Hey,

i start using BB for the first time with Xoblite (few weeks ago) and recently changed to BBLean and find it more complete... for example, BBLeanskin works just fine with all aplications unlike BBWinskin that only works with some aplications.

so .. what i want with this topic, is to debate the main differences/qualitys of each one, asking you guys that have more experience that i do with BB what you think of Xoblite and BBLean.

maybe this can help newest users of BB have an idea of the best choice for them.

...just FYI, BBWinSkin and bbLeanSkin have nothing to do with the shell, they are both plugins that can be used with all of the *box branches (bb4win/xoblite/bbLean). Apart from that, I'd really like to hear what you find "more complete" in bbLean than in xoblite - feedback makes better shells...

BR//Karl -> qwilk

i dont agree with that i think xoblite bb2 is the completest shell
you can change everything within the menus thats great
the only thing that i dont like is that yuo cant load bbleanbar but i think that karl dont want to 'make' a new bblean

@qulik which compiler do you use? mingw? cygwin?

I'd so use Xob if I could have my leanbar. ~chuckle~ That dual toolbar stack just doesn't agree with me... mostly because I use 1024 x 768 res because my monitor isn't the grandest available and a higher res makes my eyes hurt on this piddly screen (Okay, so it's not -that- piddly, it's not a fifteen incher, but it's not a 19 either, so yeah. ~l~)

But yes.. if I could stand to use a higher resolution I'd probably be using Xob right now. (When the res is so big maximizing an app to full-screen seems silly, only then does the dual toolbar thing seem like a nice idea, to me that is.)

Hi,

(i must say this before i write big texts in english: im portuguese so sorry for my bad english ... try to understand it . just an advice cause some ppl don't pay attention to the location of a user and reading my post can make ppl think that i some retarded or so, that can't even write his language).

ok back in topic, this discussion is the reason why i decided to create this topic .. so we can debate both shells

qwilk my first BB shell was Xoblite, i start playing with it and learning by reading faq/docs etc.

after a week of use, i had already load plugins to it, switch styles .. normal stuff, but some issues made me search for help:

1) when you put your mouse over the icons on the systray its doesn't pop up the text that normaly appears ... BBLean systray does it.
it helps cause i work on my laptop and i must know how percentage of charge my baterie is .. for example.

2) by default BBLean loads the BBKeys plugins and is already configured .. for newest users like i was (and still am) this makes a diference ... for example to switch from one VDesktop to another..

3) one of the things i thought when i first saw screenshots of *box was: i want my windows to look like that! i don't want that ugly xp theme anymore.

while using Xoblite, i load BBWinskin but it doesn't work with all aplications :S .. this means to have some windows with xp style and others with *box style in the same workspace ... horrible!
BBLeanSkin works just fine with all aplications ... only thing i didn't know was that i can load BBLeanskin plugin into Xoblite

4) with Xoblite i can't logoff,xutdown or reboot the computer cause it crashes i have to make ctrl+alt+delete ... in BBLean that doesn't happen.

ok, two good things about Xoblite that i miss in BBLean:

1) the easy way that we can change from one style to another is nice .. just a few clicks and thats it, style changed and working.

2) unlike many comments, i miss the dual toolbar of Xoblite ... i had the first one with the option of auto hide = true and the other one to false. this creates a nice feeling when i pass the mouse over it .

A couple things I like better in BBlean over xoblite.

1. It combines 'My Desktop' and 'All Users Desktop' into one menu item, and 'My Programs' and 'All Users Programs into one menu item. Without having to manually move the shortcuts whenever I install something new.
   
2. Having all the control panel options in a menu, at least I haven't found an easy way to do it.
   
3. While scrolling a large menu, in xoblite the scroll bar can not keep up with my mouse pointer. It lags behind. This is on XP with no plugins installed. In BBlean I have no problem.

Well... I've been using bblean for quite some time and also tried xoblite again since its latest release.
- main problem with xoblite: menu navigation really is a pain. I have not found a way to make them sticky or even move a (sub)menu. If you repeatedly need to find some option hidden 5 levels deep in the structure it becomes seriously tedious the way it is... but maybe it's just a configuration issue?
- still speaking of menus: the default setup is quite confusing. It has a lot of apps and entries that only exist on the creator's system cluttered all over the place but only a few actually usable systemwide standard menus and those are hidden 3 levels away.
- of course drag and drop onto a menu is big plus in bblean too...
- one reason I'd like to use xoblite is the integrated slit. It seems to be a more advanced (puzzle positioning) than the bbslit plugin - however it doesn't seem to like all slittable plugins... did not manage to put bbicons nor analogex on it.
just my 2cts. maybe no big deal for most but showstoppers for me.

Edit: Figured out how to use the slit - not exactly a sign of 'completeness' if I still have to manually edit the rc even though there's a menu entry supposed to do that. BBicons arrange themselves quite neatly though.
Now I'd like to use the Autohide feature... it's kinda slow isn't it. Is there any way to stop the animation or at least speed it up somehow? Also the systembar leaves its trails on my desktop, particularly the tooltips... needed to disable them. Autohiding the bars is slow as well.

I first tried BB4Win, then I started to notice that in most of the screenshots I was seeing most people were using xoblite or BBlean. So I decided to give xoblite a try. I really liked it except for one small thing......the bar would resize when I used my mouse wheel. So then I tried BBLean and have been with it ever since.

