Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mrtew · Jun 7, 2003, 08:34 AM

We really need to keep all the "can't find this resource" questions in one place instead of everyone starting a new thread every time they give up looking for something. Don't you think?

Anyway.... I will start; here's mine...
There are nice buttons in Photoshop and I see them in Drag Thing too that I don't ever remember creating in my theme, but there they are! I like them but I want to change them a little, but I can't find where they are. Please tell me! They are all those pretty, gradated, interlocking, different sized, dark grey squares you see in this shot.

quandarry · Jun 7, 2003, 11:41 AM

i think it may be these...

(3030) to (3070)

Dace · Jun 7, 2003, 02:09 PM

Originally posted by quandarry:
i think it may be these...

(3030) to (3070)

Trying to silently impress us? What theme is that that you are using?

n8x · Jun 7, 2003, 02:17 PM

Phoenix1701 · Jun 7, 2003, 03:00 PM

Yeah, 'fess up. That theme's impressing me too!

fireside · Jun 7, 2003, 03:08 PM

me wanty

Sage · Jun 7, 2003, 03:13 PM

We'll all have to hold you hostage, quandarry.

1c3 · Jun 7, 2003, 03:14 PM

groovy! me want too... =)

mrtew · Jun 7, 2003, 05:10 PM

Originally posted by quandarry:
i think it may be these...

That's IT.... thanks! Now how about this one?
Which pxm is causing the lite gray behind the Navigator and History tabs and which pxm is causing the weird grey stripes on the File Browser and Brushes tabs? The little remaining details on my theme are starting to driving me crazy. (Cool theme by the way!)

swiz · Jun 7, 2003, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by mrtew:
That's IT.... thanks! Now how about this one?
Which pxm is causing the lite gray behind the Navigator and History tabs and which pxm is causing the weird grey stripes on the File Browser and Brushes tabs? The little remaining details on my theme are starting to driving me crazy. (Cool theme by the way!)

Its coded from within the app. It wont change.

smeger · Jun 7, 2003, 05:20 PM

Sorry about contributing to thread hijack, but quandarry, that theme is superkewl! I'm looking forward to seeing a final version!

Dace · Jun 7, 2003, 06:14 PM

Originally posted by smeger:
Sorry about contributing to thread hijack, but quandarry, that theme is superkewl! I'm looking forward to seeing a final version!

Could it be the theme that's suppose to match Adam Bett's Industrial icons?

rgoer · Jun 7, 2003, 08:13 PM

It looks to be a port of the Systronic-15 windowblinds skin/litestep theme. That's the skin I use on my XP box at work ;^)

Dace · Jun 7, 2003, 08:51 PM

Originally posted by rgoer:
It looks to be a port of the Systronic-15 windowblinds skin/litestep theme. That's the skin I use on my XP box at work ;^)

Thanks for the link. Great skin, and like I said, it would go great with Adam Bett's Industrial icons. Is there a Windows port of those icons?

NetworkShadow · Jun 7, 2003, 09:07 PM

Ya I like that theme... When is it out and where do I download it?

bOOzo · Jun 8, 2003, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by mrtew:

That's the Butted Bevel Button. I promiss that once ThemePark 1.0 is done and released, you wont have to ask questions like this again..

quandarry · Jun 8, 2003, 04:36 PM

Intermission:

Originally posted by smeger:
Sorry about contributing to thread hijack, but quandarry, that theme is superkewl! I'm looking forward to seeing a final version!

when i first saw systronic i thought this has to go on osx...so i thru the basics together real quick to get it up and running just to see if it was possible/feasable to do a full blown port to osx...all this just from the small pic i had seen which didn't show too much...i have all of the artwork now and a full look as it should can't really be done withot taking artistic licence...limitations of osx at the moment...but i will tinker away till osx 10.3 comes around and see what's up...if i come up with a port that does it justice i will release it with permissions and credits...

just one thing...heh...it took me nearly three hours to get the window widgets working and lined up properly...so i may throw my hands up and pass it on...damn osx...

now back to the thread which is in progress...

