 'they' will comment their code enough for the next 'they' to read it.

The current setup is unthinkable in software development. The litestep executable simply has to have basic functionality without any mods or .rc, at least enough to navigate and fix a theme. Without it, Joe Q. User is at the mercy of anonymous themers and mod makers, who may or may not be around next week.

If mods are gonna be created for Talisman, I would rather Lighttek make them, (or at least sanction them), and distribute them with the install. They need not be loaded by default, the theme itself can do that. I don't intend to create any sort of skin or theme in the future that requires something the user doesn't have by default, and most certainly not something they have to trust a 3rd party to use.

that's not really a problem. all it does is give people more possibilities with a theme. me for example i don't use winamp controls or vwm or sysmeters, so i edit that out of the theme and make more room for tasks and other stuff i want. so that saves me time in downloading a huge installer if i'm not going to use half the modules. and i catually liked it when they introduced the theme standard (OTS) cause it made it much easier to edit themes.

Talisman does need some new modules though, for example i'd like a module like the label.dll for Litestep so i can display my uptime and stuff like that.

I tried your link, but either my browser security settings or my firewall settings wouldn't let me enter.
Oh well, I did try.

JM...that would be the 'Anti Rap-Music filter' built into the better firewalls...

the link is working so it must be something on your end, try http://www.angelfire.com/music4/vanillaice/index2.html if you're still interested, the other link is just the redirect.

he actually doesn't do much rap now, his new cd is half/half like Cypress Hill's Skull & Bones, and his CD before that was all metal, produced by Ross Robinson who produces Slipknot. I still like his rap, but I prefer hard rock. There's not a whole lot of rap i'll listen to, Ice, Cypress Hill, Eminem (except his crappy MTV songs), and Dre and Snoop's first CDs (they suck after that).

"I just wish more Litestep people would make the move to Talisman cause Litestep has TONS of modules and Talisman just has a few. I wrote a Talisman module myself but i can't get it to not show in the taskbar. i posted on their forum and never got a reply. "

you won´t find much people to code modules for a closed source and even shareware project. coders, especially in the shell community, have some kind of community spirit.

bakerstreet: i actually know who 'they' are and so do most people who are deeper into LS. actually the modularity is LiteStep´s sttrongest point. i would hate to have something like a default systray or tasks when there are modified or completely different modules around that work better for a specific theme.

have a look at Teschio´s Thin theme for example. it uses a hack of systray2 that has !bang commands when the systray expands decreases. that allows to resize taskbar3 on these events.

if you are interested in LS´s future development why not explaining your ideas at #fpn ?

Ah.....LoneRunnr...

Couldn't the exe just opt for a prefered mod if one were specified in the rc, and go with the default if one wasn't? Really, though, what I was leaning towards was when a theme was broken, it would sense the fact and either revert to the default theme, default mods, or revert to the Windows Shell. I like LS, I just really hated the theme standard. It was easier and safer when the themes came with the mods you needed.

The last time I checked in, they said they weren't going to announce who the developers were anymore, and floach, the site, didn't seem to exist. I'll dig a bit.

"The last time I checked in, they said they weren't going to announce who the developers were anymore, and floach, the site, didn't seem to exist. I'll dig a bit."

that was a while ago. obviously most people did not like that "hidden dev team" idea. so the IndieStep dev team was formed and there was a codefork (not really a codefork, as the dev team that called itself "official" never released anything and quit recently). currently Ilmcuts and Message are the core of LS development.

FPN is here: http://floach.pimpin.info/
#fpn is at irc . openprojects . net (and wasn´t down if i remember correctly)

what date is your LiteStep build btw? (!about)

Joeblade http://www.joeblade.com/ ,Shellfront http://www.shellfront.org and Blizzle http://blizzle.com/ provide more info on LS than FPN at the moment.

cool, thanks for the links. To be honest I am using Talisman, playing with a bit of background PHP automation. The last LS build I consistantly used was the last release before they started insiting on the theme format. I remember updating several times and then falling back to old 'complete' packaged themes I had (Oct. 1999, maybe?). I still have the graphics for the popup and whatnot set aside. I'll surf around a bit after I get some sleep and see where things are at.

Thanks again for the links.

baker...don't give up on LS....even stick-in-the-mud me has adopted the OTS format....even retaining 99% of my wacko functionality I'd toyed with over 5 years.

Just get a recent Indie build, grab a theme that DOES come with the 3rd party modules, set it up and reuse the same mods for subsequent themes, only altering them occasionally as new mod versions come out, making sure they don't break more than they fix.
Get a reliable 'core' of your own, that YOU are comfortable with, and only jump into others' themes if and when you have the urge to expand horizons.

The OTS standard is a boon to LS usage, not a backward step...