Just in case anyone has trouble finding ShellOn, some searching yielded 2 versions of it. http://www.dx13.co.u...rams/index.html
I haven't been able to find carapace yet but hopefully someone else has more luck finding a link for that, although I'm not sure how much it would be worth it considering there's no evidence of development for carapace since 2003 from what I saw O.O
Thanks for the link, thelamacmdr, I use version 2.0 of ShellOn. There is probably nothing wrong with 3.0, I just never felt the need to upgrade. As for carapace, this is the zip file from my archives. Never tested it, but most people liked its looks. And Blackbox4Windows seems to be the only place you can find it on the web nowadays...
carapace.zip 2.33MB
143 downloads
And this is how to use it, from the good old Teknidermy web site...
Carapace 2.0 build 534 (beta)
Starting off with my favourite, Carapace is the only skinnable shell manager out there. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be that popular out there. But I think this has more to do with people not knowing it than with it being flawed.
Carapace is a work in progress, therefore part of the configuration has to be done by altering its configuration file. Not too hard, but that's exactly what we're trying to get away from with shell managers. All the features are there though, it has support for multiple shells, provides crash protection and can auto-select a default shell at startup. The interface is fairly straight forward, although, as said, only partially functioning, so this concoction should hold no secrets for its users
Carapace consists of two programs, Carapace.exe, the shell manager andCPConfig.exe, the configuration app. In order to run Carapace, you first have to make sure it can find its skins. To do so open carapace.set in a text editor and change the line Theme_loc= to the directory of the theme you want to use. After that, run CPConfig and Carapace will install itself as the default shell. Now you can add shells to it, a process which is rather self guiding.
After a reboot (or log out/in) Carapace will load and will wait for about five seconds (depending on how long you've set this period) to allow you to pick a predefined shell, configure it or pick a file to use as shell. If you do not pick a shell within these five seconds, it will automatically load the shell you've set as default and exit. If you've configured it to crash protect the shell it loaded it will not exit, but instead run hidden, monitoring your shell and will pop up again if your shell crashes.
The interesting bit is ofcourse its skinnability. Carapace is partially skinnable. You can skin the shell selection window you see at startup. The skinning format should be familiar to experienced skinners, it's a combination of a textfile and several bitmaps. As usual Magic Pink (255,0,255) is used a the transparent colour. An interesting bit is that Carapace can use a Flash movie as a splash screen.
And here is how to use ShellOn, again from Teknidermy:
ShellON 2.30
My first impression with ShellON was, "awmygawd, options everywhere". This beasty looks rather complex to the uninitiated. It literally has options everywhere. But heralded as the successor to the throne of LiteSpawn, that was to be expected.
ShellON does a lot. Aside from dedicated shell managing functions like crash protection and multiple user profiles, it also sports features as wallpaper switching and scripting. This would be the perfect place for a corny "sadly it doesn't do the dishes" joke, but I'm not that sad. The wallpaper functions can fulfill your every wallpaper dream, keep a list of walls, monitor folders for auto-adding, change it every two minutes or at start up and more. Scripting is an interesting function. When using ShellON as your shell manager, you can let it run scripts before it loads your shell, meaning you could let it run programs and copy files before loading your shell. Okay, so I haven't figured out any use for it yet.
Like Carapace, ShellON consists of the shell loader, ShellON.exe, and a separate configuration program, config.exe. First thing to do when installing it is run this configuration program. It will then ask you to create a profile. If you name the profile the same as your login name, ShellON can autoload the shell you've picked as default whenever you log in without asking (if you've set it to do so ofcourse). Handy when multiple users share the same machine and use different shells. But unlike Carapace, you have to explicitely tell ShellON to install itself as shell manager (it's got a button to do so). Although, after running it, I noticed it did had changed the default shell without asking... Hmm, curious.
After you've added some shells to it (all done through the GUI), reboot. Upon reboot you'll see ShellON's splash screen. Here you can hit [space] to load another profile. After a couple of seconds, the shell selection screen will popup and you can pick a shell to launch. You can also choose to browse for a file and load that as shell or load nothing. Whatever you pick, ShellON will then miminise to the tray, from which it can be accessed. Ofcourse, if you choose to load nothing, you'll be left shell-less.
In case you're wondering, this is just the default scenario. You can customise ShellON to behave just as you please. If options is your game, ShellON's the manager for you. Too bad it's not skinnable.
If no shell manager does the trick for you to install Blackbox as shell (sometimes it happens, especially on some 7 and 8 builds) then you will have to tweak the registry. Here's how: http://www.askvg.com...rer-in-windows/
Do it on a Saturday afternoon!
I'll give it a try, thanks orbb
