Tips For Would-Be Authors - from fellow authors

[ChaNinja]

Over the last couple of years I've received many emails from wanna-be themers asking for general advice to help them get started...so I thought I'd start a thread dedicated to all those would-be themers out there where authors can share the knowledge they have gained through their own experiences in the field.

We're all here to use good themes and the more the merrier I say! Hopefully this will help newbie authors get a good start and an idea as to what being a dedicated themer entails. Soon we'll all be able to enjoy better themes.

I encourage all you experienced authors (basically any of the thread starters in the "Completed Visual Styles" section) to add something to this thread that you think would be helpful. I don't mean detailed tutorials or walkthroughs but just general tips, design philosophies, routines, best practices, etc, etc.

I'll get the ball rolling......

These are the main applications I use....

- StyleBuilder (www.tgtsoft.com): for making the Visual Styles

- Adobe Photoshop 7: for editing and creating the images

- Corel Xara X: for creating images, this program is great for creating vector graphics which look very good when you have to enlarge or shrink an image, can also export to many formats. (I used this for

creating the BlockOS icons)

- GIF Movie Gear for Icons: I use this as a utility for converting graphics from one format to another....extremely useful.

- ColorPad: This is a handy utility for getting color codes from pictures quickly.

- Axialis IconWorkshop 5.03: for making XP icon sets

- ResHacker or Restorator: for hacking windows DLL files and editing the shellstyle.dll for themes.

- Swish 2.0: for making animations e.g. Copy, Move Delete animations (with this app you can export to AVI)

- And more recently I have started using Cinema 4D XL 8 for making 3D graphics and CursorXP for compiling alpha-blended animated cursors.

I know that thats a lot of programs but you really don't need all of them. For Visual Styles, which is where I began, all I used was Photoshop and StyleBuilder. The rest are mostly for accessories.

Here are some tips from my own personal experiences (in no specific order)......

- Love your computer! Because you'll need to spend a lot of time on it.

- Do not be lazy because that is the #1 Theme Author killer in the world!

- Every author/artist needs inspiration, it could be anything...movies, games, family, cars, animals, weed, etc etc. Find out what really inspires you and be true to it. Let it motivate you.

- Play around with all the programs that you need to use EXTENSIVELY. Know exactly what you can do with them and what you can't.

- Think carefully about what you want your theme to look like, keeping in mind what the possibilities and limitations of StyleBuilder and msstyles are.

- Take a screenshot of desktop including start menu and import into Photoshop and start designing on top of that picture in layers. Design first, implement later.

- There are SO MANY resources and tutorials on the internet to help you but don't try and learn everything out there because it is way too much and it can discourage you. You must figure out exactly what you want to do then search for those specific answers. Theme related forums and

bulletin boards (like this one) are extremely helpful for this.

- Use the Search function in forums to locate answers to your problems. If you find nothing then make a post.

- Always encourage feedback! Ask strangers and friends constantly for feedback and suggestions.

- You must learn to tell what is good advice and what is bad advice. If you know for a fact the person has bad taste, kindly and politely disregard ;)

- Don't try and do what everyone asks, you can never satisfy everyone.

- Try and make your theme unique and original but do not overdo it. Functionality is the most important thing, if it just looks cool but is not very useable then your theme will only be a novelty thing and will soon be forgotten. People who like to USE your theme regularly will remember it forever.

- Use criticism to your advantage, never take negative things that people say to heart, even if it is very insulting. This is hard to do!

- There is something to gain from every piece of feedback (except maybe for those "nice" comments ;)

- Do not try to compete with other authors because then you start to subconciously copy them. Rather try and learn from other authors techniques and use those techniques to do your own thing, but don't ever just copy. That is being lazy.

- Use StyleBuilder to "import" other author's themes if it has something you like, and learn how they did that.

- You must always compete with yourself....always try to do something better than what you did the last time, otherwise no point in doing it.

- Don't rush anything, and don't make anything final unless you are 100% sure there is nothing more you can do to improve it. Many authors rush their work to make a "Final" release because other users pressure them, but don't listen to them, take your time and work at your own pace. None of my themes are final and I am always trying to improve them.

