...its 1400x1050 on my notebook.

austerity is just fine, a couple other themes are misaligned slightly, but Xhenit is just crappy on it. unfortunately, Xhenit is the theme id like to use.

i looked in step.rc. seems there are a bunch of pixel values for each component of the theme, with corresponding resolutions. so i figure i can edit these values, and add my res to the if/else statements.

1) am i correct?
2) is there a utility i can use to restart the shell when i want to, instead of logging off/on to see my changes to step.rc and the pixel values?

thanks, sorry if this is a stupid question.

1)I'm pretty confident you are.

2)Recyle litestep, either from the popup (Litestep>recycle), or by typing "!recycle" in lsxcommand.

ok. do i basically just have to edit the pixel values, and then recycle, over and over, kind of like when you're doing css pixel values?

also, is there a way to see what modules a theme is using? and a way to add shortcuts?

yup

look for *NetLoadModule in your theme.rc or LoadModule in your step.rc. There are already 6 shortcuts or so for applications but you can of course add more.