Alternative ways to skin a cat, erm OS :D


Recommended Posts

Ok, over the past few months as everyone undoubtedly knows there has been a lot of activity in the Customising Windows XP thread in regards to either Msstyles themes or Windowblinds themes and as I?m sure we all know, each one has its own limitations per se, yet people have been able to come up with pretty wicked looking stuff.

It just occurred to me whilst replying to a thread concerning alternate shell programs that no one?s really gone into that area yet and it?s odd because some of the things that you can do with hoverdesk or litestep is ****loads better than the stuff that you can even do with Windowblinds.

I?m not knocking either way of theming but instead of just having Msstyles themes and WB skins under Customising XP it would be cool if the forum could be restructured a bit to include Hoverdesk and Litestep themes as well

Sorta like

Customising XP

? Msstyles Themes

? Windowblinds Themes

? HoverDesk Themes

? Litestep Themes

Some of the stuff that you can do is so far beyond msstyles that with the creativity of Neowin members I?m sure they could make some **** hot themes.

http://www.deviantart.com/view-full.php?id=167586

http://www.deviantart.com/view-full.php?id=144782

http://www.customize.org/details/11799

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't care what anyone says your cool and I agree 110% windows modification has been around a long time and it seems like the new wave of ppl just don't even know 1/4 of what they can do b/c everyone is too busy arguing over WB/StyleXP instead of learning more and they weren't around when you only had one choice and all sorts of other things to do to modify the rest of your OS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For my mate Dave aka Hkey_root I shall mention that you can do SOME of those things with W2k as well so he won't feel bad about installing it instead of XP :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wickedkitten, thank you for always thinking of me, however, you can't do msstyles themes in win2k. i said only with the last 3 could you use with win2k. sheesh. and you call yourself female.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by AlmostJohn  

You have-it in XP, why on earth to use other software? Keep things simple!

Dont want it simple! Want it pretty! Want cake and eat it too!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've looked at both those programs before, but could never find a place with enough info about them. (do they work smoothly with XP, any drawbacks... system slower etc. How easy is it to switch back?)

I had a bad experience with Darkstep and Win Millenium, so I'm always a bit wary. Do you have any places I could get more info?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Litestep works great with XP the only drawback is a flaw with the cpu meter function of one of the dll's but as long as you take the call for cpu usage out of the theme it works great and you can set it up to only run on one account so switching back is as simple as deleting that one account and you can always Ctrl-Alt-Del to log off that account if it locks up. This is handy to iron out any bugs you have at first. And also it runs faster than using explorer.exe noticably faster. But the configuration may take a while for you to learn but it's fully documented. Try it just be sure and set it up per account not system wide it makes troubleshooting so much easier.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Theres your probelm isnt it. People dont want flaws. They want things to work. Plain and simply Msstyles system works. They dont have to install 3rd party software that most people think slows down there system and is "dodgey". And those that are game enough use Windows Blinds because it despite chewing up more resources then PacMan, is stable and doesnt cause people problems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel that somehow everyone's comments might mislead people astray. Namly that Shell replacement programs, (Litestep, Darkstep, Core, Cloud9, Hoverdesk, etc,) do not "skin" the GUI at all.

There was only one that I remember that used to skin the GUI without using W/Blinds, EFX, and that was E-Sence, (still ave but only for NT, Used real Enlightenment themes, and has been defunct for ages).

As for running these replacement programs, I have used and made themes for LS since 0.24.b, Core since it started, and most if not all of the others.

Sure while at first it is differcult to comprehend some of the knowledge needed in order to have a full and well rounded desktop enviroment, I personaly have found them to not only be more stable than Explorer in use but to also use less resorces too.

However in reguard to XP Using Litestep (did for a while to test a theme for a friend) I encountered no problems at all.

Hope these comments will prove usefull to anyone that maybe confused by this issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Osiris  

Theres your probelm isnt it.  People dont want flaws.  They want things to work.  Plain and simply Msstyles system works.  They dont have to install 3rd party software that most people think slows down there system and is "dodgey".  And those that are game enough use Windows Blinds because it despite chewing up more resources then PacMan, is stable and doesnt cause people problems.

As much as I appreciate you making yourself the voice of the Neowin community, not everyone thinks like you ok? Msstyles might work but they do have limitations just like everything else.

In other words keep your opinion, your opinion and don't try to pass it off as a community wide opinion when other people would probably beg to differ.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by LunaC  

I've looked at both those programs before, but could never find a place with enough info about them. (do they work smoothly with XP, any drawbacks... system slower etc. How easy is it to switch back?)

I had a bad experience with Darkstep and Win Millenium, so I'm always a bit wary. Do you have any places I could get more info?

Most of the major skinning sites ie DeviantArt, Customize.org, Skinz.org will have sections devoted to each one along with tutorials explaining how to make themes and whatnot. Most of the time you can get a lot of info from the website of the makers of the prog as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

most likely unlike yourself im not in school anymore, so dont tell me not to generalise my opinions junior.