- Make regular backups after every significant change.

- Organize your files in a logical, easy-to-refer-to manner, I cannot stress the importance of this.

- Never give up, if you get stuck, find a solution or find a way to work around the problem. Persist! Persist! Persist!

Well thats all I can come up with now, but I'll be sure to add more tips in the future. Hope it was helpful and really hope to read many more tips from other authors.

Urm Moderators....any chance you could make this thread sticky?

Regards everyone and happy theming!!!

:ninja:

[ChaNinja]

*bump* looks like nobodys interested....oh well, can't blame a guy for trying! :laugh:

[CaKeY]

Thank you very very much Mr. Ninja!

[m4ch1n3g0d]

Hey, maybe they are all too busy now creating visual styles to comment. This was informative and inspiring for me, someone who has never attempted to create one. Thanks for your post.

[RadishTM Veteran]

Excellent thread ChaNinja :yes: (Y) ....

For doing this - your thread is now a sticky :) ....

Thread Sticked

Radish.

[BakanekoX05]

hehe ill give it a try.. I already own most of those programs. Sounds like a match made in heaven? Then i see how long it takes lol. Oh well thanks for good advice

[arhra]

One major thing you need to learn is: don't trust stylebuilder's preview. Apply early, apply often. It's the only way to be certain of how your theme is looking.

Experiment a lot. If you see something in stylebuilder, and wonder what it does, change it and apply. You might occasionally break something, but some of the best ideas have come about from people poking at the limits of the theme format, and seeing where it breaks (like text- and icon-less start buttons, and compact start menus, etc).

Building from the last one, if you want to try something, but stylebuilder won't let you, quit it and open up the xml files it uses in a text editor, they're pretty self-explanatory, and you can add pretty much any property to any element, and once you reload stylebuilder, it'll pick it up and you can edit it there. Sometimes the theme engine will choke on something you added, but you can often pull off something useful, or fix an annoying bug.

can't think of anything else offhand, but then it's 5am, and i'm off to bed...

[Schmoove]

One tip from my side:

Although ResourceHacker is a great application it has it's limitations. For example you can only import BMP files with it if you want to replace a BMP. Well this sounds obvious and it is.

Though I found out that TGTSoft ResBuilder has a very nice feature. Instead of always using BMP's you can use the PNG format with ResBuilder, it will convert it automaticly to the appropriate BMP format for inserting it in the file.

This is very handy when creating Shellstyles, as you often use bitmaps with transparency. A PNG with transparency is far more easy to edit then some BMP with masked colors.

So for making shellstyles ResBuilder is my tool.

[Jason the Eighty Eighth]

thanks for the post. great work.

:yes:

[tiger2k]

Building from the last one, if you want to try something, but stylebuilder won't let you, quit it and open up the xml files it uses in a text editor, they're pretty self-explanatory, and you can add pretty much any property to any element, and once you reload stylebuilder, it'll pick it up and you can edit it there. Sometimes the theme engine will choke on something you added, but you can often pull off something useful, or fix an annoying bug.

yeah, that comes in handy some times, especially went you want to use an image but that certain object doesn't usually use images,

i really think style builder really needs an update though

[whack]

Schmoove

Although ResourceHacker is a great application it has it's limitations. For example you can only import BMP files with it if you want to replace a BMP.

What are you talking about I use Reshack to import aditional alphablended bmp's all the time. Works fine. Just create the image in like a png or psd format convert it and import. No problem.

[Tran]

I think he means is that you can import a PNG into ResBuilder and it will automatically convert it into BMP. Whereas your technique, whack, while great, means you have to save the PNG as BMP then import.

[n-ctrl]

I think the best Resource Editor is Restorator, much easier than resource hacker; the only limitation is that only existing icon color depths are accepted. So if you want to replace an icon with only 8-bit colors by another one with both 32-bit colors and less, you still need Resource Hacker.

http://www.bome.com/Restorator/

[Schmoove]

I think he means is that you can import a PNG into ResBuilder and it will automatically convert it into BMP. Whereas your technique, whack, while great, means you have to save the PNG as BMP then import.

