I new here, but i have a request.
Can anybody make a Vista theme for LiteStep or it already exist? Thanks if you answer.
Why not just get a Vista VS and use Explorer?
BigDaddy made one, cant remember if he released it or not.
Maybe ask politely.
SS here:
http://www.litestep.net/upload/profiles/Novum-like_3529-468.png
Well, just don't let his wife know.
That's not a VS - it's WB. Note the resource-gobbling per-pixel alpha.
jqubit, resource-gobbling? WB uses 0%CPU (when not dragging windows) and only 12,640K memory while skinning two desktops worth of windows with per-pixel alpha. Even litestep itself (at least with the them I'm using) takes up more memory. It's skinning is even more tight than the xp skinning system it hooks directly onto (which it also helped develop, but that's unrelated). Don't go spreading negative rumors that are based on when WIN98 was still the big OS.
rush68, windowblinds is a resource hog, always has been, always will be.
Even on my system (x4600 dual core, 7600gt) i notice the lag after installing that crap.
Oh no - not *this* argument again...
There was a discussion about this on WinCustomize a little while ago but now I can't find the article/thread. Someone, either a Stardock employee or a WB fanboy, wrote an elaborate piece trying to debunk the myth that WB is a resource hog. From what I can recall it wasn't entirely convincing. But then again, resource usage and lagginess has never been the big problem with WB IMO. Bugs and incompatibilities on the other hand...
Windows classic colors FTW!
That's what I've ended up using - just the classic style with .3DC files. It *would* be nice if we could modify the titlebar look just a little bit, while still retaining the "colorizability" of the classic style. I don't need fancy scrollbars and extra buttons, but if I could slim down that titlebar and perhaps do some vertical gradient effects with it rather than the available (lame) horizontal gradient, well, I'd go for that. I like the bbleanskin method personally - I just don't like the shell as much.
I agree with you completely. The classic style is hard to beat in terms of ease of use and, IMHO, tasteful simplicity. The only reason most people dislike it and find it dull, I think, is that we're so used to it. Hell, we've been looking at this style for ten years or so...
A vertical titlebar gradient would be great, that'd really spice up that old look immensely. I doubt it can be done (easily) though, otherwise we would probably have seen examples of it by now.
As for slimming stuff down... well, I happen to know that there's a great little module being developed ATM. It'll be all a classic color fan will need as far as LS goes. I can't say more since it's all very unofficial right now, but it'll probably be released in the not-too-distant future.
Oh, that's it. Just tease me, leave me hanging.
Seems like it'd be an easy modification to switch the gradient in windows classic from horizontal to vertical though - just swap the x and y coordinates, right? Maybe we can get hold of the source code. ;) That'd only give you two colors to work with though - not quite the effect I'd desire.
An LS port of whatever thing bblean uses to skin its windows would be super duper excellent.
and West, just tell me who is writing it, please. (if it starts with "Andy" I will be very very happy indeed :D)
C'mon fractal, don't make poor Andymon do *everything*.
Hey, I make you do stuff every now and then too! :P
Plus its not like anyone else has the hacker skills to pull it off :D
@Boreas: All right, it's not like I've signed an NDA or something so OK, here's the deal: e-sushi is working on an LS module version of ECS with some input from yours truly. It's basically the standalone ECS app in module format plus nice little things like being able to set every "windows classic" parameter on the fly with bangs... metrics, colors, fonts, font sizes -- you name it. Color schemes can be saved to file instantly and you can disable visual styles with it (after politely asking the end user, of course). You can do some really neat stuff with it, it's like syscolor on steroids.
@fractal: Sorry to disappoint you but it's neither a port of bbLeanSkin nor made by Andymon. But it's a really cool module anyway IMO. BTW, isn't bbLeanSkin open source... ? And, IIRC, based on ShellWM which is also open source? For an inclined person, possessing the right programming skills, creating LSSkin.dll shouldn't be impossible... I still have wet dreams about xSkin which will let you skin your windows with solid colors the xModule way. Isn't it time that we show the Stardocks of the world that sexy window skinning can be free and open source? ;)
That sounds good to me. I was looking at the possibility of getting at some of that stuff with a VBScript (anything in the registry is fair game), but couldn't find a way to access some of the settings and make them "stick" on the fly with the methods available to a script. ECS on steroids would do nicely. =)
I'd also like to see a tool that would let you generate color schemes more easily than 3DCC. For instance, it'd be nice to be able to group a bunch of settings together and apply a color to all of them simultaneously. It'd also be nice to specify that shadow and hilight colors ought to be derived from a given base color, just lightened or darkened appropriately. I may be able to do something like this with just CSS and an HTA, but haven't had time to work on it yet.
West: *splurt* oops I just wet my pants XD That sounds great! I love ecs (changing fonts is a big must for any color tool!!!) Wicked!
THe triumphant return of e-sushi!?
Brian: I totally aggree with that. That tool would be very good. I always felt 3Dcc was kinda wacked out (that title bar it has, why skin the title bar of a color changer!? its mental!)
That tool your thinking of sounds very cool, I did want multi change support, but the base color thing sounds very brilliant!
OK fractal, no more caffeine for you this week. And change those pants before you get some sort of fungal thing going on.
"It'd also be nice to specify that shadow and hilight colors ought to be derived from a given base color, just lightened or darkened appropriately."
Yes, that is something the standard Windows appearance dialog is able to do, and I also miss it when using 3DCC. Same as I would also like to be able to specify a font and font size for everything, and then go back and tweak the settings that should differ, instead of settings fonts and settings for like 10 different items one at a time. Maybe that would be something to suggest for ECS; !ecsMainColor (or something), which sets the 3DFace color and automatically calculates highlights and shadows (though maybe with a different algorithm than the Windows one, which often makes the color schemes too low contrast).
edit: italics seem broken again...
@fractal: "THe triumphant return of e-sushi!?"
Heh, I'm trying to convince him to do some more LS stuff, yeah :)
It seems to me that something like 3 to 5 basic colors ought to be enough for most reasonable color schemes, with the remainder of the colors being generated from them automatically, perhaps with a "contrast" slider to let you dial in shadows and hilights to your taste, and a few other tweakable options (active versus inactive titlebar, etc.). At least that 'd suit *my* tastes.
Good thinking. We could have a main, or background color (used for most 3d elements), and then the shadows and highlight are calculated from that. I.e. add/remove [this] amount of brightness from the background color to achieve the bevels. Then there could be a foreground color which is used for titlebars and menu highlights. Plus of course titlebar text and highlight text. After that we'd only need two more colors: titlebar gradient and desktop background. That's pretty much all there is to a classic color scheme. That's five different colors. Would be super if you could just select those five colors and have an entire color scheme (you could of course tweak it later on, but that'd make things much easier).
Exactly. After doing that manually a half-dozen times in 3DCC, I'm ready to speed up the process. I am getting quicker at it though!
Personally I enjoy eye-candy, so image-less themes just don't excite me.
We aim to make imageless eye-candy. ;)
