|
Creating your own themes.Themes are very easy to create. All you need is a couple of ideas, and a graphic editor. All images used by First Contact for the Themes must be in Windows Bitmap format (.BMP). An important detail here is the choosing of the background color. First Contact derives the shapes of the windows from the images chosen for them. First Contact employs advanced image processing algorithms to determine the shape out of the images provided. The shapes of First Contact windows can be infinitely complex. The windows may have holes in them, separated areas, etc. In order to determine this First Contact has to figure out what is part of the image, and what is part of the background. When creating a Theme, choose a solid color background. Use a color that your images don't use. A common color used for this purpose is Magenta (RGB: 255, 0, 255). This is the color used by most themes shipped with First Contact Communicator. Moving on. The first step creating a Theme is the image to be used by the main window. For instance:
The next step is to create the images for each of the buttons. The simplest way to do this is to cut them out of the main image (if the buttons were drawn on it, otherwise you have to create the images independently). Then you have to give the shape to the button, this is done also by the background color:
The next step is to create the 'pushed' (or down state) image for each button. This is not really necessary, but it makes your theme 'live':
Once all the images are created and saved, the next step is incorporate them into a Theme. To do this, do the following:
If you come up with an interesting Theme and would like see it posted at Alienware Technology's web site, visit www.alienwaretech.com for more information.
|
First Contact Communicator is a trademark of Alienware Technology, Inc. All
other products mentioned may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their
respective owners. |