Re: [litestep] A theory about the decreasing popularity

(please forgive me if this ends up being a duplicate. For some reason my 
first effort just disappeared. . .no smoke, no error message, just nothing.)

It might be that the rising popularity of the internet is responsible 
for some of our perceptions that LiteStep has declined. I would probably 
have to put "desire to spend time gaming/chatting/working on computer 
and less desire to play with the screen itself" high on the list.

It might also be that other customizing platforms have grown at 
LiteStep's expense. And perhaps people believed there is a much steeper 
learning curve than there really is to start using LiteStep--

On the other hand, OpenOffice and Thunderbird--both applications not 
running from a browser seem to have grown tremendously in the last 
couple of years. Sites/programs such as AVS anti-virus, Spybot and 
Roboform seem to be doing well which would suggest that there isn't a 
shortage of users willing to trust their safety to open source (or at 
least free-to-use-at-home) programs.

So I guess I don't know which are likely. I certainly wouldn't discard 
the possibility that fewer users--especially fewer users who are 
comfortable digging into their computers--might be spending the bulk of 
their time online.

Which does remind me. Has anyone thought about creating a theme that 
would take the look and feel of firefox all the way to the boot? I would 
love to see a theme that brought some of the tools I use often on the 
web to my desktop. Facilities such as pie menus, bookmarked pages, tabs 
(especially the ability to preview a thumbnail before loading), and 
really quick access to resources (such as Wikipedia, and various other 
dictionary/thesaurus/special use dictionaries)?

That might attract some attention. . .

Fractal Design wrote:
> So we all know that Litestep is losing users, and is not nearly as popular
> as it once was.
> 
> I would like to state for the record that I think this is due to the
> internet, and the web 2.0 stuffs going on.
> Take for instance the web browser: firefox.
> Firefox is another open source effort.
> 
> If people used their computers (eg word, office) more than their browser (eg
> google, wikipedia)
> then Litestep, an open source shell should be more popular than firefox.
> 
> Think about it. Web browsing is 1 capability of an OS. Litestep basically
> skins the shell of that OS.
> How is litestep losing popularity?
> 
> Its because people are using their browsers far more than any other function
> of a computer.
> 
> As an example, with tabbed browsing, people dont need/require/want a VWM
> anymore. Its not that big of a deal anymore.
> 
> P.S.
> Just a theory, no data was collected to form these opinions or anything.

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