Phoenix1701 · Jun 8, 2003, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by Dace:
Could it be the theme that's suppose to match Adam Bett's Industrial icons?

Nope, that'd be Project Rook:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...t=project+rook

TheDisaster · Jun 9, 2003, 01:39 AM

There are two questions I wanted to ask. First; There are several pxm#'s that have the aqua stripes like in the toolbars of Finder windows and the body of other windows (like the System Preferences) I've changed more than half of them so far, but barely any have changed so far. What ones have to be changed for the Finder toolbar area and the areas behind text and buttons?

Second; What controls the progress bar on the boot panel screen? I have changed two of the large progress bars like the one on the boot panel screen, but I have yet to see it used any where. Where is that one?

Thanks.

swiz · Jun 9, 2003, 07:54 AM

Originally posted by TheDisaster:
There are two questions I wanted to ask. First; There are several pxm#'s that have the aqua stripes like in the toolbars of Finder windows and the body of other windows (like the System Preferences) I've changed more than half of them so far, but barely any have changed so far. What ones have to be changed for the Finder toolbar area and the areas behind text and buttons?

Second; What controls the progress bar on the boot panel screen? I have changed two of the large progress bars like the one on the boot panel screen, but I have yet to see it used any where. Where is that one?

Thanks.

The boot panel progress bar images are stored in raw data form within a system executable file. You really want to stay away from modifying it now because APpel has a tend of changing this file just enough so that it wont allow a computer to boot up if it is using a 10.2."whatever" version and the themes file is any other version. It was really causing a stink a few months back.

bbxstudio · Jun 9, 2003, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by TheDisaster:
There are several pxm#'s that have the aqua stripes like in the toolbars of Finder windows and the body of other windows (like the System Preferences) I've changed more than half of them so far, but barely any have changed so far. What ones have to be changed for the Finder toolbar area and the areas behind text and buttons?

This part sucks - they all have to be an 8x8 pixel region that tiles nicely - you have to change all of the ppats, toolbar, modal and alert backgrounds to pretty much the same thing because for some insane reason any given window background or striped region in OSX is constructed from a seemingly random patchwork of these resources. Go through the extras.rsc (and don't miss those PPATs - they're the meat and potatoes for stripes in Aqua) just paste over anything that looks like stripes and you'll be ok.

bOOzo · Jun 9, 2003, 08:53 AM

The boot panel progress bar images are stored in raw data form within a system executable file. You really want to stay away from modifying it now because APpel has a tend of changing this file just enough so that it wont allow a computer to boot up if it is using a 10.2."whatever" version and the themes file is any other version. It was really causing a stink a few months back.

Actually, the BootX files was causing the trouble. The boot progressbar is stored in a different file called QuartzDisplay. That file is only a few K, and I it hasn't changed in any of the minor system updates. I have no idea what will happen with 10.3 though. But I've made a boot progressbar for all my themes, and it hasn't caused any problems yet.

The bootx file is a whole different story, don't include it with your theme.

I've said it before, but in ThemePark 1.0 it will be alot easier to find what you are looking for, and all the backgrounds are stored in the same category.

TheDisaster · Jun 9, 2003, 10:08 AM

Thank you. I had forgoten about the ppat's, I hadn't poked around in extra's.rsrc in a very long time. So the boot progress bar is in QuartzDisplay? I never thought about that, guess it makes sense that it'd use a progress bar bundled with the boot panel, which I have already made for this theme. I don't know if I'm going to mess with the QuartzDisplay file, is modifying that progress bar especially hard/risky?

swiz · Jun 9, 2003, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by bOOzo:
Actually, the BootX files was causing the trouble. The boot progressbar is stored in a different file called QuartzDisplay. That file is only a few K, and I it hasn't changed in any of the minor system updates. I have no idea what will happen with 10.3 though. But I've made a boot progressbar for all my themes, and it hasn't caused any problems yet.

