[smeger]

Geekspiff is pleased to announce the release of ThemePark 1.2. ThemePark is the premiere theme editing and creation tool for Mac OS X.

This release includes:

• Complete Panther compatibility.
• Added support for guiKit packages containing multiple theme variants and additional customization options.
• Added guiKit file export for use with Unsanity's ShapeShifter.
• New Text Color editor for guiKit packages supporting globally customizable text colors.
• Added support for desktopper.net's MenuEnhancer.
• Added a converter that auto-generates a Panther theme from a Jaguar one.
• Updated documentation to include a section on updating themes for use with Panther.
• Updated About window so it doesn't look super-lame under Panther.
• Added support for 'hidden' attribute in theme templates - this allows one to have data in the template that isn't shown to the user.
• ThemePark files now include a hidden key specifying which version of Mac OS X they were designed for, and this key is used in exported themes.
• Fixed a bug that caused resource names & IDs to appear to be editable when editing .rsrc files.
• Miscellaneous fixes to registration code.
• The ThemePark resource browser now respects reasonable minimum column widths.
• Fixed an issue that prevented dragging resources who's names contain one or more slash characters.
• Fixed a bug that could cause sporadic errors when using the "Filter" box in the toolbar.
• Theme Preview windows can now be brought frontmost using menus even if the current frontmost document is not a theme template.
• Changed progress bar text while opening a .rsrc file.
• Fixed yet another bug that kept Theme Preview from working properly when reopening a saved file.
• Pasting an image with transparency into the Opaque column of a pxm# editor now applies the transparency to the image's mask.
• Resolved an issue in which copying images from a pxm# editor could result in an unpremultiplied image.
• Fixed a bug that could cause large images not to display when attempting to edit them.
• Resolved a minor issue that could cause Theme Preview windows to not close automatically when the corresponding theme is closed.
• Fixed a bug that prevented dragging a theme's Preview image to the Finder.
• Fixed a bug that prevented opening files by using the Open menu from working properly.
• The Theme Preview windows now have their own menu bar. They no longer pretend to be the same application as ThemePark.
• The Theme Preview applications can now be used from the command line with any Extras.rsrc file.
• Theme Preview now requires Unsanity's Application Enhancer (APE) to be installed.
• Theme Preview now works properly after merging or resetting theme elements.
• Existing theme templates are updated to be more localizable, while providing forward compatibility.
• Fixed an issue that made it impossible to manipulate very narrow images while running Panther.

Make it sing!

[Patcarla]

GREAT!!
Thanks Smeger. Can't wait this week end to work on my themes....

[Patcarla]

Just played a bit with it.. That's such a fine app. It's gonna be so fun to make cool themes

[MorphOSX]

GEEK-SPIFF. GEEK-SPIFF. GEEK-SPIFF.

The app rocks muchly, and is worth every penny of the shareware fee. My browser's pointed at the purchase link as we speak.

Dave

[wagmedia]

I'm having a problem replacing the window bar. Even if I make the image the exact size as the original Aqua element, it insists upon scaling the image. It won't let me paste in a 22 pixel high image, it always trys to make it 21 pixels high. I'm on 10.3.1 using Photoshop CS. I also tested this out in Photoshop 7 thinking there was some weird pasting bug, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Don't you love it? You release a new version, and out come the problems.

[NetworkShadow]

Cool I'm going to play with the Panther porting.
Can you port a Jag theme and then export it as a GUIkit?

[smeger]

Originally posted by wagmedia:
I'm having a problem replacing the window bar. Even if I make the image the exact size as the original Aqua element, it insists upon scaling the image. It won't let me paste in a 22 pixel high image, it always trys to make it 21 pixels high. I'm on 10.3.1 using Photoshop CS. I also tested this out in Photoshop 7 thinking there was some weird pasting bug, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Don't you love it? You release a new version, and out come the problems.

Photoshop only copies the pixels that aren't fully transparent. Is this what's happening? If, for example, the entire top row of pixels in your image were fully transparent and you did a Select All and then a Copy, what you pasted would be only 21 pixels tall.

If that's not it, try converting your image to indexed color in Photoshop before copying.

[wagmedia]

Originally posted by smeger:
Photoshop only copies the pixels that aren't fully transparent. Is this what's happening? If, for example, the entire top row of pixels in your image were fully transparent and you did a Select All and then a Copy, what you pasted would be only 21 pixels tall.

