[aktive]

Hi,

I have the new Panther Developer Preview and I'm interested in customising it like I had it in Jag. Obviously all the apps like Duality and CandyBar don't work on Panther.

So I thought I would come straight to the themeing experts and ask how it is possible, as I have seen some of you do, to get Panther themed and to change the System icons.

I basically want to install the Milk theme, if I can, and also change all the rubbish icons that come as default with 10.3. I would like to be able to change things like the toolbar icons and the default folder icon and such.

I know that getting the theme to work on Panther for someone that doesn't know much about theming the HARD way without an app to do it for you, so if thats beyond an easy explanation than just how to change the icons would be great

One tiny last thing, does any one know how to change the application triange colors for the dock in 10.3 or how to remove the dock outline that is there by default, as again, applications like TransparentDock don't work on the Developer Preview

Thank you for any help that is forthcoming and I thank you for your expertise.

Yours sincerely,

Richard

[tikki]

If you aren't resourceful enough to figure it out, you don't need a developer preview.

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by tikki:
If you aren't resourceful enough to figure it out, you don't need a developer preview.

Damn, that's kinda harsh. He just wanted some help. I'm not a developer and have not the skills to help unfortunately. But give the guy a break.

[quandarry]

i'd advise waiting for a release of panther...as it will change...

what!!?? you don't like the panther gui...my my...

[CarbonG4]

Well to answer the man's question, ThemeChanger v0.5 will still work in Panther to install .DLTA themes. However, you need slim down the themes you used in Jaguar significantly before trying to install them under Panther. Take the theme you want (Milk.dlta for example), right-click "Show Contents"... drag out only the Extras.rsrc file and the Main.themescript. Now create a new folder called "Milk_Panther" (or whatever floats your boat) and put those two files in that folder. Open up the Main.themescript in TextEdit, strip out all of the %sf lines that are between the <10.2> and </10.2> tags except for the line that installs the Extras.rsrc file. Now, change the 10.2 tags to 10.3. Finally, go ahead and remove the line that says "preview = preview.tiff" above the opening tag because I forgot to tell you to also copy the preview image out from the Jaguar Milk theme

Now take that folder that has the two files in it and rename it to "Milk_Panther.dlta"... navigate on your Panther system to /Library/ and create a folder called "Themes" and put this .dlta in there. Launch ThemeChanger and switch themes.

If this screws up your system I won't be sorry, this is fully unsupported so muck about w/ it at your own risk.

//Carbon

[fireside]

instead of doing all of that stuff carbon couldnt you just go to themechanger and uncheck all the boxes but extras.rsrc?

[smeger]

I don't think it's a good idea to use a Jaguar Extras.rsrc in Panther - doesn't Panther add a lot of new resources? What you could do is open up the DLTA as Carbon described and change the OS tag from "10.2" to "ThemeStep". This will make your theme changer app "patch" the Extras.rsrc instead of "replace" the Extras.rsrc. This way, your installed theme still has the new Panther resources.

[CarbonG4]

Damn, I left out the most critical step... after you extract the Extras.rsrc from the Jaguar theme you need to run it through ThemeFur w/ a copy of the default Panther Extras.rsrc set as the new base. This will copy all of the resources from the Jaguar theme into the correct PXM's on a Panther compatible base.

Or, you could try what Smeger said which is probably easier.

Fireside -- well based on what you read from my explaination you could do that, but the whole point of rebuilding the .dlta is to run it through ThemeFur which I somehow managed to leave out that step... hey I didn't get to sleep until 8am this morning...

Sorry 'bout that
//Carbon

[aktive]

Hi thanks to everyone (well almost everyone ) for your help.

I am not a developer and have a copy of Panther for curiosities sake. I consider myself an advanced user and yes, if I looked round for a few hours and figured out how themes work in Panther I'm sure I could work it out. But I thought to myself, I could do that or I could use the macnn forums to ask the experts, who have been working with themes and GUI customisation since OSX was released, which would save me time and I would learn in the process. Isn't that what forums are for, tikki?

Anyway, thanks for the help again, and I'll try the theming tomorrow sometime, and yes, I know its at my own risk

Just a quickie, does anyone know how to change the Panther system icons, i.e. the toolbar icons and the default folder icon? is this something to do with extras.rsrc again?

Thanks for any help,

Richard

[iFix Rene]

Look inside Finder.app
and in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemIcons.bundle to change system icons


you can uses Iconographer to convert
icons you want to use to .icns then
rename them and replace with Terminal

[aktive]

thanks for the tips, I've changed most of my system icons now.

However the icons for the default drives i.e. the external drive and firewire drive and such don't seem to be in the SystemIcons.bundle. Whereabouts would i be able to locate them?


Thanks again


Richard