Oh yeah, thats right. I removed both from my themes for fear of having to do it ultimately anyway; so I was just grouping them together. Thanks for the refresher, if Panther doesnt change it than I will probably go back and include them again.

smeger · Jun 9, 2003, 05:19 PM

I posted a rant about this in the QuartzDisplay thread, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say, Apple will change the file at some point and you'll have lots of angry theme users and people will think that theming destabilizes your system.

Please don't distribute modified QuartzDisplay files.

TheDisaster · Jun 9, 2003, 08:06 PM

Originally posted by smeger:
I posted a rant about this in the QuartzDisplay thread, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say, Apple will change the file at some point and you'll have lots of angry theme users and people will think that theming destabilizes your system.

Please don't distribute modified QuartzDisplay files.

But the same can be said about BootX files, and many themes contain those too, or the Extras.rsrc. But for the sake of playing it safe I probably wouldn't include these in my final theme. I just makes it so much more complete.

I have noticed that in the pxm#'s there are a lot more push buttons than I had expected, are all of them necessary to change? I get the feeling that there are at least a few abandoned resources in here that aren't used, is this true?

mrtew · Jun 9, 2003, 09:55 PM

Originally posted by smeger:
... Suffice to say, Apple will change the file at some point and ...

Do you have any reason for saying that... or are you just kinda guessing?

smeger · Jun 9, 2003, 10:57 PM

Originally posted by mrtew:
Do you have any reason for saying that... or are you just kinda guessing?

I don't have any concrete knowledge. But system components always change eventually. I'd put good money on it changing within the year.

Originally posted by TheDisaster:
But the same can be said about BootX files, and many themes contain those too...

I think it's insane to distribute patches of any executable file unless the program you're using to do the patching has assloads of safety checks.

Especially when the files you're replacing are responsible for booting your computer.

TheDisaster · Jun 10, 2003, 05:04 PM

Not a question specifically about where a certain pxm# is, but how one behaves. I was playing around with the pxm resources for the menu bar (root menu caps and root menu fill) and waned to see if I could get them to be completely transparent, except for a one pixel line line at the very bottom. I wanted to play with this because I wanted to see what I had to do to have a semi-transparent menu bar, so I could see my desktop picture behind it. No matter what I did it came out really funny every time. It was always white, and when I clicked on it the selected fill got all funny and inverted looking. When I released it stays. Is the menu bar weird, or do I just have to do something different?

TheDisaster · Jun 10, 2003, 05:37 PM

I fixed it so that the menu bar should be the exact same transparency as a normal window's title bar when it is inactive, but it still doesn't work. It looks normal until I click on it, it selects, then when I release it is a light blue. There must be something special about the menu bar that I don't know.

TheDisaster · Jun 10, 2003, 05:50 PM

Nevermind the last two questions, it turns out I'd have to hack apart the SystemUIServer.

mrtew · Jun 10, 2003, 07:11 PM

Originally posted by TheDisaster:
Nevermind the last two questions, it turns out I'd have to hack apart the SystemUIServer.

Yep, no such thing as a transparent menubar (yet). It would be great though! I'm surprised that I haven't seen a 'Glass' theme yet where everything is transparent (except for the menubar). I think that would be cool. Windowshade lets you make any window transparent, but I'd like to see the gui itself clear while the content of the windows would obviously not be. Who knows what kinds of problems one would run into with layering though. My Titanium theme is about done now... maybe that will be my next project!

smeger · Jun 10, 2003, 07:51 PM

Originally posted by TheDisaster:
Is the menu bar weird, or do I just have to do something different?

Nope, the menu bar is weird. It's actually a carbon window and its set to disallow compositing. This means it cannot include transparency.

darkcore · Jun 10, 2003, 11:50 PM

I have a theming question, id rather not give a preview of the theme i'm working on yet, so i'll use a screenshot from Max's Milk theme.

