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:

Note that the Magenta background is not visible when showing the Theme. Also notice that the buttons were drawn on the main image. This is not required, but it simplifies the drawing and positioning of them.

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:

As you can see this is the same image of the "Connect" button from the picture above, with the addition of the pink background.

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':

Note that in this image, the area outside the button is unimportant, as the button main image (the one above) is the one that tells First Contact what is going to be the shape of the button. Special care has to be given to alignment between this image, and the main one.

Once all the images are created and saved, the next step is incorporate them into a Theme. To do this, do the following:

Use the Explorer (Start Menu | Programs | Explorer) to locate First Contact installation directory, this is usually "C:\Program Files\Alienware Technology\First Contact\".
Go to the Themes sub-directory, and in there create a new subdirectory where to store your new Theme (e.g. MyTheme)
Move all the images created for your theme there.
Then open First Contact, and in the Themes Page of the Options Dialog, enable the 'Designer Mode' checkbox.
Now when you right click on the main screen you will see a whole new set of commands available.
Before continuing it is very important to use the "Save Theme As" command to create a new Theme. Save the new theme in the directory you just created, where all your new images are.
In the Popup Menu, the first command in the menu is "Select Image", use it to locate the image file for the main window.
Then right click on each of the buttons, and repeat the process.
For each button you will need also to select the 'Pushed' (down state) image and the 'hilite' image. if the latter was not designed use the 'Pushed' image as the 'hilite' image.
The next step is to position the buttons. To do this holding the Control key down (your cursor will change) click and drag each of the buttons to the proper position. If one of the buttons is not visible due to the new shape of the main window, use the 'Move Here' command available from each button on the main screen popup menu.
Once you are finished doing this hit 'Save Theme' on the right click popup menu. And your theme is now saved.

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.

 

 

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