Litestep, dead or alive?

hello gef,Go to the LiteStep page and click on the help link.I hope you don't go missin like Bryan King,,,,,,,,,

http://floach.pimpin.info/

http://www.joeblade.com/

http://www.shellfront.org/

http://blizzle.com/

Moshi was kind enough to point me toward some up-to-date sites recently, on a thread about halfway down called "Why no talisman themes?". There is some discussion there, and the links above are from the discussion.

gef....I just upped one a few hours ago.
Yes, they are still being made and are quite compatible with XP, as with any MS OS after 3x...

I've been wondering about something.... back in the good ol' Skinz.org and LS.net days, LS themes were uploaded by the bucket, but since the fall of those sites, I rarely see any new LS themes. Did the "urge" for creating/uploading LS themes go down with the sites or are they just being stuffed somewhere else?!?!
(And no funny comments please Mr. Martin)

The whole shell scene has fallen apart from what I've seen.

Snow...I think the problem is what really has plagued LS for years....not having a 'home' with any reliable longevity.
Most sites of the skinning variety have a 'dribble' coming through,...I have a few in the pipeline, and others that are just ideas, but anuthing that's not just another single-bar theme like all the other ones takes time...

Jafo - Surely Wincustomize is a 'home' but not many skinners upload Litestep themes. I know Wincustomize covers many aspects of skinning but from what I can see, most people seem satisfied with just adding items like 'Windowblinds','Icons', etc., to their normal operating system.

There's more than likely to be thousands of active LS themers out there. Just becuase no themes are being uploaded, doesn't mean there's none being made.

I think its safe to say that LS has crashed many peoples machines.And trying to figure out why is like joining some kind of cult when most folks just want to have fun.Not much more can be said.Good luck gef if you do decide to jump off the LS cliff,,for some ther is water below,but from what I have experienced and read here and there,there are sharp jagged rocks down there.I have no idea why WC cannot make this much easier on the user.Such as add the LS installer to the page.Or at least get one of the LS users to write a help addition for the program instead of the no page can be displayed I have been getting since I have been here.I better run now the LS squad will be here shortly to say how easy it is and if you don't find it so,your skin IQ must be low.Running away now,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

As Jafo wrote, Litestep has suffered by not having a goto site that has stayed up with any consistancy. I personally keep my themes here because I know this site will be around a year from now.

But Litestep is still active, new mods are coming out, and new themes are created (even boring bar themes

The theme submissions are really spread around the skin sites plus one Litestep themes site.

In terms of Litestep's "safe value", The Litestep installer, linked to on Shellfront.org is the safest way to get your toes wet. I believe it even comes with an installer.

IMHO, an installer is not the safest way to get started. As with any installer , it is going to do your work for you, and when you need to un-do it, you won't know how. If you do the installation yourself, though, you'll have a grasp on what you will need to do to revert back. As I have said before, there is no safety-net built into LS, and that is what makes it daunting, and frankly inaccessable to some.

LS never crashed my machine, but explorer does quite often. If you need things done for you, though, don't try it. It is a good app; quite stable and trustworthy.

And of course there is always another side,,LS crashes my machine everytime I try to use it.I have been running XP from the start.Explorer has never crashed my machine.I still think it speaks volumes about LS and a stable "home" such as WC that there is no help documentation.No page to be displayed.

Litestep will never crash in use.
It might fail to work if it hasn't been configured properly or if the correct path isn't present when defining it as your shell.
It amazes me the amount of people who use the old 'There's no documentation available' routine.
I know the first time I used LS, the first thing I did to find out info, before I had even set it as my shell, was to actually read the helpfiles included. Seems that's a near-extinct artform these days with a large majority sadly.
Yes, Litestep has a steep learning curve, IF you're planning on building or modifying existing themes, but for a general user, the new OTS-system makes theme installation and switching an absoloute breeze.

Hippy,Would in not benifit everyone if WC "configured properly"LS from the getgo?Kind of like everything else here on the browser?The reason I keep bringing up this help doc issue is because I have been to the LS site and boards and I think,if WC is to continue offering the stuff,that their /WC/ delivery method could simplify this learning curve,or maybe even eliminate it.Then even simpletons like me could get some of that LS good.

brazil: You are looking at LS as though it were a self-contained app. I have had *themes* crash my system, but never LS. There is practically nothing to LS, and certainly little to do any harm. Themes and mods, though, can be flawed.