Do any themers (Max?) happen to know which pxm(s) (or other theme resources) contain the fill color and/or frame of the boxes in the above screenshot? If need be I can give other examples of the same boxes in other programs.

Fluid · Jun 11, 2003, 12:12 AM

The closest theme to a transparent theme is using deskshade to remove the menu bar shadow and make the menu background same as wallpaper. Really cool effect.

quandarry · Jun 11, 2003, 12:12 AM

Originally posted by darkcore:
I have a theming question, id rather not give a preview of the theme i'm working on yet, so i'll use a screenshot from Max's Milk theme.

Do any themers (Max?) happen to know which pxm(s) (or other theme resources) contain the fill color and/or frame of the boxes in the above screenshot? If need be I can give other examples of the same boxes in other programs.

this may help....
http://www.desktopper.net/theme/4-38/

swiz · Jun 11, 2003, 01:04 AM

Originally posted by darkcore:
I have a theming question, id rather not give a preview of the theme i'm working on yet, so i'll use a screenshot from Max's Milk theme.

Do any themers (Max?) happen to know which pxm(s) (or other theme resources) contain the fill color and/or frame of the boxes in the above screenshot? If need be I can give other examples of the same boxes in other programs.

Thats the secondary groupbox, aka pxm #2312 thru 2315.

darkcore · Jun 11, 2003, 03:46 AM

quandarry: i've checked there before, doesn't seem to help. :/

swiz: I modified all the secondary groupbox pxms but they didn't seem to affect the boxes.

bOOzo · Jun 11, 2003, 04:50 AM

Originally posted by darkcore:
quandarry: i've checked there before, doesn't seem to help. :/

swiz: I modified all the secondary groupbox pxms but they didn't seem to affect the boxes.

Actually, those boxes can't be changed.. They are like gray transparent layer that is overlayed on the background of the theme. They are only used in cocoa apps.
If it is possible to change them, I have no idea how.

Dace · Jun 11, 2003, 08:48 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
I'm surprised that I haven't seen a 'Glass' theme yet where everything is transparent (except for the menubar). I think that would be cool. Windowshade lets you make any window transparent, but I'd like to see the gui itself clear while the content of the windows would obviously not be. Who knows what kinds of problems one would run into with layering though. My Titanium theme is about done now... maybe that will be my next project!

Did you forget about ClearAqua? Maybe you never heard of it.

TheDisaster · Jun 11, 2003, 11:55 AM

Originally posted by Dace:
Did you forget about ClearAqua? Maybe you never heard of it.

I remember that theme, but it made it impossible to read your menus if your had more than a few things open, or a dark wallpaper. What would be awesome would be something like it, but have the menus and stuff be transparent enough to look almost clear but still dark enough to not lose the text of the menus. mrtew and myself have talked briefly about the idea of trying to find a nice medium for a theme like this.

mrtew · Jun 11, 2003, 09:34 PM

Originally posted by Dace:
Did you forget about ClearAqua? Maybe you never heard of it.

Atually, yes I was able to forget about it, but after you posted that screenshot all the horrible memories came flooding back in wave after wave. My eyes! My retinas are burning! My eyes. Please don't EVER do anything like that again!

Dace · Jun 11, 2003, 09:46 PM

Originally posted by mrtew:
Atually, yes I was able to forget about it, but after you posted that screenshot all the horrible memories came flooding back in wave after wave. My eyes! My retinas are burning! My eyes. Please don't EVER do anything like that again!

Next time, be careful what you wish for... and stop staring at your computer screen all day, that's why your eyes hurt (try some Visine). Go outside and take some fresh air, socialize...meet real people :

mrtew · Jul 12, 2003, 10:16 PM

I was looking at ResExcellence and noticed in my theme example there is a grey space next to the tabs that I never see in 'real life' and that there is something similar in several other themes. I really thought I'd gotten all the ppats and background and fill pxms fixed so that kind of thing wouldn't happen but I must have missed one somewhere and I still can't find it. It really doesn't affect the theme because I never actually see it anywhere but it looks bad on ResEx and when I update my theme for Panther I'd like to have it gone. Does anyone know where this area is coming from in the ResEx previews? Please?