If that's not it, try converting your image to indexed color in Photoshop before copying.

No, I had flattened it before hand. I also tried the index color trick, but that didn't work either.

[Pixelwerx]

I was going to post a problem I was having with the last release and Panther, where I couldn't change the pxm's for labels. If I dragged the image to the desktop, modded it, and tried to copy it back, it would paste the .tiff file icon. If I copied it from PS, it would paste without the transparency. I hope that is fixed with 1.2.

Other than that I would like to thank you for TP, its an awesome app Keep up to great work.

By the way, long time lurker, first time post. I'm so glad I found this forum.

[wagmedia]

OK, I'm able to work around this by pasting into Preview first, then pasting into ThemePark. Kinda weird.

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by Pixelwerx:
I was going to post a problem I was having with the last release and Panther, where I couldn't change the pxm's for labels. If I dragged the image to the desktop, modded it, and tried to copy it back, it would paste the .tiff file icon. If I copied it from PS, it would paste without the transparency. I hope that is fixed with 1.2.

Just tried it, and it still does that. Smeger, or anybody else, do you know why? I might actually use labels if I can make them less ugly.

[timdorr]

Oh great, another $20 spent...

JUST KIDDING!

This is a great app, and I'm having fun restarting Cel Shaded I'm a victim of ThemeChanger screw ups that ever tcfix didn't help, so this combined with ShapeShifter has me all giddy like a child

[smeger]

Originally posted by Pixelwerx:
I was going to post a problem I was having with the last release and Panther, where I couldn't change the pxm's for labels. If I dragged the image to the desktop, modded it, and tried to copy it back, it would paste the .tiff file icon. If I copied it from PS, it would paste without the transparency. I hope that is fixed with 1.2.

Other than that I would like to thank you for TP, its an awesome app Keep up to great work.

By the way, long time lurker, first time post. I'm so glad I found this forum.

The transparency issue is probably the biggest hurdle to creating a theme with ThemePark. The problem is that Photoshop only reads/writes non-transparent PICT data from the clipboard, so you can't simply copy/paste a transparent image. (side note - why the hell does the premiere image editing app in the world do this!!!???)

There are quite a few work-arounds. Some can be found in ThemePark's online help (yes, it's one of like four apps that actually has online help). Another can be found in this theme creation tutorial. Another is to save your image from PS as a TIFF with transparency and then open in in Preview.app and copy it from there. That puts a transparent TIFF onto the clipboard.

I have a fix in the works to make this issue easy but it's tough for me to implement for various reasons.

[smeger]

Originally posted by wagmedia:
No, I had flattened it before hand. I also tried the index color trick, but that didn't work either.

Email me your image, I'll check it out out and see what's up.

[timdorr]

P.S. smeger, you got $20 coming your way

[smeger]

By the way, I thought I'd post a little bit of "what's new" for this release of ThemePark. The biggest things, obviously, are support for guiKit and auto-generation of Panther themes from Jaguar ones. Let's talk about the second one first.

The idea here is that Panther introduced a ton of new widgets and modified lots of existing ones. It would have been a lot of work to update existing themes, and most of that work would have been roughly the same for every theme that was updated. So ThemePark does it for you. Specifically, it adds new states to the pxm# resources that need them, it generates "mini" widgets from the appropriate existing "small" or "large" widgets, it creates brand new widgets out of existing ones (like the new segment tabs, for example), it migrates existing themed elements to new locations where appropriate, and it does other modifications as needed to make the Pantherized theme experience pleasant.

(Side note - this is a superset of what ShapeShifter does when it updates a theme for use with Panther. But its the same idea.)

The idea here is not that all of this will work perfectly - it won't. Resizing images isn't perfect, and generating new ones by compositing existing ones based on statistical analysis ain't perfect either. The idea is that it will provide something that's usable and that reduces dramatically the amount of work that's necessary by you to make it perfect.

Okay, moving on to guiKit. To use the new guiKit features, your editable theme needs to be in a guiKit ThemePark template. You can create one of these via File -> New. If you have an existing theme that isn't stored as a guiKit template, you can import it into your new guiKit template.

The first thing you'll see is that you've got support for multiple variants (finally!). Adding and removing 'em is fairly obvious, and this is also where you can import an existing non-guiKit themepark template (filename extension "tpark").

This area also contains some options for each variant. Currently, the only option present is a checkbox that lets you select whether to use desktopper.net's MenuEnhancer in your theme. Checking the box causes new editable theme items to appear in the Menubars and Menus section of your theme.

