I was wanting to find out if the green highlighted conncetions and bit rates with a chat smilie had anything to do with who was connected to LimeWire at that current time, and if the black colored information were useres who weren't connected at that particular time.
I usually have an easy time downloading, but I really want a couple of songs and I can't get them to download.

Also, How can I tell when I am sharing files? It seems no one ever downloads from my files...

Black indicates that the client had no available upload slots at the time of the query (I think).

The chat smiley indicates that the client accepts chat.

Bit rates are reported by some clients for some MP3s.

The search results are only those clients connected to the network. A client not connected to the network will not return any search results. Ultrapeers do not cache file lists for other clients for security/legal reasons (Napster was vulnerable because it had central servers holding lists of the software being shared).

There /are/ some clever things being done to propogate search results further which may mean that the above is out of date - but I believe it is correct in essence.

I'm not sure how you tell whether people /can/ download from you if they aren't. Here, I have to beat them off with a stick and there are still way more requests than I can service.

Mark