Exactly it is much easier to work with PNG then with BMP if you work with transparency. Also if you work with BMP you still have to think of the fact that you should downsample it to 8bit, because 24bit or 32bit don't always work

Resbuilder just give you the option to use any PNG. It automaticly converts it back to the right BMP format. I found this very convenient when making my shellstyle for BlueCurve.

Oh and whack, for your information, there is no such thing as 'alphablended bitmaps'. The only format that supports alphablending is PNG (and the PSP and PS native formats ofcourse). BMP doesn't even support transparency (like GIF does for example). Infact the imported BMP doesn't even has transparency... only a color that the software using the BMP has to draw as a transparent pixel.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Not true Schmoove... Photoshop can save 32 bit BMP images.... that is 24 bits of color and 8 bits of alpha. These can be imported into reshacker....

There is one problem though.. most programs (including reshacker and even the Windows Explorer) can't display them properly.....

I used to use ResHacker... because I found ResBuilder kept corrupting my msstyles and shellstyles.

But now I use ResBuilder because of the file cache.... Also the whole PNG thing is great cos I prefer fireworks to Photoshop anyway

Tip

Whenever you open a file with resbuilder it will extract the contents of this file into a file cache, on my computer it is at c:\program files\tgtsoft\resbuild\temp\. You can edit the files directly from there and they are updated on the fly (automagically) in resbuilder. I would recommend that you make sure that the directory tree is completely collapsed.

Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

[Schmoove]

Not true Schmoove... Photoshop can save 32 bit BMP images.... that is 24 bits of color and 8 bits of alpha. These can be imported into reshacker....

Jesus, can't you people read?? I never said you couldn't import 32bit BMP's with ResHacker.

Exactly it is much easier to work with PNG then with BMP if you work with transparency. Also if you work with BMP you still have to think of the fact that you should downsample it to 8bit, because 24bit or 32bit don't always work (8bit also doesn't always work... sometimes you must use 32bit)

What I meant is, sometimes if you forget to downsample to 8bit and you import the 32bit BMP, the shellstyle will not show up at all, because it's corrupted.

With ResBuilder you don't have that problem, since it uses PNG for you to edit and it converts the PNG back to the right format before importing it (it does import it as a BMP actually, since Windows can't handle PNG), without you bothering about if you should have saved the file in 8 or 32 bit or whatever.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

I interchange 32 bit BMP files with 8 and 24 bit as well with reshacker... works a treat.... I don't see why it would corrupt your files.

Also alpha transparency doesn't always work either... sometimes it must be index transparency otherwise the styles engine doesn't render it as transparent and vice versa (sometimes it has to be 32 bit with Alpha transparency to make it render correctly).

Peeeeeeeeeeeeeez

[ChaNinja]

Wow! This thread is sticky! Thank you Radish! I thought it was doomed to stumble down the page to oblivion like so many before it. My faith has been restored, I really believe it has the potential to benefit all of us, white-belts to ninjas.

I have encountered SO many problems and questions while theming and some of them drove me to the brink of insanity I tell you! They can be extremely tedious, frustrating and even show-stopping. I just wouldn't want anyone else to have to endure such pain unnecessarily. And if any of you authors know something that might make the journey a little less traumatic for the rest of us, then please share...we'll be forever in your debt!

Arhra! Haven't heard from you in years dude! Thanks so much for the tip! Looking at your post count and the date you joined...you don't talk much in here do you? I feel privileged! You are one heck of a themer! :)

You contributed some crucial knowledge there! But remember...before you try anything new by editing the XML file, be sure to backup your StyleBuilder files...the inbuilt backup feature should be fine.

Talking about that inbuilt backup feature of StyleBuilder...think of it as the "Quick Save" in games...very short term! In addition you should consistently make archived backups of your SB files in a separate folder (RAR files work best for Stylebuilder files). Often you'll want to backtrack a long way and it can save you a lot of time.

