:: Shell-Shocked :: News: News-letter by az (blizzle.com)

Well, hello. It's so nice to see you. Yes, I took a bit of an unexpected vacation, and when I returned I really did mean to tell you of all my travels. Of course the old slideshow is nowhere near interesting enough for you, I realize this, so I was hoping we both could sit down and have a nice chat. Oh, no -- not just about my adventures. I suppose some of them may tie into our conversation, but I'd like to chat more about current events.

Like the new site? Erm, which you say? I suppose there has been a lot of changes, with Shellscape, blizzle, VirtualPlastic, LDI, FPN, bluebox LS.net and LS.com all being revamped in one way or another. So which is your favorite? Oh, that one. Well, I didn't mention it, but you know I think that's my favorite too.

It's raining shells, hallelujah it's raining shells, oh yeah! Oh. Sorry, I forgot you were there again. Sometimes I just like to break into song when I think of all the shell news that has passed since our last chat. I mean, bluebox has a new author, and site. How'd that happen? And the staff keeps evolving with bb4win. Both of these shells have had new releases, isn't that great? I know, you're a die-hard babya user, but I still thought you might be interested in talking about some of these changes. Great! You know SharpE has continued to evolve it's core. Have you downloaded it recently? The installer has been updated with all of the newest components, which is really nice. I can't even begin the mention all of the other new releases. What? You know...OpenVision2,NextStart, LiteShell. It's really been quite busy.

My word yes, he's been a coding machine lately. You know who else has been busy? That entire Geoshell community. Not only have they released their plugin SDK, but also there has been tons of new plugins and updates introduced lately. True, there's also been a lot of activity with new SharpE and Litestep plugins.

I know your eyes like to wander, so I'm sure you've been checking out some of the improvements to Serenade and Core which have been going on. I'm sure the updates to WindowBlinds and the new ShellWM window skinners have both caught your attention. What's that? Oh, I'm glad there's been work on that front too.

So much has happened since we last spoke, I still can't believe it. I mean, look at all of the wonderful OSX Dock options you have. Mobydock, Y's Dock, ObjectDock, all free and they're all slowly progressing toward true shell replacement. Sure are some fancy program launchers this bunch.

I'm sorry friend, but my mind has taken a meltdown as we walk down this memory lane. I think I need to take a quick nap.