The fact is, the skills you learn when you install LS by hand are *necessary* to know, and 90% of the trouble comes when someone uses an installer and then has no clue how to find their way back to the original shell without it. If a theme is bad, you may not be able to get back to the installer.

You aren't a simpleton, you just aren't comfortable with the software, it is fairly complex stuff. No one is born knowing how to use software, and that doesn't mean they need automation to do the work for them. They need to learn how it works, *before* they try to use it. Using it shouldn't be simplified, unless the software itself is somehow simplified.

P.S. it wouldn't be right for WC to do anything with LS. It isn't a startdock product, and it has developers working elsewhere. If WC or SD were to monkey with it, it would furthur divide the situation and make things more confusing. They have no more to do with LS than they have to do with Winamp.

heh.. LS never crashed on my machine either.... tee hee maybe it's because LS only lasted a few hours before it kicked off the machine again

*before it GOT kicked off

I see bakerstreet,So you do not see the day when it would be possible to automate the process?I guess it must be a bit hairy or probably would have been done.And it seems like LS would want to crawl in under the covers of Stardock a bit and make sure the program would be as easy to use as lets say DesktopX.That way many more people would come to the LS fold.But as it stands,some land in water and some jagged rocks.

Madam Snowman,did LiteStep put itz heavy foot on yer butt too??

brazil: actually, yes, I do. We talked about this recently on the "Why no talisman themes" thread. I think that LS will stay in the shadows until it automatically reverts to a stable, useful state when a theme or a mod is bad. That is the one, ever-present problem. There should be some fail-safe functionality in place in case the theme fails.

Stardock does good work, and it would no doubt do a great job with LS, but shell replacement is an area that would be pretty unprofitable. In the 95/98 days, it was *very* beneficial to replace the Explorer shell, and there weren't a lot of system resources to run shell-like apps *over* Explorer. Now, the basic Windows shell is much more stable, and there are heaps of resources to run things like DesktopX over it. That leaves less reason to replace the shell, and so less demand for shell replacements, I suppose.

,,,so at the end of the day when a real life look at bandwidth versus downloads,LS will soon be unrepresented here I predict.If the current status remains quo LS will be used by fewer and fewer people because of "steep learning curves" or"improper configuration".Just because many fought long and hard to use LS does not mean it always has to be that way.It would seem that someone would want to fix or delete a dead link like we have on the LS page.Dead links speak much louder than words.

Ive been running ls for close to year, ive had my problems, but now build themes for myself, most are a combination of bar themes and "other" but its my personal funtionality. I have jump off the LS cliff and found it was only 3 feet high. Learn from mistakes than rather going to other people to complain about them =P

brazil...
Any one of my LS themes here, by number of downloads would be in the top 10 ever at LS.net or LS.com or any of the others....why?, because Wincustomize.com is actually getting LS out into the world in far greater numbers than any of the dedicated LS sites did.
LS is still popular. It is infinitely more popular since the advent of OTS and themes coded for the system.
LS is an Open Source proggy released under the GNU Licence, and not a Stardock/Wincustomize product. Due to the transience of the LS scene, often links will fail, but technically, Wincustomize is a site which disseminates LiteSTEP themes, just as it does with WinAMP skins, but it is not the Program's Hosting site...[perhaps it should be...], and does not have builds, modules, docs, etc,etc that actual LS-specific sites are known for. We just try to link to one of them which often has more ups and downs than a honeymoon...

Baker, there is a fail-safe for LiteSTEP...has been for a few years. It's called 'ShellON'.
Even in XP there is nothing better than 'Ctrl/Shift/Esc' and killing a recalcitrant LS and having ShellON popup and offer you the option to reload LS or Exploder or whatever other shells you may have...[I currently have 5, Exploder, 3 separate Litesteps, and Hoverdesk].

A few years ago [in Win98] I tried an installer...but couldn't see the point, when all my 'themes' at the time were self-contained, functional shells and all you had to do was unzip the things to 'C' with relative paths, change one line in system.ini or point to LS in ShellON and that was that...

Jafo: Yeah, that is what I am getting at, really. Why not have ShellOn functionality built in? I used a similar shell-switcher when I was using LS before, and it did the same for me.