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The following is directly from the author. Why a new shell? I work on namespace extensions for Windows Explorer which means I spend a lot of time in a debugger starting and restarting Explorer (and thus losing my shell, system tray icons, and so on). So I decided to write a new quick and dirty shell replacement so I wouldn't lose all of these nifty things. It started out as a [really ugly] start menu and system tray that looked a lot like the normal ones. Then I decided I wanted to reclaim the desktop space taken up by the use[full|less] taskbar, so I collapsed the taskbar into a popup menu. I figured I was pretty much done at this point, and started showing it off to people at work. We started discussing other ways to improve the shell -- grouping windows by application, adding quick-launch buttons to the taskbar, etc. A lot of them are good ideas and are on my todo list. One of my coworkers got really excited about my idea for embedding windows on the desktop, an "active desktop that works." In any event, I spent the weekend implementing a plugin interface for "desktop" windows and LiteStep modules. And it is darn cool. So now I have a shell replacement for Explorer that is fast, requires less memory, and is just plain cooler than Explorer. It is definitely not done, but it's ready for gutsy people to start playing with. Oh, and it's free, and open-source. Have at it. Free Software geoShell is free software (as in GNU free software). It is free software because I choose not to profit from it. It is free software because I make good money writing commercial software and I want to contribute to the community in a meaningful and non-commercial way. It is not free software so I can take a side in "that debate". =] Copyright, copyleft, GPL, who can tell? This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The author can be contacted via Email at [email protected]. The GNU/GPL is available at www.gnu.org |
� 1999 rafe a. magnuson
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