[Gerrit Vanoppen]

1. Icons
There are applications missing from the App list (AppleWorks, Route66 to name a few). I haven't yet found a way to add them to a theme. Is there ?

2. Desktop Pictures
Is there a way to insert a small tile with a solid color or a simple pattern, and have it tiled rather then zoomed out to full screen ?

TIA

[esXXI]

Originally posted by Gerrit Vanoppen:
1. Icons
There are applications missing from the App list (AppleWorks, Route66 to name a few). I haven't yet found a way to add them to a theme. Is there ?

2. Desktop Pictures
Is there a way to insert a small tile with a solid color or a simple pattern, and have it tiled rather then zoomed out to full screen ?

TIA

To answer 1) Jason has to code in (and presumably tweak/alter ShapeShifter/guiKit each time) each app's resources. Similar to how he has to add application skins.

(And who uses AppleWorks? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it's fourteen different types of ooglay and old smelling.)

[ArcticBear]

Originally posted by Gerrit Vanoppen:
2. Desktop Pictures
Is there a way to insert a small tile with a solid color or a simple pattern, and have it tiled rather then zoomed out to full screen ?

That would be a good feature addition. I guess the workaround is to cut and paste tiles and resave as a full screen size.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by esXXI:
(And who uses AppleWorks? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it's fourteen different types of ooglay and old smelling.)

It wasn't the point wether or not I use AppleWorks - it was the point missing it in TP. But I understand the coding thing - and definitely accept the incompleteness.
And just to let you know, I do use AppleWorks, mainly the database though - and the little word processing I need anyway.
Both FileMaker and MSWord would be like overkill for my limited needs.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by ArcticBear:
That would be a good feature addition. I guess the workaround is to cut and paste tiles and resave as a full screen size.

I'd say there may be a way already, and I suspect Good Gray is using it...
Otherwise, what would be a full screen size ? 12" 15" 17" etc etc ?

[Sage]

AppleWorks probably isn't on the list, because it uses old-school resource fork crap, just like MS Word. SS can easily change many applications, because most have their resources put in a folder in the app package, and it's just a matter of swapping out some .tiff files. But working with resource forks is beyond yucky.

[Blackintosh]

There are a lot of Applications that seem to be not supported by TP.
InDesign, Microsoft Office, etc...

Anyone an idea, how to solve this?

[Sage]

I don't have InDesign, but I imagine it's the same thing as AppleWorks and Office – resource forks. Same probably goes for Photoshop and almost any other really big commercial app.

[Dave-o�]

Correct.. all the 'major' apps use hard coded or resource forks for there display.. Though they are some what themed there is room for improvement. Have you noticed how Adobe apps are not touched by Silk? Same sort of deal..

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
Have you noticed how Adobe apps are not touched by Silk? Same sort of deal..

Silk lets you add these applications in it's Pref pane.

[Blackintosh]

TP supports Photoshop and ImageReady, but not Illustrator, Acrpobat, InDesign etc. although their names appear in the template.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

ThemePark has app icon containers for 3 sizes. Here's a few questions.

- if I only drop an icon on the 128x128, will the OS later compute all other sizes and will they look OK ?
- can I use Pixadex, use the slider to adjust preview size and from there on drag-n-drop all three sizes one by one into TP containers ?
- can I export .icns files from Pixadex one by one and drop them onto the TP window (as noted in TP comment) ?
- what would be the best way to create a TP iconset ?

TIA

[.saNNic.]

I use CandyBar to create a "base" set of icons...... System, Apps and App Extras. Then I open ThemePark and "add" an iconset to my theme, since ThemePark will recognize the CandyBar changed icons as "Default Aqua Icons", I change the remainder of the icons I was unable to change in CandyBar like the Disk Image icon, Preference Panes, File Types and so on....... Once I've finished changing icons in ThemePark I "Merge With Installed Elements" and "Save>Export for ShapeShifter".

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Two ideas about CandyBar 2 :

- prior to running SS2 with icons, I used CB to set all icons to default Aqua. Unfortunately my backup external disk wasn't hooked at the time, and my next backup ran into several errors (type -39) with messages like "Couldn't backup 0Safari..." (notice the zero prior to the name) and repeating that for about 6 or 7 app's. I suspect it has to do with the icons switched by CB2.
- I've never seen CB handle these icons (Finder and Trash), and now SS2 does



Back to TP : so you still do some remaining work in TP2. How do you fill up the different icon sizes ?

[.saNNic.]

Both apps are lacking in the icons they handle and arguably ShapeShifter has a few bugs in its handling of icons, but the method I have described above works quite well for me.

To put it another way....... CandyBar is to icons as ThemeChanger is to themes and ShapeShifter finishes the job.

I would like to see CandyBar icontainers support entire system icontainers (including apps and app extras} and I would like to see ShapeShifter have a scanning method (much like CandyBars app scanning method) to detect applications. The main drawback with ShapeShifters icon scan/detection is that there is none, Jason must code the program to realize any possible change.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by .saNNic.:
Both apps are lacking in the icons they handle and arguably ShapeShifter has a few bugs in its handling of icons, but the method I have described above works quite well for me.

I know of one SS icon bug : iDisk in Finder Sidebar. Have you encountered others so far ?

Your CandyBar method sounds OK, too bad though my Pixadex drag-n-drop question hasn't been answered yet - guess I'd prefer that one over CB.

[smeger]

- if I only drop an icon on the 128x128, will the OS later compute all other sizes and will they look OK ?

Yes, it will, and it will look as "OK" as any automatically resized image can. In other words, sometimes it'll look fine and sometimes it'll look horrible.

If you want to be quick, only do the 128x128. If all you're going to do is resize the 128x128 in Photoshop, there's probably no point - just do the 128x128. If you want to use different images for different sizes, or you can manually clean up the smaller versions, then do so.


- can I use Pixadex, use the slider to adjust preview size and from there on drag-n-drop all three sizes one by one into TP containers ?

I don't know for sure. If Pixadex icons change between the size representations as you drag the slider, then yes.

- can I export .icns files from Pixadex one by one and drop them onto the TP window (as noted in TP comment) ?

Yes, and this is probably the best way to do it since you KNOW that you're getting all of the representations that are defined if you do it this way (including drop states). When you drag in icns file into ThemePark, you drag into the window background, not into any of the three image representations.

- what would be the best way to create a TP iconset ?

You can improve on .saNNic.'s method a bit. Create an icontainer using Pixadex or Candybar. Make sure that it's an icontainer that actually maps icons to locations in the filesystem - these are usually the "red" icontainers. In ThemePark's icon set section, import the icontainer - you don't need to apply it with Candybar and then merge it in, ThemePark will read it directly. Change whatever you need to change, and save/export the file.

.saNNic.'s method will store all of the icons in the resulting guiKit file, even the ones that you haven't modified. And it's more work...

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Much obliged, smeger, for your in depth comment
I've used method 3 : exporting .icns files from Pixadex, next dropping them into TP windows. Works great.
CandyBar is out anyway : won't startup with SS2 active

[ArcticBear]

Originally posted by smeger:
- if I only drop an icon on the 128x128, will the OS later compute all other sizes and will they look OK ?

... If all you're going to do is resize the 128x128 in Photoshop, there's probably no point - just do the 128x128. If you want to use different images for different sizes, or you can manually clean up the smaller versions, then do so.

One trick is to unsharp mask the resized icon to keep the features from getting too fuzzy.