Hello everyone...
I'm disappointed, I see in this forum only questions about the malfunctions of winstep, it's very good to improve the software, I'm happy...
But I don't see anyone offering themes out of the 5904 members that make up the site and I can't believe that out of the number, nobody makes themes...
For me, Winstep is a software to replace and beautify the desktop in its own way by creating themes and not to replace Windows as "WindowBlinds" does and other disappeared software like "AstonShell" or "Litesteps" and others did.
No need for "ThemeBuilder" software to create themes as many ask (Waste of time), just put your fingers in the "ass" to analyze the configuration files in existing themes and understand how it works as I did it with your "Jorge" themes and those of
"WebGizmos", "DaniloOC", "Tiggz" and other talents and as others have done...
I notice on the different sites that no one makes a new Winstep theme anymore and I myself don't put any more on "Wincustomize" following a very slight difference with some members (I'm in full reflection)...
If no one gets involved, Jorge, and one day you no longer have the possibility of continuing to take care of Winstep, everything risks collapsing like a house of cards...
Me in the current state, everything works quite well and I don't encounter any particular problem, winstep seems stable...
Please, create in the forum a section "Screenshot Winstep Themes" or other, it is strongly lacking and it would allow to see the work of each of the members and give ideas...
Designing themes for Winstep is essential, it's one of its main functions, I'm sure...
Post for all intents and purposes...
Friendly...

I agree with you Picco, something like a separate forum for screenshots of new Winstep themes, and discussions of themes and theming, might be useful, and I have been advocating something like that in recent years. However, the state of theming/skinning in general is at an all time low, and interest here seems to be just as low, alas. So whether such a forum would actually see enough use is perhaps debatable. Yet, given that Winstep apps have a heavy focus on being themeable, the dearth of new themes as well as the lack of exposure and debate on this board could, in the longer term, quite conceivably spell disaster IMO.

As for the 5900+ members of this board, that figure is very highly misleading. I would estimate that at least one third of that number can be accounted for by spammers, both those that haven't been found yet and those that have been banned. Most of these put their spam into their user profile and/or signature. While as a moderator I can ban them, unfortunately I cannot delete their accounts. A further given seems to be that there are perhaps at best a dozen or so members who actually log in to the board with any kind of regularity. A majority of members either never post at all or at best might have posted the odd query at some point. It's probably anybody's guess how many members are actually in any way still using the board, or even actually still use one or other of the Winstep apps. My own personal guess would be, fewer than half by some margin, alas....

Where I have to disagree with you is on the subject of a Theme Builder. The lack of one could very well be a factor in the dearth of new themes. Not everyone can or wants to edit configuration files. At the very least, a really good, in-depth Theme Building Guide is needed. However, I do agree again,, new Winstep themes are essential. Come to that, new default themes to replace those rather tired, old ones would also help.

By the way, a dedicated Winstep Gallery is under construction. Although not open to the general public yet, themes can be uploaded already.

well for myself ive gotten very complacent with my nexus. in the beginning i even modified some themes (mostly by modifying the images) for my personal use, ive played alot with various docks,subdocks, modules and whatnot, searching the web for free icons, and sometimes making my own. lately i just add/remove shortcuts as needed, although for a while now ive been planning to replace my shelf subdocks with grid stacks

Thank you for your "NEXTER" response...
Ok for the number of members on the site where spammers are lurking, you are in a better position than me to see the problem which I understand now.
On the other hand for a "Winstep Theme Builder" it has been in question for years and I think (This is my opinion only) that it was born dead.
I think "Jorge" is practically alone and doesn't have time to fully devote himself to this subject, he is not "Stardock" who must have several programmers working full-time for pay. In my opinion, it has too much work to fix the stability and compatibility problems with Windows 11 on Winstep Nexus. So OK for an old theme building guide that already exists but updated might help some to build new themes.
I am still convinced that "Jorge" originally created this software to change and beautify the windows desktop by creating themes.
It is an overlay that is not made to replace Windows, Linux or Ubuntu. It is not an operating system as many people seem to treat it.
Not everyone can or wants to modify config files, I persist and sign, they just have to put in the effort and not settle for old themes. I know some people do it but only for themselves and keep their themes.
It is not normal that Winstep themes are presented and uploaded on other sites than Winstep, "Stardock (Wincustomize)" has nothing to do with Winstep, their purpose is to promote their own software, overnight Winstep may disappear from their site.
As for the unofficial winstep theme gallery, I downloaded a few themes and I had to take a lot of them because the proportions were badly respected in the configuration files (A lot of work), it is useless to fill the gallery of themes that must be partly redone while thanking, respecting and honoring the work that has been produced by these Skinners.
I love the Winstep software and praise all the work done by "Jorge" all these years. I don't pretend to be a skinning crackpot, there are a lot of settings I still haven't figured out in the config files and I can make a few mistakes but I've picked up some basics over time.
Example: If we construct a TitleA or I with a drawn structure of 300x40 pixels, it must be configured in the file (...wst) 300x40 and not reduced to 200x20 because the drawing appears completely distorted.
Sorry, I don't want to be the tacheron who uploads new themes to the winstep themes gallery to satisfy and please some who don't make an effort like I do on "Wincustomize" or no one is interested in Winstep anymore Like in the past.
I will review my position when the winstep themes gallery is officially integrated on the winstep site and possibly a topic will be created to present new themes in screenshot.
I also want to honor the skinner work of "Halo296" which I believe and believed to understand is "Ukrainian" and that given the context hope that he is doing well as well as all his loved ones...
Cordially...

Well, speaking of spammers, look what happened yesterday morning. Four spam posts in a row, a few minutes apart. Definitely spam bots. Three were from the same spam bot I'm pretty sure, two at least two of them using the same IP. As fast as I could ban one 'user' and delete the offending post another ID cropped up. Plus a fifth new user that smells suspiciously like a spam bot too, although so far no spam. (That often follows weeks or even months later.)

