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Topic: Long time no see

Glad to see LiteStep is still alive and that there's a number of familiar names around here. Hey all smile

So what's been going on the latest years? Is core devleopment still active? And what about modules and themes, are people still developing stuff? I've been out of the loop for like five years so I have absolutely no idea what LS and its community is like today.

As for me, I've been using Explorer ever since I gave up LS. I think I reached a point where I realized that with a nice VS and a few extensions, Explorer is not a bad shell. It let me do everything I needed to do, and with increasingly powerful computers the performance gain of using LS wasn't really there anymore.

All this changed recently though. I moved to Windows 7 last year, and a while back I got myself a second 22" monitor. To my surprise and dismay I found that you can't really do much at all with the secondary desktop in W7. I've been very happy with W7 so far but this is really a major oversight on Microsoft's part.

So as you may have guessed, I'm thinking of returning to LS. But before I jump in, I have a few questions:


1. Is LiteStep fully Win 7 x64 compatible these days?

2. Are the xModules still in development and/or x64 compatible?

3. Is it possible to have two taskbars, each one showing only the tasks on the screen it's on? (I seem to remember this used to be possible, but it's been a long time and I didn't use dual monitors back then)

4. Is there a module that remembers window positions and moves windows to the screen it was last on when launched?

I'm sincerely hoping the answer to all of the above is "yes", otherwise I think I'll just have to live with the limitiations in W7 Explorer hmm


TIA

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Re: Long time no see

Hi West,
Welcome back.
I just reply to answer one of your question :

3. Is it possible to have two taskbars, each one showing only the tasks on the screen it's on? (I seem to remember this used to be possible, but it's been a long time and I didn't use dual monitors back then)

And yes it is, i do it with xtaskbar i will post my conf but i m at work.

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Re: Long time no see

West wrote:

Glad to see LiteStep is still alive and that there's a number of familiar names around here. Hey all smile

Hello there smile

So what's been going on the latest years? Is core devleopment still active? And what about modules and themes, are people still developing stuff? I've been out of the loop for like five years so I have absolutely no idea what LS and its community is like today.

As for me, I've been using Explorer ever since I gave up LS. I think I reached a point where I realized that with a nice VS and a few extensions, Explorer is not a bad shell. It let me do everything I needed to do, and with increasingly powerful computers the performance gain of using LS wasn't really there anymore.

All this changed recently though. I moved to Windows 7 last year, and a while back I got myself a second 22" monitor. To my surprise and dismay I found that you can't really do much at all with the secondary desktop in W7. I've been very happy with W7 so far but this is really a major oversight on Microsoft's part.

So as you may have guessed, I'm thinking of returning to LS. But before I jump in, I have a few questions:


1. Is LiteStep fully Win 7 x64 compatible these days?

AFAIK (I'm running Windows XP 32bit) LS does work with Vista and Win7 64bit. I think you need to use the latest build. There are a few problems that are being worked on at the moment that will be fixed in a future release. There's plenty of guides out there about how to get LS working with Win7/Vista. I've seen a few written by the DeviantArt people as there are a number of active Litestep/shell groups on that site.

2. Are the xModules still in development and/or x64 compatible?

Yes, there are many modules still in development. There have been a number of 64bit releases as well ... see here - http://modules.shellfront.org/?M=D

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Re: Long time no see

West! I'm so excited!

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Re: Long time no see

traveled wrote:

And yes it is, i do it with xtaskbar i will post my conf but i m at work.

Thanks for confirming that! No need for posting code snippets, I think I can manage smile

djbarney wrote:

AFAIK (I'm running Windows XP 32bit) LS does work with Vista and Win7 64bit. I think you need to use the latest build. There are a few problems that are being worked on at the moment that will be fixed in a future release. There's plenty of guides out there about how to get LS working with Win7/Vista. I've seen a few written by the DeviantArt people as there are a number of active Litestep/shell groups on that site.

Cool, thanks. So is deviantart the place to go looking for LS themes these days? No dedicated LS theme sites anymore? What happened to ls-themes.org and lsuniverse? Both dead? sad

djbarney wrote:

Yes, there are many modules still in development. There have been a number of 64bit releases as well ... see here - http://modules.shellfront.org/?M=D

Thanks!

the-golem wrote:

West! I'm so excited!

Heh, glad to see you too mate smile I've also spotted Tobbe, xcal, acidfire, and rootrider on here. Any others from the old LS crew still around?

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Re: Long time no see

West!  Just saying hi. smile No time for answers at the moment...

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Re: Long time no see

Hey West ltns...I tried runnin LS on Win7x64...ended up not being worth my time.  I was spending more time just trying to recover parts of LS then I was using my PC.

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Re: Long time no see

Hey DeV... that's not what I was hoping to hear hmm Was that problems with LS itself or old themes/modules?

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Re: Long time no see

Part of it was multimonitor issues...a good amount of it was module stability...

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Re: Long time no see

Litestep (not) working well in Windows 7 is what's keeping me in XP. I haven't used Windows on my home desktop without LS since probably 2000.. and I'd rather not change that any time soon sad

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

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Re: Long time no see

rootrider wrote:

Litestep (not) working well in Windows 7 is what's keeping me in XP. I haven't used Windows on my home desktop without LS since probably 2000.. and I'd rather not change that any time soon sad

Looks like I'm stuck with Explorer then. As my computer's main task is music production I need an OS that lets me use more than 3GB RAM. So XP is simply out of the question.

Too bad hmm

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Re: Long time no see

I've never actually tried running LS in Windows 7... fwiw tongue

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

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Re: Long time no see

West wrote:
rootrider wrote:

Litestep (not) working well in Windows 7 is what's keeping me in XP. I haven't used Windows on my home desktop without LS since probably 2000.. and I'd rather not change that any time soon sad

Looks like I'm stuck with Explorer then. As my computer's main task is music production I need an OS that lets me use more than 3GB RAM. So XP is simply out of the question.

Too bad hmm

Bah. LiteStep works (mostly) fine in Win7. The only drawback so far is a small issue with how the tray icons are handled. We mostly know where to look, but either don't have the time or the knowhow how to solve the problem 100%. For what it's worth, the other shell mods our there are encountering the same problem, with *I think* the exception of one, and I'll be damned if I remember what it is.

There's also a cosmetic drawback of not being able to do the aero effects natively/hackishly very well in LiteStep, but that's a complete aesthetic issue and not a performance issue (imho).

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Re: Long time no see

Yes, LS works quite ok in win7 - I use it on all of my machines. The tray icons are the biggest problem, as are some password-protected WiFi networks. There are also some minor startup issues, but they are, curiously enough, different on every one of my machines. Some systray associated controlpanel apps crash explorer when started - very weird.

LiteStep addict since b23. http://brembs.net

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Re: Long time no see

Sharpenviro (SharpE) dont have tray issues. But it haves a so uggly apearence, and its no  themeable like LiteStep.