Windows themes

I know we've talked about Mozilla/Firefox/Etc... extensions and themes
in the past, but I've never seen anybody here talk about Windows
themes/shells. I only just heard about custom windows shells (basically
new user interfaces for windows) and now I'm kinda hooked - don't think
I could go back to the ugly WinXP theme or Windows classic theme now!

I grabbed myself LiteStep (apparently the most popular custom shell)
and downloaded a few themes to play around with. LiteStep lets theme
designers Do pretty much whatever they like with the interfaces and is
very modular, letting you turn on and off features with ease (so you
can be minimalist or....maximumist, or anything in between). While they
don't tend to be quite as user friendly or simple to tweak as the
standard windows themes, if you spend a little time tweaking settings
in script files you can get quite a bit of control.

Here is a picture of my newly tweaked desktop, using LiteStep with the "non | step" theme...



Funnily enough, my only real issue with this theme, and something I
can't seem to find out how to change, is how to get my desktop icons
showing again :biggrin:

If any of you want to look into custom shells, I suggest you check out
LiteStep. The offical site is down (and apparently has been for some
time) but you can download it and find out more info here...

http://beyondconvention.net/ohussain/lsinstaller/

A good place to grab themes for it, and lots of other shells and programs...

http://www.customize.org/list/ls

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Well... as for me, I prefer Linux and KDE XD

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HL2 tutorials 'n' stuff: http://madedog.pri.ee
217.159.236.34:27050 - CSS Server - Clean | koffer.ee

Is Litestep free? I used to use ThemeXP or something but it was only 30-day shareware, though there were some good themes with it. I'll have to try this one out :smile:

I use Tuneup XP, has a built in theme program majigger.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

Litestep is free. That non-step theme is nice I only have one problem. The bar is on the top and won't move to the bottom :sad:

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http://www.jamesdeth.co.uk

I WANT TO KEEP MY SNARKPIT NAME AS THURSDAY- AND NOT CHANGE IT TO MY NEW ALIAS OF THALDARIN! WHY? NOSTALGIC PURPOSES FOR ME! STOP ASKING ME IF I WANT TO GET IT CH

Thursday - click the button with the backwards L shape on it, and a
menu will pop up that lets you change the taskbar to the bottom, as
well as change its colour theme. You have to do a fair bit of digging
to find out how to change lots of things, and most things require a bit
of scripting (I've been playing around adding in "bang" commands, which
let you do pretty much anything through the command line on the
taskbar), but I think its worth it in the end to finally have things
the way you actually want them. These things don't seem to come in a
very useable form - I spent a good few hours setting up right click
menus and what have you :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Ah there we go. Now I put it at the bottom the Opera Browser logo won't appear like it did before. Argh.... I will figure it out somehow, bit like the desktop icon thing.

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http://www.jamesdeth.co.uk

I WANT TO KEEP MY SNARKPIT NAME AS THURSDAY- AND NOT CHANGE IT TO MY NEW ALIAS OF THALDARIN! WHY? NOSTALGIC PURPOSES FOR ME! STOP ASKING ME IF I WANT TO GET IT CH

I am waiting for Longhorn (or the eXPedition... ) which has a 3D window manager :-P

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HL2 tutorials 'n' stuff: http://madedog.pri.ee
217.159.236.34:27050 - CSS Server - Clean | koffer.ee

I use Microsofts new official "Royale" theme based on Windows Media
Centre Edition. Shame they kept so quiet about it, as it's quite a nice
theme. You can get it
here
if you're interested.

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My site

Nice app. Trying it out now, trying to find a good theme.

Something for all nerds: http://www.customize.org/details/34281

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What the Snarkpitters listen to!

I'm quite a fan of Royale, Loco, just got it.

I am waiting for Longhorn (or the eXPedition... ) which has a 3D window manager :-P

SphereXP can do that now. And it's free. Pretty cool, really.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

I have Smartbar XP on the right side of my screen, with the Windows task bar disabled and the screen res 1152*864

I'd get a screen shot, but my Photobucket account exceeded it's bandwidth...

i once used some mac themes and object dock, but for some reason it deleted my shortcuts and then i started to hate it.

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Boo f**king Hoo

I have LiteStep on my system now. I dont use it much. Its not a theme prgram as much as a new UI, heck it unloads most of windows and uses just what it needs to still be a Windows Based Machine.

<div><div>[quote[

SphereXP can do that now. And it's free. Pretty cool, really.

</div></div>

I tried that out, and I really hated it. It was so wierd, and
only my desktop icons would move, none of my regular windows
would. It's a neat idea though.

I use the "Olive Green" theme that came pre-packaged with Windows XP. It serves the purpose well, but it might not be the prettiest. I am so used to it by now that I see no point of changing to anything else.

At one point in my life, before I turned twenty, I used to mess around with icons and themes all the time. I even customized the Windows startup animation screen, and I had all sorts of custom sounds for each Windows event. This was with Windows 3.1!