Herbalist, if that was your only problem with Xob, you might be interested in this post.

http://box.crackmonkey.us/phpbb2/viewto ... light=#122

i began with blackbox4win.. then moved onto bblean quite quickly. then i tried xob2.. now back to bblean. the shutdown but in xob2 is a pain in the arse, im the kind of user who clicks shut down and walkes off, i was shocked to return 3 days later to see my pc still on.. haha kind of silly on my part, but thats how iv always done things.. now talking on irc with thewayofzen it sems the shutdown error has been narrowed down to bbleanskin. if you dont have bbleanskin plugin running you are less likely to have the shutdown issue.. which i am annoyed with as i use bbleanskin aswell, makes the look & feel of my wannabe linux windows computer complete..

the default menu structure with xob2 is a little off, in the sense that its full of all sorts of useless utils i dont have installed, and the ones i do have installed are all in different locations. i can make a suggestion which could rememdy this.. the popular programs like im, firefox/ie, outlook/thunderbird could all be configured upon installation like the litestep installation program somebody made, which can give the user the option to define all these upon installation then create the appropriate menu items, im not a programmer by a long shot, but i dont think this would be a hard thing to create.. im currently working on a menu creator in php so people can make this via a website. very limited but it could come in handy in some aspects for people..

nothing drasticly wrong with xob2.. dual layer system bar i dont like, i like leanbar.. i do however LOVE the little button which hides the systray, i love that soo much.. i wish that was in leanbar.. *wink* *wink*

but. noone can really say any shell is better than the other, its all down to personal preference.. i give great huge thumbs up to all who have worked on the shells, the different branches & all the plugins available. making this a great community and leaving all things open for discussion. it makes for all things to be great fun and awesome to play with.. so many many great thanks to all. i dont need to name names, (i dont have the time) but thanks

good day to all.. and a happy holiday period..

I use the compiler included with Microsoft's MSVC++ Toolkit 2003 (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/).

So does xoblite, if you enable "Tooltips" in the systembar menu...

This is a matter of choice; most users prefer to define hotkeys themselves and dislike someone else registering hotkeys for them. After all, which hotkey to use for a certain action is very much a matter of personal taste.

This is a known issue that seems to affect some Win2k setups. For instance, it happens to me on my Win2k box at work, but not on my WinXP box at home. At this point I do not know why this happen, but people have previously been reporting crashes on shutdown for all *box branches (other people claim it has been fixed in recent versions of bb4win and bbLean, but it seems to be very much a random issue depending on a combination of factors). That said, I agree it's a fugly thing, and I am keeping an eye on it. Btw, it should be noted that some plugins (e.g. hooking plugins like BBWinSkin/bbLeanSkin) have also been causing crashes on shutdown for some users, so that's something to be aware of as well.

IMHO the point of using an alternative shell is to replace the Explorer shell experience with something new and different, hence I do not use the desktop and see no need for it within xoblite. As for the start menu, a similar argument would apply, even if it's a somewhat more important feature than the desktop. bbLean, however, is much more Explorer-centric in its approach, with e.g. context menus, drag'n'drop onto the menu and more Explorer integration, but personally I prefer to open Explorer itself if I want to access its specific functions and folders, e.g. the control panel (which happens quite rarely in most cases anyway).

This has been fixed in xoblite bb2 RC3 which will be released shortly (pending enough free time before Christmas).

See my argument concerning Explorer functions above. As for the applications links, I've tried to define them using the default install path for all applications, so they should work unless you've moved stuff around. As for it being huge, yes, that's true, but for new users this is often preferable to having no (or a limited number of) entries. Bottom line, the idea is that the default menu should contain entries for most common apps out there, so you only have to remove the lines you do not want, not being forced to add stuff until you're more proficient with the shell. That said, the menu layout is obviously a matter of taste, just like hotkey mappings.

Plugins requiring &-loading to dock to the slit is an issue with older plugins and has nothing to do with the "completeness" of the shell. As for the autohide speed, it should be fast enough on most modern computers, but if not there's a setting called xoblite.autohide.speed in extensions.rc that you could try tweaking (not sure if it makes much of a difference though - Windows seems to dislike fast moving windows, if you know what I mean... )

The resizing functionality has been changed to ctrl+mousewheel in xoblite bb2 RC3 which will be released shortly (again, pending enough free time before Christmas).

Thank you all for taking xoblite for a spin, I hope that answers at least some of the questions/concerns you had regarding the current release.

BR//Karl -> qwilk

Well I'm glad a new version is being released so soon. I still use xoblite, I change between bblean and xoblite depending on my mood.

well, I managed to make it fade away in super slo-mo by setting the speed to 1000 or more... not very useful though as I want to make it hide as fast (like in *instantly*) not as slow as possible. Maybe just having a simple option to enable/disable it would do the trick?
Meanwhile I figured that the latest bbinterface can replace the slit (and some more) completely so that's a non-issue anyway.

I started with BBLean but tried Xoblite when the new beta was released. I love almost everything about it (the shadows on the menu text just rocks). I can't live without sticky menus though, so I had to go back to BBLean. They're both great shell replacements.

bblean and still bblean.
Because of these 2 points
- Sticky Menus
You can move out menus and place them anyway AND you can almost
use them like real explorer-folders - thats just too usefull, if you get used
to it, you dont want to loose it.
- "Virtual Folders"
Merged Folders. One Menuitem can hold an unlimited amount of linked-
content. Since i have many many HDs i have stuff which should be on
one HD at several places. With BBLean i can merge all these places to
one Virtual Folder - thats just greate.