Tools of the trade

Okay so you want to make a theme for Vista right? Well your going to need some applications first.

Heres what I use:

Resource Editor
A must to get the graphics out of the needed files.

PE Explorer
This is one of the most used tools you will use, this program isn't free (I'm sure you can find a way around that) but it's the best I've used, and it's what I use.
Alternatives:
ResHack


Graphics Editor
If you're going to be making graphics for themes you're obviously going to need a graphics editor, here's a few you could use:

Adobe Photoshop: The best graphics editor on the market and has been for a long time, but it comes at a price, Photoshop is insanely expensive (but also easily obtainable). It's what I use since it has the best UI I've used on any graphics editing application. (Windows and Mac only)

GIMP: The open source alternative to Photoshop, the price? Free of course. This is good in someways but The GIMP has some problems. For starters the terrible and confusing UI, which makes doing simple tasks frustrating sometimes, but for the price and for it's feature set GIMP is defiantly one of the best image editors after Photoshop. (For all platforms Windows, Mac, Linux)

Hex Editor
Not needed often, but comes in handy when editing the VARIANT file in a theme.

XVI32: A lightweight free hex editor that will do what you need to edit whatever files you need to. It's what I use. (Windows Only)

Must Have Utilities
These are applications you MUST have if you want to successfully create a Vista theme.

Alpha Image Converter: You need this make proper PNGs that will work in Vista (see my post called "creating proper transparent aero compatible pngs") Now I couldn't find who created this little utility since I found it on a forum, but I've uploaded it and you can download it by clicking the name of it.

And that's basically all you need to start making a Vista skin.

VistaXT Version 2.0 R2 Progress

If you already didn't guess I make Vista themes, my major one called VistaXT is on release 1 of version 2.0 at the moment. You can find it and all the older versions (V1.0 releases) at my deviantart page: http://skate3214.deviantart.com)

Anyways I just thought I'd update you on my progress for the new version coming soon.
The first major change will be that I want to include an installer for the them that will:
-Take ownership of the necessary files
-Rename the files to "filename.dll.bak" so it's possible to restore it from a backup
-Copy over the modified files
-Restart explorer to show the changes

I'm pretty much finished with the installer, I just have to test it and test different ways to package it (SFX RAR, etc...)

The installer is coded using a scripting language called Autoit, which is a BASIC type language.
Other parts of it are a small executable for restarting Explorer.exe and a small one for taking ownership of all the files. These are just batch files compiled to an exe.

I plan on releasing the source code to the Autoit script and the executables with the project, so other people can build off it to make there own installers.

Now on to the graphical part. I've changed all the progress bars for the copy/paste dialogues and the meters on remaining hard drive space (basically anything that has a progress bar). I've toned down the highlights on the start bar as I got some complaints of them being to bright.
Two themes are now included (possibly three) one with the normal dark taskbar, another with a lighter more transparent taskbar and probably another with a dark taskbar but a toned down reflection.
Also new is a brand new login background and splash screen, with a new more cleaner design.
I've also for the first time have made a bootscreen (to be used with the msconfig no gui boot option)
Also included are new smoother, cleaner push buttons, instead of the old sharp harsh looking ones.
There's a few other thing's I have changed to but I can't remember everything at the moment, I also still have quite a few more things to change. But so far this release is coming along good.

If you wanna have a look at Autoit you can visit there website, it's a very handy scripting language:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

Creating proper transparent Aero Compatible PNGs

Okay this is the first tutorial in the set in helping you make a start on making a theme for Vista.
I originally posted this on JoeJoe.org a while ago.

Okay first what I mean by compatible PNGs is this:

See how there is white around the image, this is because of how programs like Photoshop save PNG files. So we need to make it so it looks like this:

See no more white!

Okay to do this you need to have your image, I'm going to use the startbutton as the example because this was the one that was giving me trouble in the beginning.

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Lets Start!

Okay so make your image in Photoshop like so:

Remember it must have a transparent background

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Now download the program called "Alpha Icon Converter"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/e4am97

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And run it you'll see the program come up, make it so that it looks like this:

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And drag your .PNG file onto the program and you'll get a .BMP file with the same name back


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Now open both these files in Photoshop, and drag the .PNG layer onto the .BMP layer like so:

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Now position the new layer exactly over the top of the "Background" layer in the image:

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Now select the "Background" and use a paint brush to completely paint it black, the whole thing, make sure you don't miss any spots!

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Now save that file as a .BMP file with these settings:


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Now drag that new .BMP file onto "Alpha Icon Converter" with these settings:

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And wala! the new .PNG that has been created is the one you use to replace the resource in your msstyles file or whatever file you are modding. This technique can be used on any image that has that problem, not all images have this problem but a few of them do.

Happy modding! :)

First Post!

Hey everyone, I decided to make this blog to help people in designing some new themes and skins for Windows Vista. It will contain things such as creating proper transparent PNGs for use in Vista, the location of the graphics in what resource and other tips and helpful hints.

Hopefully with this we'll start seeing some good ORIGINAL themes and not all the longhorn and OSX rip offs I've been seeing all the time :)