11.03.00 – 17.03.00

Recently, I have been lurking on the mailing list of the
up and coming shellexperts.com site.  This is comprised mostly of
a lot of newbies and a few people who have been around for a bit.
My first impressions of this little group are WOW.  I can’t believe
how organized they are compared to just about any other site or
the community as a whole.  No premature launch of the site.  No
bickering if something isn’t to someones liking.  Just a lot of
discussion, action, discussion, tweaking, discussion, more tweaking.
THIS is the way LiteStep should be.  None of this flame wars on the
list. None of the childish messes that I have been witness to lately.
Once the site is up and running, I can almost assure you that it will
do nothing but get better and better and with a minimum of problems
too.  I suggest everyone in the community take a page out of there
book and consider actually working together instead of trying to
either one up each other or out do each other.

- demigod

—————————
TOP NEWS STORIES
—————————

- Dev team needs your help again (12:42pm 16.03)

“Attention Litesteppers!

“Litestep has been getting more and more stable over the past
couple weeks, but we’re still working to track down a couple
resource leaks. We hate trying to find resource leaks,
especially ones like this that do not cause problems for a
considerable amount of time. I’d like to request, on behalf
of the devteam, that you folks try to help us out a bit.

“What we need to eliminate leaks is to narrow them down to a
particular module or a particular action. The easiest way to
watch for resource leaks is to use a resource monitor. Using
a monitor, try performing various shell actions, running
with and without various modules, and generally poking and
prodding Litestep until you see the resources go up but never
come back down. Once you can reproduce the leak, let us know
where you found it.

“There are several good resource monitors. I personally use
the Windows 2000 Task Manager. The Task Manager has a tab
that displays process information, called “Processes”. When
on this tab, go to the menu “View/Select Columns” and add the
columns “GDI Objects” and “USER Objects” to your display. The
other columns can be selected to search out other leaks and
problems…be our guest. I have not been able to get this to
work in NT4, and obviously there’s no TaskManager in Windows
9X, so if someone knows another good resource monitor, please
post it to the list!!

“What we are looking for is leaks in USER and GDI objects
and memory leaks in general (“Mem Usage” in TaskManager). The
tighter you can narrow things down the better…reporting
that a particular module seems related to the leak is good;
reporting that clicking the left mouse button on the right
icon in that module causes the leak is *much* better.

“The sooner we find these leaks, the sooner we’ll have a
release out…this is the most critical of all problems with
the current builds. We’re counting on your help! Thank you!

- Charles Nutter (Headius)”

—————————
MODULES
—————————

- LSWchanger 1.2 ~ Tzvetan Raikov (9:55am 13.03)

“LSWchanger is another wallpaper changing module, BUT, this
one is REALLY cool:

- can use a list with images in .BMP, .PCX, .JPG and .PNG
file formats
- can change the current picture at a specified interval
of time
- can be controlled by using of !bang commands”

%%UPDATE%% (9:46am 15.03)

- litestep directory can be different from c:\litestep
- other bugs fixed

url – http://www.geocities.com/wchangerbg
e-mail – craikov@hotmail.com
(source: http://www.desktopian.org)

+—————+

- grdTray 2.0 b2.1 ~ Gustav Munkby (11:30am 13.03)

grdTray is a system tray replacement module for LiteStep
which provides greater control over appearance, placement
and icon layoutClick. Grab it Here to get it.

What’s new.
- completely rewritten in a c++ object-oriented way
- new IconHue effect included
- fixed some bugs and tweaked the code a lot
- made it open-source [ see source license ]
- temporarily removed the bang-commands

%%UPDATE%% (12:56pm 15.03)

Changes for v2 b2:
- IconHue effect is recoded (no need for msimg32.dll)
- Saturation (or rather desaturnation effect added)
- re-added the bang-commands

Changes for v2 b2.1
- actually deletes the deleted icons from memory
- fix for applications not removing their icons on
termination, such as ICQ
- swapped the Icon Hue effect colors, to make it RGB instead
of BGR

url – http://home.swipnet.se/grd/ls/
e-mail – grd@swipnet.se
(source: http://www.chunkymunky.com/modulo)

+—————+

- V_Bang 1.98 ~ Blkhawk (11:20am 14.03)

- I did a *total* rewrite of the volume control Interface
- I did also a rewrite of the rest of the Module
(Ok, I DID copy&past some parts ;)
- The Channels are now counted from 0 instead of -1…
0 is now the main Volume instead of -1.
- Changed the way the !bangs are to be called….
Always use brackets! “!Volume_Up [0]”
- you can now use !Set_Volume to set the Left/Right channels
to different values: “!Set_Volume [0,50,60]”
This sets the main volume with 50% volume on the left and
60% on the right Channel.
- You can grab the Source from my HomePage ;)
- It Should work with the old LsSlider 0.7

url – http://www.blkhawk.de
e-mail – blkhawk@blkhawk.de
(source: LS Mailing List ~ New V_Bang)

+—————+

- MidPop 1.5 ~ Spectra9 (2:42pm 14.03)

Got this sent to me via news@chunkymunky.com:

“Hi, I’m sending the updated version of MidPop (1.5) for
Litestep, a module for displaying the popup menu with middle
button mouse click. It fixs the “cannot find initmoduleex”
error among other things and also added exclusion list
support. Thanks.”

url – http://www.desktopian.org
e-mail – illusion@cryogen.com
(source: Spectra9 via e-mail)

+—————+

- bscript 1.1 ~ Tzvetan Raiko (9:45am 15.03)

- litestep directory can be different from c:\litestep
- Now can execute files
- other bugs fixed

url – http://www.geocities.com/wchangerbg
e-mail – craikov@hotmail.com
(source: http://floach.pimpin.net)

+—————+

- lsrc 1.2 ~ Tzvetan Raiko (9:46am 15.03)

- litestep directory can be different from c:\litestep
- other bugs fixed

url – http://www.geocities.com/wchangerbg
e-mail – craikov@hotmail.com
(source: http://floach.pimpin.net)

+—————+

- Systray 1.04 ~ Maduin (3:26pm 16.03)

- bugfix: an application re-adding an existing icon caused
a GDI resource leak

url – http://maduin.dasoft.org
e-mail – maduin@dasoft.org
(source: http://www.desktopian.org)

+—————+

- LsTransparent 1.0.0.8 ~ Carluchi (12:10pm 17.03)

“LsTransparent is a module that allows you to make most
litestep modules transparent with some simple settings and
!bang commands. You can control the level of transparency as
well. You can also fade in and out these modules with !bang
commands.

“This module is a BETA module, so expect bugs.

“The module works in Win9x WinNT and Win2K.

“It does not make every module truely transparent like some
other applications do in Win2k. It paints the modules to
give the appearence of them being transparent. Think of it
as a poor man’s real time Alpha Blending.”

url – http://floach.pimpin.net
e-mail – carluchi@stratos.net
(source: http://floach.pimpin.net)

—————————
THEMES
—————————

- GeoCube 1.0 ~ pulsar (2:39pm 14.03)

“Version 1.0 of GeoCube is ready! I think i’ve included
everything, if something is missing or it doesn’t work or
something, mail me and let me know so I can update it. The SS
is the same as yesterday because it hasn’t changed..”

url – users.cyberzone.net/~shade682
ss – http://www.litestep.net/themes/ss/geocubess1.gif
e-mail – shade682@cyberzone.net
(source: http://www.litestep.net)

—————————
WEB SITES
—————————

- Litestep2000 get’s a new home ~ jalist (12:14pm 17.03)

jalist moved his site litestep2000 on over to chunkymunky
(http://www.chunkymunky.com/litestep2000/) This is a UK
LiteStep site, and worth the visit imho.

url – http://www.chunkymunky.com/litestep2000
e-mail – jalist@litestep2000.co.uk
(source: http://www.chunkymunky.com)

—————————
PROGRAMS
—————————

- lsDrinks 2.1.6 ~ nf0 (11:26 14.03)

Changes since last version:

- 2.1.6 Added Geeknews.org, Fixed Segfault
- 2.1.5 Added After Y2k Cartoon
- Added LiteStep.Net,Litestep.net Screen Shots (using
backends from MrJukes and geekMASTR)
- Added the ability for the script to create a directory if
one doesn’t exist so in including as the sub dirs is no
longer needed.
- 2.1.4 Changed Floach to read from Desktopian * Thanks
Tin_Omen *, Changed Tin_Toys to Desktopian
- Changed the htm page to added a different header and url,
Added Shell City
- 2.1.3 Added Astronomy Pic of the Day, Dilbert.FileForum
Changed the Way Floach Works.
- 2.1.2 Added User Friendly Strip.

url – http://www.10500bc.org/lsDrinks/index.htm
e-mail – nf0@10500bc.org
(source: http://floach.pimpin.net)

+—————+

- !.exe ~ Maduin (3:18 15.03)

Maduin has had this around for awhile I guess.  It’s a
command line application that allows you to run any
LiteStep !Bang command directly from a dos prompt.  This
little program opens a hoard of new ideas.

url – http://maduin.dasoft.org
e-mail – maduin@dasoft.org
(source: http://floach.pimpin.net)

………………………………

—-
Tips
—-

- Over at mindjunction.com, there is a list of all the clsid’s for
windows.  This is extremely useful if you want to link a shortcut
or popup to say dial-up networking or my computer.  The url is

http://www.mindjunction.com/articles.php3?main=Articles&item=4

………………………………

—–
Retro
—–

- Still no mods sent, but that could be because for some reason
my @chunkymunky.com addy is dead.  Please, if you were trying to
send me some, mail them to demigod@meganet.net.

………………………………

————-
Latest Builds
————-

- Official – b24.5 build 031300
Modified [lsapi, workspace, popup / Message / 03-12-2000]
o Fixed lsapi crashing with an undeclared variable
(envvar was being set to NULL, and then was being
added to the map)
o Removed lsutil from the desktop2 dependencies (per
noodge)
o Added MessageBox warning if lsapi finds an
unitialized variable, will tell the variable, and
the line
o Fixed !popupdynamicfolder not displaying folders
more than 3 levels deep
o Fixed !popupdynamicfolder using the combined paths
when executing

………………………………

————-
Mailing Lists
————-

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