Best Shell Developer We consider this our top award. These guys spend the time cranking the code, answering bug reports, and working at ground zero on the shell itself. A nomination to this category is really an award in itself.

The nominees are:

• Message - Raptor/LiteStep
• jugg - PureLS/LiteStep
• geO - Raptor/geOShell5
• Courtah - Serenade
• Jaykul - geOShell4
• Lowspirit - SharpE
• Pixol - SharpE/Carapace
• nivenh - LiteStep/DPanel
• azathoth - Blackbox For Windows

And the winner is... jugg! :D

This was a tough choice. Message has done a great deal of coding for both Raptor and LiteStep this year. nivenh has released some intrepid software and added png support to LiteStep. It's not really fair to make us pick just one!

We've chosen jugg because he is so well-balanced in the community. He's brought us a number of new releases of PureLS this year, bringing better support for LiteStep modules and improvements to the systray. What's more, he worked with Message to bring those changes to LiteStep itself. He's also been essential in finding hosting for LiteStep.net. He's present on the IRC channels and helpful to users of both LS and PureLS. Sure, we all wish he had more time, but he's done a smashing job as it stands.

				Best Supporting Developer The number of coders working directly on shells pales in comparison to the number of coders working on modules, websites, and helper apps. All of the nominees for this category provide support code for our favorite shells.

The nominees are:

• BlkHawk - LsBox/LsSlider
• galois - LSTS/LSDistro/3dclock/LsGradwall
• jalist - LiteStep.net
• grd - grdAmp/grdTray/grdMagick/grdTransparent
• qwilk - multikeys/mzscript
• maduin - Label/RCX/TaskSwitcher

And the winner...s... eh, are... BlkHawk and galois! :D

It simply wasn't possible to choose only one of them - BlkHawk's immensely popular LsBox has changed LiteStep theming as we know it, effectively being a shell within the shell. On the other hand, galois' numerous contributions to the LS community couldn't go unnoticed - LSTS paved the way for a new era of LiteStep compatibility and ease of use. They both deserve this award, and who are we to argue?

				Best Innovation Here we're looking for the most innovative idea that appeared on the shell scene this year.

The nominees are:

• Gestures - Pavel Vitis' LiteStep module that allows the user to draw shapes to fire bang commands
• Open Theme Standard (OTS) - A standard for LiteStep that attempts to draw the community and the separate distributions together
• LiteStep.net User Pages - Featuring a personal log and message board, a catalog of themes, and a pile of stats.
• Raptor - geO came to us with a strong idea, excellent docs, and started a wave of excitement

And the winner is... OTS! :D

We are simply astonished that this year has brought a solid theme standard to LiteStep. If you are familiar with the logistics of the community, you know this is no easy task. In fact, a year ago anyone would have told you it was a fruitless effort.

The OTS is now a well-documented standard that has gained popular acceptance. It offers LS themers complete flexibility by imposing a rather simple structure. It's greatest feature is its team, which is comprised of experience themers, each with different abilities and tremendous talent.

				Best Promise Enough recent announcements in the shell community warranted an award for Best Promise. In other words, the most anticipated event or product that has been announced for shell users in 2002.

The nominees are:

• ShellCon - rootrider
• Blackbox for Windows - azathoth
• Raptor 1.0 - Raptor Dev Team
• Blizzle - Anticipated shell/skinner community site
• PureLS for Linux - Ender

And the winner is... Blackbox for Windows! :D

Our eyes have been on Raptor for a long time. And let's face it: too long really to believe in its promise just yet. The recent updates to the ShellCon site also give us hope in its arrival someday, although that day may be distant.

Blackbox for Windows is a promise and yet it is truly here now. Without jinxing it's first release, let us just say that it is very stable, very beautiful, and very real. After a long dirth of new shells, we stand on the verge of a shell that stands to feed our appetites and revitalize the community. As we talked about the nominees for this category, Blackbox was the one that we were the most excited and most confident about.

With that said.. enough anticipation already. Good luck to you, azathoth! We would like to make these awards an annual event, and we plan on seeing this shell listed as a nominee (and hopeful winner) of Best Shell.