I use the XML trick that Arhra mentioned very often when I want to change the text properties of a button, taskbar button, toolbar button, "All Programs" menu or titlebar text for different "states" e.g pressed, mouseover, active, inactive etc.

It seems however that it does not work with the "Small Caption" titlebars.

And thank you Schmoove for the great tip! I've never used ResBuilder before and will try it out for my next shellstyles! As mentioned by others here, you can alternatively save the PNG image as a PSD file using Photoshop, then use "GIF Movie Gear" to convert the PSD file to a 24-bit BMP with alpha channel (which is what DLL and msstyle files like).

Here are some other tips when using Transparency in StyleBuilder....

- The standard way of using the magic pink color is cool for straight edges and maybe 45 degree edges. But usually looks very pixelated and poor quality when used for large curves.

- If you want that smooth semi-transparent look then you can usually change the "ImageFile" property in StyleBuilder to point to a PNG file instead of the BMP file. Be warned that this is not always possible...like for most parts of the Startmenu and titlebars for example (so try stick to straight and 45 degree edges for these). Most buttons and arrows usually work fine with PNGs though.

- When changing the ImageFile property make sure the new PNG image is in the folder with the rest of the VS images.

- This next one is something that had me really stumped! When you change an ImageFile property from a BMP file to a PNG file, you must delete or rename the original BMP file in the folder...otherwise StyleBuilder will still try to use it!

- Also if you get a bright white patch where it should have been transparent then you should apply a flat fill or gradient of 1% opacity to the transparent regions of the image. StyleBuilder sometimes battles with completely transparent bits.

- I figured these out the hard way during TallyHawk B1 when I did the Tray Arrows (remember the hawk eye) and the old wing-shaped Taskbar buttons.

- Always backup your StyleBuilder files before attempting to change the ImageFile property to a PNG.

- Using a PNG image for the Startbutton is tricky and a bit of a pain but it is possible. For some reason it causes StyleBuilder to crash. I think it is related to the Preview window. It will not crash unless the startbutton is visible in the preview window when the preview window is reset. Since this is the case when StyleBuilder is launched it will crash on loading up. So for this reason making the startbutton a PNG should be the last thing you do. Its best to do this by opening the compiled msstyle file in a resource hacker like ResHacker or Restorator and manually make the change there. But remember to convert the PNG to a masked BMP using "GIF Movie Gear" first. Or use ResBuilder I suppose. I had to do this for every color scheme of the TallyHawk B2 release. It was tedious but it wouldn't have looked so smooth when you use double-height taskbars otherwise.

- Use standard BMPs and the "magic pink" method whenever you can because unlike PNGs, BMP files can be easily optimized and made smaller thus resulting in a faster performing VS. I'll give you some more tips on optimizations another time. It is the last step in creating a VS.

A word on feedback and exposure, I mentioned before how important this is. But you must be careful when and where you get feedback.

I first realized the beauty of feedback when I uploaded ChaNinja Style A1 to ThemeXP.org. The overwhelming positive comments I got from those users back then really motivated me to persist with theming. But things have changed much since then. Back then VSs were still a very new concept and it was much easier to impress people than it is now. Since then so many new and good VSs have been released on sites like ThemeXP.org and Deviantart that people have become somewhat spoilt for choice and generally take VSs for granted. Gone are the days when you can upload a theme that you have worked up in a couple of days and get the encouraging feedback that you used to, infact it could be quite devastating some of the things people say nowadays. But you can expect that from such sites because:

A) You'll get a LOT more exposure there than your VSs would on say Neowin (which believe it or not is still underground in comparison). More people means more anonymity thus ruder comments.

B) Feedback is usually short and one-way. You're either limited to one comment or the site just doesn't facilitate two-way conversations adequately.

C) They are generally uncontrolled environments where people don't have to answer to moderators or others when they act like morons.

My point is this, think about the kind of feedback you are looking for and upload your themes appropriately. If you are still developing and want regular, informative and constructive feedback, then use forum-based sites. Only use sites like themexp or deviantart to showcase your themes once you've reached an important milestone or the theme is more or less complete. This way you'll get the right kind of feedback and you'll save yourself much dissappointment.

