I don’t know whether you’ve ever played with WindowBlinds, which is basically an application that allows world+dog to skin Windows (although it originally started on OS/2).

Well, Litestep goes a little further than that. A lot further, actually. It can replace the start menu, context menus - in fact the whole thing. As an added bonus, it’s open source, as it basically a Windows port of the X window manager AfterStep.

There are hundreds of themes available on the site (although note that you have to register to download any of the files on the site, although this is free and relatively painless). There are themes based on just about anything you can think of, although the theme browser on the website doesn’t do much categorisation or sorting. (That said, there are also some skins on wincustomize.com, as well)

LiteStep also has many configurable modules that can be used to enhance your theme. If you install a theme that uses a module you don’t have, then I believe LiteStep will download it for you.

Naturally, I’m planning to use this in a very customised virtual machine - I’ll report back when i have something to share on that!

Tags: LiteStep, skinning, visual themes