the candies will give more supprot than just egg beaters, and are a great pedal, however they still arn't great for riding in normal shoes, i def goof off on my bike in normal shoes or even flipflops on my eggbeaters, and its totally doable, just far from preferable, you have to kinda keep in your head to not slip off the pedals, basically the issues with the candy is that even with the cage, the mechanism still sticks up. I was supprised at how much longer i coudl trackstand on big platform pedals

as for shoes any mtn shoe will work on the road as long as you use mtn pedals on your road bike, this is basically what i do, i run eggs on my mtn bike and ss, and quattros on my road bike cause they are stiffer for better power transmission, i'm sure candies would have basically the same effect. This setup is not as stiff as a good road shoe and pedal, but its been fine for me (and my road bike is far from somthin cheap where you wouldn't notice pedal flex)