Also you'll find that your styles will be well received by some sites and not so well by others. It depends largely on the community's culture. Try many different sites to see where you get the best response. For example I find that Neowin is good for most kinds of VSs but at Hardwaregeeks I found that Mac-style VSs get a better response. I'm generalising a lot here but there are patterns you should look out for.

Just one word about the resource hackers, I recommend you have a copy of all of them just to be sure. Use them all and see which one you are more comfortable with. I prefer the Restorator interface but I found that it can be quite unstable at times and I sometimes end up using ResHacker for changing images in msstyles. I found Restorator better for working with system DLLs like the shell32.dll as it lets you save your changes by overwriting the original shell32.dll immediately instead of saving as another file. Then all you have to do is reboot to see the changes. Reshacker used to give me those "Cannot overwrite as file is in use" errors often.

In closing for the day I just wanted to say to the beginners that theming is an incredible experience! You will learn many important and diverse lessons. You will develop many useful skills and get to know yourself better. But don't kid yourselves...it takes HARD work and dedication, and is quite a challenge to take on, but like all good challenges, the rewards of succeeding are well worth it! For yourself and your many users-to-be.

Cha :ninja:

Edited May 16, 2003 by ChaNinja

[Schmoove]

I interchange 32 bit BMP files with 8 and 24 bit as well with reshacker... works a treat.... I don't see why it would corrupt your files.

Also alpha transparency doesn't always work either... sometimes it must be index transparency otherwise the styles engine doesn't render it as transparent and vice versa (sometimes it has to be 32 bit with Alpha transparency to make it render correctly).

Peeeeeeeeeeeeeez

Beats me why it wouldn't work, but from my own experience, the shellstyle is very picky on what you feed it. I had numerous occasions where the shellstyle got corrupted when changing a BMP with the wrong format. Well that made me use ResBuilder in the end.

And thank you Schmoove for the great tip! I've never used ResBuilder before and will try it out for my next shellstyles! As mentioned by others here, you can alternatively save the PNG image as a PSD file using Photoshop, then use "GIF Movie Gear" to convert the PSD file to a 24-bit BMP with alpha channel (which is what DLL and msstyle files like).

You can also save it in Photoshop as a 24bit bmp with alpha channel. You just got to make sure that your image is positioned on a layer and not on the background-layer. So when you start making an image, don't start drawing on the background-layer but first create a new layer (well at any task this is something I would advice... avoid useing the background-layer at any cost) and start drawing on that. then when you are ready, you delete the background layer so al you got left is 1 layer with your picture on it (or merge all used layers, except for the background layer.... so no 'flatten image', but 'merge visible'... don't forget to hide the background layer when using 'merge visible').

Edited May 16, 2003 by Schmoove

[ChaNinja]

Shot Schmoove! I didn't know you could use PS for those BMPs! Good one! :D

[themajor]

Nice thread started by Chaninja............I am a great fan of his work and i am going to have a go but i am a complete novice. I need to get Adobe Photoshop before i can start but its so expensive. I have looked around and i can pick up edition 5 which is LE (i presume this is for Limited Edition) fairly cheaply but will this have all the bits i need or should i save up for version 7 which will take some time. Any advice from you experts out there would be appreciated but go easy on me as you have got to start somewhere.

[Valkyre]

Nice guide Cha, but I already do most of what you suggested! :whistle: :laugh:

[.Atlantis]

Geez. This has made me think twice about Theming. Took me a while to think whether I should shoot ahead and start doing it. I am a complete n00b to theming, but have done my fair share of excellent graphical user interfaces and images.

I have decided to give this a shot.

-Grant

P.S Cheers ChaNinja, you inspire me with your great work, I hope to beat you some day :whistle: :lol:

[morkuma]

i am such a victim of lazyness

i have started about 10 VS, 40+ winamp skins, a few trillian skins, and never EVER complete them.

:/

stupid everything :D

great giude though, i eventually will pump out a few vs's and skins :D

[xxpor]

i cant find a working dl for ColorPad tho, can some one post a link?