You mentioned that it had flaws yourself so you opened the doors to rebuttle on that issue. And the simple fact is and it comes down to everything, from OS, to apps is stability. My comments were merely a reflection upon the lack of stability of those programs forementioned.

Given the rather acute adress you gave my first comment perhaps we should also discuss your emotional stability, you seemed a little sensitve and snappy in that reply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The arguement about windowblinds being a hog shouldn't even be happening:

forreal.png

and this is on my parents p2 400 with 64mb ram,"wbload"=124K...

WB 3.1 btw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Osiris  

most likely unlike yourself im not in school anymore, so dont tell me not to generalise my opinions junior.

You mentioned that it had flaws yourself so you opened the doors to rebuttle on that issue.  And the simple fact is and it comes down to everything, from OS, to apps is stability.  My comments were merely a reflection upon the lack of stability of those programs forementioned.  

Given the rather acute adress you gave my first comment perhaps we should also discuss your emotional stability, you seemed a little sensitve and snappy in that reply.

most likely seeing as how your what? 18 and I'm almost 24 and graduated out of school when i was 17 you can kill the grampa adams attitude ok?

Given the rather acute address I gave your first comment perhaps we should discuss your tendancy to accurately gauge everyones likes and dislikes on this board in relation to your own for as to my emotional stability or lack thereof its irrelevant since thats in no relation to the topic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Make sure you get 3.2 when it's released. They've managed to make the bitmaps global (on XP). This means a) no memory or GDI wastage due to duplicated bitmap load, and b) much faster app load time. The heavier the skin, the more significant it is, but I noticed a huge improvement even on my UIS1 skin. 3.0 was good, but this is the release where it really starts feeling snappy on launch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by greenreaper  

Make sure you get 3.2 when it's released. They've managed to make the bitmaps global (on XP). This means a) no memory or GDI wastage due to duplicated bitmap load, and b) much faster app load time. The heavier the skin, the more significant it is, but I noticed a huge improvement even on my UIS1 skin. 3.0 was good, but this is the release where it really starts feeling snappy on launch.

just 3.1 was already a huge improvement over the previous versions (except for the repaint issues with kyro drivers) and even I'll admit that

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Osiris  

Theres your probelm isnt it.  People dont want flaws.  They want things to work.  Plain and simply Msstyles system works.  They dont have to install 3rd party software that most people think slows down there system and is "dodgey".  And those that are game enough use Windows Blinds because it despite chewing up more resources then PacMan, is stable and doesnt cause people problems.

The facts are "styles" use more resources that WB...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really don't know which is better on the resources-wise side. Since we're comparing them on XP, GDI/User resources don't really count (although they do on 9x, so it's unlikely that WB really takes up much of them either). The only ones I can think of are memory and CPU time.

Memory is hard to judge because of the way they both work, but realistically, if they both do the same thing graphics-wise, they're both going to take up about the same space in memory. Multiple skins in-use might take more with WB - but then, it's something you can't do at all with msstyles.

CPU time - benchmarks seem to indicate that WB has an edge in most areas. However, feedback is mixed. Some say it's fast, some that it's slow. Finding out what factors cause this is a big issue. Hopefully the load time reduction will eliminate most of these, but there may be some conditions (like, lots of windows on top of each other) where WB is indeed slower. At least it's possible to give new versions to users and see if they can tell the difference.

So really, hard to differentiate right now, though I'd say 3.2 will give WB an edge performance-wise, along with Hyperpaint. As to features, well, I think I can safely say WB has more. But then it costs $20, so it should. ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well Osiris actually Wicked Kitten did not mention the flaw I did and I am not nor is she if I remember correctly (I don't actually know her but I do know her boyfriend a bit) still in school. Also SHE is not a junior. She was not bothered by your opinion so much as your staement as to what "people" want being as you are not the only opinion on the board she started the thread for those who are interested. Not to havw you come in and shoot it down saying thats not what "people' want and lastly Litestep works great except the CPU call glitch which they are working on I'm sure. But when you remove that one call from the few themes that have it it often runs far more stabily than Explorer and with far fewer resources. And for those who are comparing the shell replacement's to WB and VS they aren't the same thing at all. Shell replacements don't skin anything they replace the general layout of the shell. Then you can use WB or VS to skin you windows as well but they are two completly different types of programs and as for shell replacements they don't run over the top of explorer they replace it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

lol what is this a joke? you go off at me for generalising a comment and now your stating what she was trying to say and what she meant. Could be me but I dont think your viable to account for what she did or did not mean.

Secondly she did adress the flaw, as did you then, it doesnt matter what you dress it up as flaw, or "glitch" as you call it, they both mean the same thing.

Thirdly I can generialise my opinion on the basis of facts. Because as I orignanal post ppl dont want to install third party software and they want stability. They know the Msstyles skinning is stable, thats why most ppl are using that and none of your "glitched" litestep skins, and how can I generalise this because if you havent noticed on this and 100 other sites msstyles skins are what most ppl are discussing or using themes on. But I guess being female wicked kitten you wouldnt be aware that theres a bigger world out there, and other sites similar to neowin and other communites like this. But thats okay I know females are prone to one mindedness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.