This section is also explained fully in ThemePark's online help.

Finally, custom text colors. Previous ThemePark themes had some editable text colors located at Elements -> Global Elements -> Text Colors. They were rather cryptic, and more importantly, they only worked in Carbon apps. Your guiKit template migrates these to a new editor that is somewhat nicer (although I think it could still be clearer). Here's a pretty picture:



I should note that this text color stuff is a work in progress. Some stuff doesn't work consistently or at all (Finder Icon View Text, e.g.). More options will be added and the ones that are already there will be refined.

Finally, the Export menu has a new, rather obvious menu item named Export for ShapeShifter. You can probably guess what this does.

Okay, that's your tour! Go make some art!

[wagmedia]

Originally posted by smeger:
Email me your image, I'll check it out out and see what's up.

I sent it to your Geekspiff webmaster email address.

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by smeger:
The transparency issue is probably the biggest hurdle to creating a theme with ThemePark. The problem is that Photoshop only reads/writes non-transparent PICT data from the clipboard, so you can't simply copy/paste a transparent image. (side note - why the hell does the premiere image editing app in the world do this!!!???)

There are quite a few work-arounds. Some can be found in ThemePark's online help (yes, it's one of like four apps that actually has online help). Another can be found in this theme creation tutorial. Another is to save your image from PS as a TIFF with transparency and then open in in Preview.app and copy it from there. That puts a transparent TIFF onto the clipboard.

I have a fix in the works to make this issue easy but it's tough for me to implement for various reasons.

Thanks Smeger, worked like a charm.

[Pixelwerx]

Oh, by the way. I thought TP was going to be able to open guiKit files. I guess I was mistaken? Let us know.

[bOOzo]

Originally posted by Pixelwerx:
Oh, by the way. I thought TP was going to be able to open guiKit files. I guess I was mistaken? Let us know.

If you apply the guiKit and then reopen themeparkand create a new theme, you can browse trough the whole guiKit theme you applied.

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by bOOzo:
If you apply the guiKit and then reopen themeparkand create a new theme, you can browse trough the whole guiKit theme you applied.

Yeah, I knew about that. I just wasn't planning on installing APE & SS, I've heard of too many problems with APE. I was hoping to be able to open a GuiKit without having to install something I don't want. Oh well. I mostly make my own themes anyway, just sometimes if someone has some graphics that are exactly what I want, I'll borrow them instead of making it myself. I just don't have alot of computer time these days

[timdorr]

Originally posted by bOOzo:
If you apply the guiKit and then reopen themeparkand create a new theme, you can browse trough the whole guiKit theme you applied.

So....What's the point of creating non-editable guiKits if you can just do that?

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by timdorr:
So....What's the point of creating non-editable guiKits if you can just do that?

To _make_ you have to install APE & SS? So even if you don't want to use SS for your theme changing, if you want to convert a SS exclusive, you still have to pay for SS. I think that kind of sucks.

[swiz]

Originally posted by Pixelwerx:
To _make_ you have to install APE & SS? So even if you don't want to use SS for your theme changing, if you want to convert a SS exclusive, you still have to pay for SS. I think that kind of sucks.

No you dont, just install it and do it in demo mode.

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by swiz:
No you dont, just install it and do it in demo mode.

But isn't it only good for 15 days?

[bOOzo]

It's pretty pointless converting guiKits anyway, because you loose the proper look of the theme..

[Pixelwerx]

Originally posted by bOOzo:
It's pretty pointless converting guiKits anyway, because you loose the proper look of the theme..

It's not so simple, it would depend on the theme. With GuiPod for example, the only difference I noticed was 'Menu Title Selected' not having the endcap graphics. Maybe there was something else, but not that I could see.

[Twister]

Originally posted by smeger:


Finally, custom text colors. Previous ThemePark themes had some editable text colors located at Elements -> Global Elements -> Text Colors. They were rather cryptic, and more importantly, they only worked in Carbon apps. Your guiKit template migrates these to a new editor that is somewhat nicer (although I think it could still be clearer). Here's a pretty picture:

Any chance of getting a better description of what those names mean?

What is Selected Header Text?
What is Window Frame Text?

Which one corresponds with the finders main menu? How about the toolbar text?

Thanks

[1c3]

Maybe I will buy it.. but I have to know what kind of theme to make^^

But I must say it loks really nice!!

100 posts!!