New AstonShell ate my icons!
The wife and kids were in Chicago for two weeks visiting family, granting me access to the old home desktop, an old 1Ghz Athlon-processored HP that runs Win2K for the wife and kids, and Ubuntu Linux on another partition for me. There was a request recently from an individual to update the TopPanel plugin of my DominantNegative theme to the more recent Panel plugin, and a few other minor things. Finally had the time to at least take a look at it, so I booted into Win2K and installed AstonShell 1.92.
First off, Win2K is truly hideous... I forgot how crummy it looks and works. The menu system (from the start-button) is truly abominable - you forget details like this when you use an organized system like MacOSX or KDE/Gnome/XFCE on linux.
Aesthetics and function aside, the AstonShell install under W2K went cleanly, as always, and I was able to quickly make the alterations to the DominantNegative theme to update it to the latest set up plugins. Was pleased to see that the Main Menu plugin now permits a bottom texture, something that LiteStep popup menus have enjoyed for over a decade now. It was a simple detail that makes the program more fun to skin and a bit more graphically versatile, giving skinners what they really want: freedom.
Upon saving the theme, however, I still ran into one of my long-time gripes with Aston: saving a theme under multiple resolutions. Saving the theme as 1280x1024 resolution (the max of my LCD), I then reset my screen resolution for 1280x768 and resaved the theme through the included Theme-Manager. Upon trying to reload the theme from the Theme-Manager, the drop-down box for the theme resolution would only show 1280x768, even AFTER switching the resolution back to 1280x1024. STINK. Now that Aston themes are compiled files (some sort of archive), hacking into the config file is a little less entertaining. So I skipped it. Loss of freedom will not lead to more loss of my time.
After exitting my login and returning to my wife's, it became clear that something was VERY wrong with the desktop. Any desktop icons (under the regular explorer shell) that would have contained the little "Shortcut Arrow" to indicate their nature as a shortcut was covered by AdAwareSE's icon. Try as I might to change the icons, the problem would not go away. Considering the only change to the Win2K system on this computer was the addition of AstonShell, I switched out of AstonShell as the primary shell under my login and re-logged on as the wife. PROBLEM SOLVED!!! Using previous versions of AstonShell I have seen situations where icons on other logins got moved or misplaced, especially if a user switched to Aston and then switched back to Explorer. This was new behavior entirely, however.
Long story short: Installing AstonShell for one user under Windows2000Pro will screw up icons for the other accounts on the computer even if they don't have AstonShell enabled as the shell. Be aware, however, that this was a beta release, and as all Beta software should be approached, do not consider this bug too heavily.
Needless to say, the developers are probably on the way to solving this. AstonShell has always been the most exceptionally stable shell alternative for Windows because it has developers who know their stuff, know how to optimize it, and consider consequences for each line of code. I would still recommend their software to anyone.
First off, Win2K is truly hideous... I forgot how crummy it looks and works. The menu system (from the start-button) is truly abominable - you forget details like this when you use an organized system like MacOSX or KDE/Gnome/XFCE on linux.
Aesthetics and function aside, the AstonShell install under W2K went cleanly, as always, and I was able to quickly make the alterations to the DominantNegative theme to update it to the latest set up plugins. Was pleased to see that the Main Menu plugin now permits a bottom texture, something that LiteStep popup menus have enjoyed for over a decade now. It was a simple detail that makes the program more fun to skin and a bit more graphically versatile, giving skinners what they really want: freedom.
Upon saving the theme, however, I still ran into one of my long-time gripes with Aston: saving a theme under multiple resolutions. Saving the theme as 1280x1024 resolution (the max of my LCD), I then reset my screen resolution for 1280x768 and resaved the theme through the included Theme-Manager. Upon trying to reload the theme from the Theme-Manager, the drop-down box for the theme resolution would only show 1280x768, even AFTER switching the resolution back to 1280x1024. STINK. Now that Aston themes are compiled files (some sort of archive), hacking into the config file is a little less entertaining. So I skipped it. Loss of freedom will not lead to more loss of my time.
After exitting my login and returning to my wife's, it became clear that something was VERY wrong with the desktop. Any desktop icons (under the regular explorer shell) that would have contained the little "Shortcut Arrow" to indicate their nature as a shortcut was covered by AdAwareSE's icon. Try as I might to change the icons, the problem would not go away. Considering the only change to the Win2K system on this computer was the addition of AstonShell, I switched out of AstonShell as the primary shell under my login and re-logged on as the wife. PROBLEM SOLVED!!! Using previous versions of AstonShell I have seen situations where icons on other logins got moved or misplaced, especially if a user switched to Aston and then switched back to Explorer. This was new behavior entirely, however.
Long story short: Installing AstonShell for one user under Windows2000Pro will screw up icons for the other accounts on the computer even if they don't have AstonShell enabled as the shell. Be aware, however, that this was a beta release, and as all Beta software should be approached, do not consider this bug too heavily.
Needless to say, the developers are probably on the way to solving this. AstonShell has always been the most exceptionally stable shell alternative for Windows because it has developers who know their stuff, know how to optimize it, and consider consequences for each line of code. I would still recommend their software to anyone.
posted by mrbiotech at
5:00 PM
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1 comments