Here's what I am talking about and a few other examples....

Synotic · Jul 13, 2003, 05:49 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
I was looking at ResExcellence and noticed in my theme example there is a grey space next to the tabs that I never see in 'real life' and that there is something similar in several other themes. I really thought I'd gotten all the ppats and background and fill pxms fixed so that kind of thing wouldn't happen but I must have missed one somewhere and I still can't find it. It really doesn't affect the theme because I never actually see it anywhere but it looks bad on ResEx and when I update my theme for Panther I'd like to have it gone. Does anyone know where this area is coming from in the ResEx previews? Please?

Here's what I am talking about and a few other examples....

It's because they're using a RealBASIC app to preview the theme. I think Carbon apps also experienced that problem when I was messing around with Carbon nibs in IB. It doesn't show up in Aqua because it uses the same striped pattern in and out of the tabs. But I don't think I've seen any Carbon app exhibit this problem other than RealBASIC apps?

mrtew · Jul 13, 2003, 09:19 AM

Originally posted by Synotic:
It's because they're using a RealBASIC app to preview the theme. I think Carbon apps also experienced that problem when I was messing around with Carbon nibs in IB. It doesn't show up in Aqua because it uses the same striped pattern in and out of the tabs. But I don't think I've seen any Carbon app exhibit this problem other than RealBASIC apps?

Thanks, but only those 4 themes out of dozens show that error so I'd blame it on the theme more than ResEx's display app. I just want to fix my theme so that when they display it in real basic it won't have that problem.

mrtew · Jul 14, 2003, 06:25 PM

Is there anyone that knows which pxm is making the grey area by the tabs?

Originally posted by mrtew:
I was looking at ResExcellence and noticed in my theme example there is a grey space next to the tabs that I never see in 'real life' and that there is something similar in several other themes. I really thought I'd gotten all the ppats and background and fill pxms fixed so that kind of thing wouldn't happen but I must have missed one somewhere and I still can't find it. It really doesn't affect the theme because I never actually see it anywhere but it looks bad on ResEx and when I update my theme for Panther I'd like to have it gone. Does anyone know where this area is coming from in the ResEx previews? Please?

Synotic · Jul 15, 2003, 05:52 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
Thanks, but only those 4 themes out of dozens show that error so I'd blame it on the theme more than ResEx's display app. I just want to fix my theme so that when they display it in real basic it won't have that problem.

Well I still think it is RealBASIC. If you notice all of those themes have different backgrounds for the tab pane and the window background. The themes that don't have this problem are the ones appear to have the same background and tab background. If you can find a theme that has different backgrounds but displays correctly, maybe you could looks at its resources?

mrtew · Jul 15, 2003, 06:17 AM

Originally posted by Synotic:
Well I still think it is RealBASIC. If you notice all of those themes have different backgrounds for the tab pane and the window background. The themes that don't have this problem are the ones appear to have the same background and tab background. If you can find a theme that has different backgrounds but displays correctly, maybe you could looks at its resources?

That's the thing.... I don't want to have different backgrounds.... I want them all the same, and I do everywhere but here on resex. Even if I fixed it I don't know how I'd test it until I resubmitted it to resex. I want the same background for the tab pane and the window background I just can't find any resources I haven't changed. Here's some examples of how I want it to look...

swiz · Jul 15, 2003, 04:35 PM

It must be the theme because the preview app was made with Interface Builder. Mike Coyle was using a preview from Theme Checker which was carbon and it made my theme previews look bad because it used obsolete PPATs in the wrong places. I talked to Mike and suggested he use IB, he did so its not RealBasic unless Scott(The new ResEx dude) made yet another preview app and did use it.