Stepping back to litestep
Ever since I saw the fanatastic themes avaliable to linux users I have been striving to re-create the same eye candy on a win 32 desktop.
In the late 90's I found litestep and found it gave the freedom I yernd for, but I never create my own theme
After 2 years or so of using other peoples litestep themes I ended up reverting to win XP's default theme. That was untill about 12 months ago when I took up Sharp E This I used for a good yeah and very succesfully, on fact here's a screenshot. The shell was very stable and yet I became dismaied with it because it was rather limited with respect to the extensibility of the interface. If you are looking for a low maintaince shell replacement SharpE is great. I should add that the development team are working hard on a new version that alows for a greaeter degree of styling, and when it's released I might just check it out once again.
To fill the void I took alook at litestep again. After 4/5 years I felt sure it will have advanced, ammd be even more configurable. The first thing I notice was the core version hadn't actually changed except maybe for 0.24.6 to 0.24.7 I was soon concerned that development was dead and as a sheel I was going to be disapointed. There was one major thing I had over looked, litestep's module these in contrast have been contined to be developed.
When I originally used litestep I was, well... scared to create a theme. Having alot more confidence in my own ablities to understand, design and implyment much comples systems I was no longer scared. It turns out they are in fact very simple to create. Follow these instructions for createing a Microthemeand with in 2/3 mins you will have loaded in to your own theme, all be in very "Micro". Yes theres alot of documentation and heaps of modules and different versions. But using the latest versions and having easy access to thier doumentation you will have no problems knocking somehting up.
Here's some of my attempts, walkin', joggin' and runnin' I created these three over 3 days and found it very enjoyable. So get skinin'! And if you can reccommend anyother Shell replacments please fell free to make suggestions.