Ok, right now, I'm just learning C++.
I;m not very good at it yet, but I understand that I have alot of requests and I'd like to help if possible.
I also happen to know PHP and VB6.0, but I prefer not to use VB for certain coding as it's inefficient.

Here's a list of features Litestep should have:
-Hotkey support, hotkey's were all controller by explorer...not that that shell is gone, they don't work. It would be ok to download an app for this, but it would take up more system resources.
-Multiple Icon selections on the desktop, it just seems wierd when I can't actually select an Icon. (a feature I'm sure many would like)
-Dragable icons, even if you have to simulate a fake copy of the icon dragging, I would still like to see and Icon move in some form when I drag it....this could later leed to full drag support with icons. :P
-Animated Menus, it would be aweseom if you guys made optimized code so skin developers could animated movement of menus.
-Desktop icon listing is only by name...I really hate that.
-Fix the Program list "&" symbols. Many programs, by default, read a single "&" as an underscore, well, I used alot of those for folders before I got litestep and it looked pretty funky. (Just convert all "&" to "&&" before it lists it and it'll be fixed)
...There are others, I'm sure, but that's all I can think of for now. :)

As for the moment...right now, I'm working on a more modernized Lightstep skin, I feel the default one is one of the best around, but it seems to resemble Gnome (from linux) quite a bit in it's style.
Well, I happen to prefer KDE and Windows XP styles more than Gnome. So, I'm making my own skin from scratch that's similar to the default skin, but has a bit more shading and a few design changes that I feel *minimize* the space taken up by the taskbar.

1) uhmm...hotkey.dll. check your hotkey.rc on how to set them.
2) I think this is possible in xDesktop...don't quote me on that though
3) I know this works in xDesktop
4) Also possible already
5) If we converted them all straight up like that then we would loose the functionality of the Underscore.

uhmmm...its LiteStep...not Lightstep...and there are hundreds of themes out there already so there is no need to start from scratch. Obviously you haven't used LS for very long as all of your requests are already possible. You may want to look around a little more and not just assume that the one theme that you have installed does everything LS can do. Welcome to the community btw.

Austerity's well over a year old, and there have been a lot of improvements (as well as completely new features) added since. Like dev said, look around a bit more, check out some of the other community sites, read some forums...LS is much more powerful than Austerity makes it look.

Try some newer themes and also take a look at the features available with the modules those themes use.

As deuce said, Austerity is ancient and predates xModules completely (I think), so it's a very poor example of what's possible with litestep.

Ok, I found much better modules...I didn't know you could do it that easily.
I found Clickonic to be my favorite as it resembles a standard desktop icon interface more-so than many others.

As for other skins, I've seen alot more now and I've still decided I prefer the basic layout of Austerity but there are many things I wish to change. So far I have nearly completed my taskbar design in photoshop. I must say, it resembles Austerity, but is very different in many ways.

Obviously you didn't go back too far through the themes as that style of theme was the mainstay for a while.

I went through and I saw many nice themes, I just like the basic taskbar style.

My advice would be to *not* use Austerity and "change" it. The inner-workings of it are just too... bulky.

You could actually start with an empty file in notepad if you wanted.

Start with *NetLoadModule lines, then configure each module :)

Pretty simple actually.

Or, you could start with an empty file in notepad and add nothing to it. You could call the theme "Tabula Rasa" :P

Or use a Jamaican flag as the wallpaper and call it Tabula Rasta.

Or... an image of the space shuttle. Tabula NASA.

Or an image of Charlize Theron's butt, and call it Fabulous Assa.

Ya know, I don't think DeViLbOi is going to like us turning these forums into another Blizzle cheesebox. =P

Speaking of which, what happened to Blizzle anyway?

I'm pretty sure he won't like it at all, but what are we gonna do? I have no idea what's happened to blizzle though... it's been unavailable all day :(

I don't like being the last 'serious' post in a thread...

It makes me look so square.

Rectangular, actually. But then all of our posts are rectangular.

Ban the last 3 posters, I say!

Yeah, ban them! BAN THEM!

Oh wait, now I'm the last poster. Darn.

No, *I'm last*. Mwuahahaha.