Man, that really dates me, doesn't it?

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I always turn off all the advanced graphic feature things (except font
antialiasing), and change the themes back to Windows 2000 style. I
think it's a bit more practical that way.

The cool thing about litestep is that it really lets you make it as
practical or as fancy as you like. I think I've probably got it setup
to be more productive than standard windows UI's and there is still a
lot of room for improvement.

For example, I mentioned briefly about being able to do scripting and
create commands you can run from your taskbar. An example is being able
to type "? <args>" and have it pop open your browser and search
for your arguments in your search engine of choice, or you can create
specifics such as my "?image <args>" to search for google images,
or "?amazon <args>" to search on amazon. I can just type
"!snarkpit" or "!mapcore" and get to websites without needing to open
my browser or clutter my desktop with links. You can also use it
exactly like the windows "run..." command - type in any address on your
computer and be taken there, execute any program (including non-pathed
ones such as "calc" or "ping"), and do anything you'd normally have to
bring up a cmd window for basically.

Another fairly neat feature I've not quite gotten used to but think
could be handy is the multiple desktop system. This lets you have
several desktops that can be cycled between or selected from the
taskbar, allowing you to, for instance, minimise/restore multiple
things at once.

So yeah, basically having a replacement shell, particularly one as
modular and tweakable as LiteStep, really lets you go crazy with
customising things for your own productivity.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

i used to enjoy 'themeing' the screens at work. a few years ago, i found out the name of the old 'it is now safe to turn off your computer' file. it was a small bmp but had a .sys extension, so i made a new one in paint that said the computer had encountered a serious error and would explode in 10 seconds. it wouldn't really have been funny if i'd done it on my own computer instead of my managers. worked a treat. and the touch screen pic i made as a desktop background worked pretty well as a dafty magnet.

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i eat paint

Something else you might want to try is ClearType,
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx , basically it
makes text smoother, more like text printed on a piece of paper.

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What the Snarkpitters listen to!

My desktop (radiance background and Smartbar XP):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v637/WildCard832/background.jpg

You need to empty your recycle bin man! You've got over a gig of stuff
in there, madness :biggrin: Pretty cool system info on your taskbar there
though.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Dunno if anyones brought this up yet, but you can make windows XP look like the next version of windows they are currently working on. Its called Windows Longhorn.

The conversion program is free and available at MS.

I will look to see if I can relocate it.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

My current desktop - showing off the royale theme and serving as guidance for those of us with exams...

http://img93.echo.cx/img93/8414/desktop76054bf.jpg

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My site

TBH, most of the programs you guys have put up I've tried- I hated Royal, all it is is a recolour of standard windows theme, you don't need to download any crappy theme to make it look like royale.

As for litestep- hated it with a vengeance. So stupid to use, everything is so tiny and theres no decent manuals to tell you whats going on! I had to open safemode winXP just to uninstal it because it wouldn't tell me how!

I'm just gunna stick with standard windows themes that you can download- none of this crazy s**t.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

I just use rainy day theme (the windows one) and some sorta back ground...

You can Find LOADS of themes in www.wincustomize.com XD

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.::Dark|Masta::. - One name. One legend.

Well, I took a look at the lite step thingy -- I was on that customize.org website ,and I saw a theme I wanted -- then I realized that it wouldn't load without litestep. Okay, no big deal.

The big deal started when I loaded and installed litestep, restarted my computer... and was quite horrified at what I saw. Worst of all, the theme I had been trying to get working, didn't seem to actually have the file it need for Litestep to reconize (I will check to make sure that it is a litestep, but I'm very sure.)

So about 3 minutes ago, I did a system restore to get my good ol windows XP classic theme back :razz:

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

Dude all you needed to do was run an explorer window and make it to the control panel- system restore IS bad for your PC, fact. I don't care what evidence anyone has against my comment, I've seen it work over time...

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

ive had litestep installed but not activated, it puts two icons on your
desktop, one to restart to litestep and one to restart to explorer :razz: im trying to check out that hl2 theme, and the standard litestep theme kills my ingame fps, any ideas? latest drivers ect. :razz:

EDIT:

ive just got the hl too theme installed, with a few alterations, here is what i got:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/Dred_furst/litestepthing.jpg

ive linked it because the image is huge :razz:

EDIT #2:

i used to enjoy 'themeing' the screens at work. a few years ago,
i found out the name of the old 'it is now safe to turn off your
computer' file. it was a small bmp but had a .sys extension, so i made
a new one in paint that said the computer had encountered a serious
error and would explode in 10 seconds. it wouldn't really have been
funny if i'd done it on my own computer instead of my managers. worked
a treat. and the touch screen pic i made as a desktop background worked
pretty well as a dafty magnet.

whats that file, i can have so much fun at school! and anyone know how to stop it turning off automatically?

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I need a new sig