alo, i want to try my hand with creating a visual style... i just want to know how you guys started doing it, did you learn from a specific site? which tool(s) do you use to make them? i'd like to make myself a milkish/silverish style... the ones i've used were good, but never quite what i wanted... actually, my ideal style is the look of milk but the buttons and sliders of puma/gun metal... if someone knows of such a style, then you'll save me a whole lot of time.
thanks much
you can use stylebuilder (tgtsoft.com) to create themes. here's a tutorial: http://www.tgtsoft.com/sb_help/pageone.html
as for me, i prefer to mod a pre-existing style with reshacker and resbuilder (also from tgtsoft.com). since you already have some ideas, you might find this method more approachable. extract the images that you want and replace the corresponding images in the other theme. simple. 
are the styles you create with stylebuilder only good with stylexp? when you go to install s.b., it says you must have stylexp installed for it to work... on my pc, i just used the hacked uxtheme, i'd rather not use stylexp...
i tried resbuilder... this is me trying to figure it out. 
i use the uxtheme patch as well (i'm not paying for software when i can use the patch), but i use resbuilder and reshacker to mod it.
you might need to install stylexp to install stylebuilder, but try installing sb without sxp and see what happens. it's a more intuitive, graphical approach to modding themes.
if you want to use resbuilder, it's really quite simple. open up the msstyles file and you'll see the tree on the left. browse to the bitmap section and find the relevant bitmaps. then you can edit the image directly in the editor of your choice.
most of the time, i just use reshacker. i can select the bitmap and save it (as a backup, or if i want to modify it), and then i select replace bitmap (after modding or taking from another theme), and then i save it.
if you need more help, don't hesitate to ask more questions. i can even walk you through modding the style.
thank you my friend... your offered assistance is greatly appreciated.
i may take you up on it... i'm going to try and do it through reshacker since i do know that a little bit.
if you know how to use reshacker, go for it.
resbuilder is just like reshacker, so you won't have much trouble modding themes.
if you need more help, just meet me on msn (later, because i'm going to sleep now. 
). and of course the others can help you out as well.
well, that didn't take long....
to finish? no... i meant it didn't take long to completely screw up my puma style file... i'm redownloading it and starting again (this time i'll be smart and keep a backup!)
the problem was (i think) one of the bmp for the milk style did not translate well to the puma. i ended up with crap looking title bar.
probably the hardest part of doing this is actually finding the specific bmp that you want to change. most of them, i have no idea what they would affect if i tried to change them out. (the gripper bmp? oh of course, that must change the.... gripper? 
)
does anyone know why this is happening, referring to the "box" around the scroll bars... i took the scroll bar from puma (looks fine there) and when i put it into the other style, it gave me these boxes around the bars.
ok... after playing around for a while now, i figured out exactly what i want... panther snow created by stefanka is pretty perfect to exactly what i was looking for... only things that i want to change are in the screenshot... can someone help me do this, everytime i try, it just screws it all up. maybe the resources aren't the same dimensions, that i don't know.
why don't you guys crack the app :naughty: I have cracked almost all my apps ihave downloaded! :naughty: I'm naughty!
i don't know what you're talking about. what apps? we're talking about visual styles.
if you're using reshacker, you'll see that it automatically creates a backup file (called something_original.msstyles). in any case, i'm glad you dabbled a bit with modding.
the box seems to appear because the scrollbar shaft images are probably different. i.e. the area around the scrollbar was made to blend into the background for one of the themes and not necessarily for the other. one way to get around this is to add transparency all around the actual scrollbar image. in most cases, that color is magic pink: 255 0 255.
i'm not quite sure what you mean by no border style. are you just trying to take the scrollbar from one and put it into the other?
about the no border style... puma comes with 4 different substyles, gunmetal, puma, puma pro and snow... each one of those has 2 styles, border and no border. i was just displaying which one i was using, i didn't really need to specify the border or no border part of it since yes, i am only trying to change the slider and the border has nothing to do with that.
i'll try changing the shaft images also or adding the transparency to the current one, i didn't even think of that... i didn't realize that it does create that backup, that's something good to know.
thanks again dreamz
If you replace alot of files, you'll soon notice that your system32 folder get full of .backup files.
Every once and awhile I gather them up and put them in my official "backup" folder.
Originally posted by dreamz@Mar 3 2004, 10:11 AMone way to get around this is to add transparency all around the actual scrollbar image. in most cases, that color is magic pink: 255 0 255.
does this just mean i draw that color on what i want tranparent with that pink color? i'm guessing that windows interprets that specific color as being transparent?
Yes but if you try to 'paint it on' you will inevitably get lighter/darker shades of pink on the pic, which won't become transparent >.
keith has a point. sometimes you just need to go over it pixel by pixel to make sure that it's magic pink. mspaint isn't bad actually.
most themes define magic pink as the transparent color, but some things may be different, though i doubt it.
Aqua-Soft Forums