When Mr. Bandwidth and Mrs. Bigbucks finally sleep together, LiteStep will be talked about.This is the only thing about LS I am sure of.

brazil: nah it just generally annoyed me So I visited Hoverdesk.net and have stayed there ever since

Is hoverdesk a shell replacement now?

Thanks for the tip Madam Snowman,I have never tried HD.LS annoyed me as well.I thought the look and concept were for me, but even when I got a "theme" to load I got a hundred freaky warning screens telling me what the "OTS theme" I was trying to load was missing.Tried to get out and walla,frozen on every reboot,no way home.It,LS,seems to have eaten Bryan King.He loaded it on XP and the last post we got from him sounded like he was taking on water.Never to be heard from again so far.I also have noticed the lack of comments on LS themes and I have to wonder how many of these people loaded it like everything else on the WC Browser only to be hobbled on reboot.Then,after recovery, go to the page where you downloaded the theme to try and get help and click, no page to be displayed.Very poorly supported here and there.The kind of money needed to make a site like this fly will need mainstream money not fringe coinage.Either LS will join the cause or the Bandwidth Hogz gonna eat it,,and when it does the Litestepers will have no one to blame but themselves for ignoring the crys for help to crush the 'Steep learning curve"

So, judging by the comments received, the concensus seems to be that Litestep causes many people problems and so do not use it. The 29 replies have been from only 8 people - very good comments but not a very wide range of users.............. I'll wait awhile and see what happens next.
Many thanks for the interest.

The concensus is that LiteStep causes brazil problems (as does the space bar), while everyone else says it runs a-okay.

Thing is: LiteStep is for power users. If you're not comfortable with your machine, you shouldn't run it. Documentation and what not is out there, you just have to dig deep these days.

Experiment-ware so to speak (as opposed to one-click-install-ware).

Another thing: LiteStep themes are very author dependent (shortcuts used and what not), so they're not very portable or usable to others. Perhaps this is why people are contnent with tweaking their own themes and feel little need to upload them.

bakerman: HvD CAN be used as shell, you just won't have the systray + some other "normal" windows thingys... but hey.. who needs'em anyways

gef: I don't think that LS it self is the cause for all the problems mentioned. I do believe that it is a "Fail 40", as in wrong/faulty "installation" of LS that causes these problems! If LS ain't setup correct it might "blow up" your system. First time I tried LS was two or three years ago before the OTS was "invented" and you had to edit like 117 diff system files in order to get it to load/work. Gave me a great deal of hairloss and sleepless nights

Most LS themes that need configured before use come with a readme file (Surprising how many people don't actually bother to read it though, then they complain that things don't work) that points out all the parts that need to be edited.

What it all comes down to nowadays, is that a lot of people want the results, but aren't prepared to put in the time to read the documents, and make sure everything is set up properly beforehand.It's a shame, becuase that little bit of preperation, usually gives the good reward of having your desktop looking snazzy, and providing some excellent theme-specific features.

To clarify the initial question. Personally, I find Litestep quite easy, that wasn't the question. I just wanted to know if many people were interested enough for me or anyone else for that matter, to go to the trouble of creating a theme. I havn't tried since the old '98 days and wasn't sure if XP posed any problems.

I've never used Litestep, never seen it, never knew it existed until I came to this site...

gef: when XP was new LiteStep had some problems with the systray. of course LiteStep development has not stopped and the systray works fine now

some modules work under XP/2K only (eycandy stuff as per-pixel alpha-blending). examples are layercut.dll, grdtransparent.dll

your graphics have always been some of the really beautiful around, so i´m pretty sure a lot of people would appreciate new stuff from you please have a look at layercut.dll btw.

been to lsthemes.com recently?

moshi - Thanks for the info and update. Just what I needed. I havn't visited lsthemes recently,I'll go there now.

For a 'normal' user, who has the capacity to read and comprehend, LiteSTEP will not create any problems.
People themeing for LiteSTEP naturally run the risk of doing 'odd' things while coding and can expect a bit more 'fun', but so too would Joe Average delving into Explorer.exe with a copy of Reshacker.
A MS OS is quite capable of giving 'trouble' with or without the assistance of an alternate shell.

Win2000 and XP both created problems for LiteSTEP's systray but it wasn't too long before that was sorted.

Shell handling in a NT-based OS requires registry mods, rather than via system.ini as in Win9x, and the 'moron's solution to LS in NT' [the one I personally use...] is to handle that with ShellON. Works for me....

I've found LiteStep to be an extremely configurable environment with a lot of goodies. For the common user, however, the coding gets to be a little too much (spend more time tweaking the RC files than enjoying the GUI). I have never been able to get it to run for more than four hours without a completely irreversible hang-up.

Don't skin for LiteStep. Skin for Object Desktop. LiteStep, Bad. Object Desktop, Good. Bad bad good bad, good good bad. Bad.

,,,and I thought it was just me,,not.Thanks mrbiotech.It seems as though Litestep iz a great party if ya can find it.BTW there are at least 3 dead links on the LS page.

as DeViLbOi said at ShellFront: "Those who want to learn and have fun with us, hop on board...if not...get out my way f00!"

I'm with moshi on that one....[I'm usually with moshi on lots of things - kindred LS-spirit]....

Longest that I have ever had LiteSTEP up and running - just over 13 days.
Longest I have ever had a computer up and running? - just over 13 days.

That included a lot of shell changing, theme changing, recycling, step coding, theme creating, installing, uninstalling, you name it.

Did LS cause the stop after 13 days? No, I simply needed to turn the thing off to swap out a drive-caddy....

LiteSTEP 'can' be as stable as you want it to be [or let it]..

Litestep also makes breakfast in bed.

Sure does...

and if ur luck it will even do ur homework for you ( i only could dream )

Well, I don't know if I can let it go at that...

The thread topic is "dead or alive". I won't flood this thread with the entire editorial; so if your interested check out my site: http://www.leechprint.com/phil/start.htm

The editorial speaks to where I see Litestep going and where perhaps it needs to go. It's a different view than already expressed by others in this thread, but that's cool

Please let us know how you make out adam solley.I have tried again a few days ago but I just can't get it to load.I have tried Shellon and Shellenabler.Both times unsuccessful load ups.I would very much like to see it in action.Many of my favorite themes are Litestep.I hope I have not given anyone the wrong idea.I would just like to be able to use it.I think there should be a WC process of screens that lead you to the LS party.Is this asking too much?

brazil...Litestep is not in any way related to Stardock and WC, just as WinAMP is not.
The difference however is that the former is a shell requiring 'understanding' in its use, and the latter is just another dopey MP3 player of which there are squillions..

I read all that on your site, Phil....and at Shellfront....and agree with your 'concerns'...

Jafo:dig,