...zzz...mmm...recent releases in some logical order

0irc 1.2.32 by murphy Torsten Stelling: 0irc is a small Litestep irc-client for the global chat network.
aclock 0.4.0.4 by McClaus: Very nice clock plugin for SharpE
Aurora 0.4: Adds a pulsing colored border to your Litestep desktop, controlled by bang commands
BBbin 1.0 by qwilk: Ah, recycle bin functions in blackbox for windows. the um, nice, um. NICE TO HAVE!
BBSoundFX v2 by qwilk: bb4win sound player with some nice new features for playing sounds on the hours, half hour and um.
bsetbg 1.2 by ironhead: as blackbox for windows tries to become more feature-accurate with the unix version, this tool has been revamped to resemble the original better.
Chattercheck 0.4.0.5 by seb Sean Adams: SharpE plugins checks and displays information from chatboxes across the shell scene.
works with the new blizzle design. yay!
Clippy 0.4.0.0 by sirReal: Neat and useful clipboard manager for SharpE.
console2 2.00 by Brandon Sneed: Skin your shell! Well, if your shell is cmd.exe...
dumper by Edward Moras: Information grabbing Litestep plugin
foobang a1 by Russell Norberg: based on geekamp, controls foobar2000 audio player in Litestep
geoClip 1.0.1 by Pistos: GeoClip (geoshell plugin) stores text clips that are put in the standard Windows clipboard, and lets you put them back in the clipboard later.
geoExtract 1.2.4 beta by Pistos: Basically, geOExtract is intended to let you provide a URL and some parsing parameters, and then go fetch (extract) that text from the HTML page and display it on a geobar. (For Geoshell)
geoList 0.8 by eikonos: Nice little temporary editor plugin here.
GeoPlayer 0.3.1 by Jodie Berg: The GeoPlayer plugin, for GeoShell, allows you to play mp3 files, via m3u files, using winamp plugins without having to run winamp itself.
geoUsers v2.0.6 (Cerberus) by Daemon Stanislav Antov: Geoshell plugin - Shows the current number of users, and other stats.
GeoXWM 1.1.3 by eikonos: Virtual Window Manager for GeoShell
GetWeather 2.0 by Brian Wolven: Visual Basic (VBS) Script to sort Weather related information into variables.
jAMPtoo 1.21.5: Shows information about the current song playing in Winamp
LsBox 2.7: LsBox is a Litestep loadmodule that allows the creation of freefloating and final "Boxes" that can be used to generate custom messageboxes, Floating Menues and Dialogs.
LSClipBoard 2.13: Allows multiple-items to be stored for easy access on the Clipboard
LSMail 4.14 by Vendicator: This is LiteSTEP's longest running third-party module. It checks for new mail on multiple POP3 accounts and lets the user know when they have new mail.
A bunch of fixes to this happy ol' mail checker.
LSWeather 5.01: LSWeather can get weather conditions from almost anywhere on the globe, providing that you supply it with a proper Zip Code for US residence, or a global station code for international users.
LSXCommand 1.8.3: Small feature enhancements added to this version by jesus_mjjg
ObjectDock 0.85 by Stardock Corporation: A program launcher and taskbar replacement that is similar (in apperance and function) to the Mac OS X dock.
OpenVision2 Development Release #2 by Alain deschenes: This is the starting point for the next version of the OpenVision shell
opera 7 b2 by Opera Software: The alternate web browser, is the self-proclaimed "fastest browser on earth"
blizzle looks just wonderful using opera 7 b2 :)
qWeather 0.4.3.10 by seb Sean Adams: This is a weather monitor plugin for SharpE. It sits in your SharpBar and downloads (and translates if necessary)weather information for your locale.
works with weather.com again. yay!
RabidVWM 1.0 beta 4: This is a completely new VWM, written from scratch as I was annoyed at working around all the sysvwm bugs.
RAINMETER 0.8 by rainy: This is an excellent CPU/MEM Meter plugin for Litestep.
random.dll 1.1: A simple Litestep module that executes a random command from a list of commands.
1.1 added *RandomEvar and !RandomEvar, cut 28kb from the size
RECYCLER 5.0.0 by Nexter: Recycle Bin for LiteStep
Nexter rewrote the code for this module, but have other changes been made?
sCMD 0.4.3.0 by pixol: Adds a command-line to your SharpBar for SharpE
brand new sCMD brings better compatibility with windows, but only works on Win2k and WinXP
ShellOn v3 beta 8 by Mike Rhodes: Happy-pappy shell switcher. And more!
still in beta, this shell switcher is for experienced users.
shellWM beta 0.4 by ShellWM Team: An open-source window skinner for the Windows shell replacement scene.
slimp3 by e-sushi Edward Moras: Very lightweight and small MP3 player for Litestep
tasks.dll 0.92-b3 by Christian Buffin: small efficient task manager for Litestep-based Win32 shells.
This version fixes some of the more annoying bugs
tinSplash 0.0.6 by tin_omen Todd S. Kadrie: Splash screen application with alpha fading and transparency support. Based on XPlash by Aleni.
meant to post this before, oops. new version of this splash screen app with a new option for display time.
uShort by ucho: Transparent Shortcut module for Litestep.
no documentation on this as far as I can see, very beta/alpha.
xprop 1.26: Screen magnification Litestep module for your desktop

- Added !XPropLsBoxHook for lsbox *ModuleHook support
Y's Dock 0.51 beta by M.Yamaguchi: Y's Dock is a program launcher built to be similar to Macintosh OS X's Dock.
a bunch of additions and fixes means the dock race is hotting up.

Ahh, awake and feeling refreshed. Well, I really hope we can speak more frequently. Keep in touch, I love talking to you.

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