				Best Website This year has been a difficult year to run a website. Hosting that can handle the traffic is rare and expensive. We honor those sites that fought the struggle of the year and brought such depth to our community.

The nominees are:

• FPN
• Litestep.net
• LS2k
• Shellfront
• Westep

And the winner is... LS2k! :D

Two sites (LS2k and Shellfront) dominated the shell news flow in 2001. To be able to pick a winner we have looked at a number of factors, including news quality, update frequency, and — of course — design (as alternative shells is very much a design thing).

For its contribution to our community, we have chosen to give the award posthumously to the late LS2k. With high quality, up-to-date content and a very nice design it became the most influential shell site this year. The award also reflects our gratitude towards jalist for his hard work bringing back important community sites such as LiteStep.net.

				Best Shell We love our shells! We hail the hotkeys! We praise the popups! We grovel to the grippers! We whorship the wharf! <g>

The nominees are:

• Cloud:9ine - C9 Dev Team
• Core - Asperon
• geOShell - geOShell Dev Team
• LiteStep - LS Dev Team
• PureLS - jugg/Ender
• Serenade - Courtah
• SharpE - LowDimension
• Talisman II - Lighttek
• WinStep - WinStep Team

And the winner is... LiteStep! :D

This year, the most popular alternative shell took some giant leaps for shellkind. Generally being seen as quite complex, hard to configure, and with a steep learning curve, LiteStep has improved in a lot of important areas during the year 2001. With a new theme standard (OTS), easier theme swapping (LSTS), new features such as PNG support, and over 300 third party modules to choose from, the old champion still reigns supreme!

				Best LiteStep Module With over 300 LiteStep modules to choose from, it's a difficult task to narrow it down. We're looking for the one that has had the most impact on the community — the one that can not be lived without!

The nominees are:

• mzscript
• LsBox
• LSXCommand
• GeekAmp
• Popup2
• jDesk
• ckVWM

And the winner is... mzscript! :D

mzscript is a singular module, which has changed theming as we know it. Themers use this module to save the desktop state, change color schemes, and to add advanced features by tying bang commands together. Often we will use a theme that seems to have it's own miniature applications inside, just to find that mzscript has been cleverly used — with shortcuts — to give the illusion of an application. And although this module has seen only a minor revision this year, we feel it's impact has been the greatest.

				Best Vapors Left From a Shell This award highlights those shells that never really had a chance to be shells. Either the developers disappeared before users really got into it or the shell only existed in faerie tale land!

The nominees are:

• IceSphere
• Graphite
• Juice
• eggShell/zeroShell - based on the pics
• DarkStep/Krikkit

And the winner is... Juice! :D

				Best Thorn in the Side What would this year be like without the continual presence of annoying persons, domineering companies, and chaos itself?

The nominees are:

• The LS CD-SET - For all the flames you caused!
• IRC - EFNet lost major servers this year, conflict in #LiteStep, and mindless bots that use your own words against you!
• Computer-Smart of Rancho Cucamonga - hijaaked the xsweekly.com domain
• Bandwidth - LS.NET--up and down; NEWS.GEOSHELL.COM--replaced by geoshellx.com; LS.COM--up and down; LS.ORG--stranded; CUSTOMIZE.ORG--up and down; DESKMOD.COM--up and down; THEMES.ORG--up and hacked and down and up; etc.
• Efront - for the skinz.org scandal
• Palm Inc. - for placing BeOS in the trash, not the recycle bin

And the winner is... Bandwidth! :(

Yeah, there is a missing nominee here, but we figured that person doesn't deserve an award at all! <vbg>

We've chosen bandwidth (or rather resources, as DNS have been just as bad) as the number one thorn in the side this year, and for a good reason - just count the number of ups and downs in the nomination above! Someone has said that without a presence on the web, our community will die. Well, thanks to a few dedicated people things look better than ever as we enter the year 2002. However, the bandwidth spectre will probably continue to haunt us in the foreseeable future.