As regards the mythical Theme Builder, yes, it's been talked about for a long time and that's why it has become known as 'The thing that must not be named', as Jorge tends to get a bit upset by any mention of it.

The Winstep project - at first known as the NextStart project - originally was inspired by the detached application etc. menus of the NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP OS and a desire to have custom menus that emulated the look and feel of those under Windows. The concept quickly came to embrace the idea that such menus should be themeable by the user, and also expanded to in future gradually 'emulate' the whole NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP Workspace with its dock and even the shelf featured in an experimental new GUI in an OPENSTEP beta, and originally also the FileViewer (file manager). As a long time NS/OS user who had been involved in a - alas, failed/abandoned - project to bring the NS/OS GUI to OPENSTEP Enterprise for Windows NT a few years earlier, working on interface design, I was instantly drawn to the idea of NextSTART even before there was any kind of self-supporting beta and so have been with the project since its inception.

Right from the start the idea was that it should be easy for the average user to create his own theme/s, and so a kind of Theme Builder was developed right alongside NextSTART and incorporated into its preferences applet, along with the taskbar replacement also. The Theme Builder survived well into the noughties (2000s) or early 2010s but was eventually abandoned due to the apps - by now including Workshelf and the first modules, as well as a beta Nexus if memory serves - becoming too complex and needing much more space for all kinds of preferences etc., and just making it impossible to maintain an integrated theme builder for each of the Winstep apps. Ever since, a new comprehensive Theme Builder has been promised and much discussed, and there even is an alpha of it for the Nexus section.

So as you can see, ease of creating one's own theme/s has been at the core of the project from the start. And in the absence of a new theme builder, especially given the steep decline of the whole skinning movement in recent years, I am not in the least surprised that there are very few new themes for Winstep coming along. If Winstep theming is to survive to any meaningful extent, I consider a new Theme Builder to be essential, preferably along with a comprehensive guide to creating Winstep themes outside of using the Theme Builder. None of this is exactly rocket science and all of it definitely achievable, if very boring to do no doubt. However, done it surely must be, and indeed it should take priority over more and more new features in my opinion.

A working theme builder would be very nice, but accurate (/comprehensive) documentation on the configuration files (and how they relate to the applications, and each other) is essential.

When I first started looking at Winstep I had a specific purpose in mind - clear up my increasingly busy desktop, whilst enabling applications to be grouped for access purposes.

WorkShelf looked like a good match so I experimented with it (and also subsequently with NextStart). However I couldn't find a nice / simple / basic theme that minimised the use of screen real estate - and also, incidentally, had a nice menu structure presentation.

Different themes had some aspects, but with other features that didn't fit.

So I decided that I needed to adapt a theme (or a few themes) to match my preferences. That's when I determined that Winstep themebuilding is a bit of a black art as there was no readily available documentation for performing this operation.

Some reasonable time spent perusing the forums / web; investigating existing themes; trying to contact previous theme builders; and installing the earlier theme builder application (in a virtual machine) eventually gave me enough of an insight to modify a 'workable' theme - not great but sufficient to the task, and I had to move onto other demands on my time.

If my requirement had arisen during the heyday of Winstep theme development this whole issue may have been moot, as there would hopefully have been some experienced / helpful souls who could point me in the right direction.

Failing that however then some good documentation on how themes work is a must, particularly if you want to encourage more people to get into theme creation!

I would still vote for a theme section on the forum - but as was concluded last time this was raised, it only works if people engage.

BTW on a different aspect of the original post - this is likely to be the case anyway. As far as I can tell Jorge is the owner of, and only person with access to, the Winstep source code - so if he no longer provides support then its lifetime is limited anyway!

A working 'Thing that must not be named' wouldn't just be nice but very important to get people started.



Well, something like a comprehensive (and comprehensible!) 'user guide to creating themes' inc. full documentation of the configuration files is perhaps an easier option to implement than 'The thing....' and would at least help more advanced users, however, I rather suspect that it still might leave complete theming virgins rather stumped.



Well, yes, when even a post about theme building results in just two or three people responding and very little interest shown in terms of views you can see that a theme forum would be a complete waste of space, alas.

What would help the whole situation wrt themes and theme creation would, without doubt, be the completion of and public access to the Winstep theme repository, preferably in tandem with the guide to theme building and/or 'The thing....'. The first has been hanging in the air for about three years now if memory serves, and 'The thing....' for considerably longer even.



Well, Winstep is Jorge's life's project and work, in a way you could say his magnum opus, and I think I can safely say that he'd never willingly abandon it. The only way that could happen as far as I could see would be if MS made it practically impossible to support pure Win32 apps. (We already get a foretaste of such a possibility with the latest Windows 11 Insider Beta....) Admittedly, the latter is by no means beyond what MS might get up to at some point - their biggest ambition is to actually move away from the desktop completely eventually, anyway, as the OS itself is no longer a major revenue source and has not been one for quite some time. (The prospect of this could only benefit Linux - there's nowhere else to go. Forget 'The Rotten Fruit', they'd go the same way as MS, and why move from one shite platform to an even more shite one anyway!)

So, in that scenario of cessation of pure Win32 support, it wouldn't help anybody to have access to the Winstep source code. While in general, I have come to favour Open Source software to the fullest, whether that be the 'full Monty' as in the FOSS definition - Free and Open Source Software - free at least in the sense that anybody can use it in any way they like etc. etc., distribute it, and whatever else, though not necessarily by definition free of cost, or just Open Source in that the source can be studied and audited and the like, I don't really think Winstep's code being made Open Source in any way, shape, or form would be beneficial to anyone at any point