Theme Wizard

Besides customizing your Desktop elements settings, you can change the entire look and feel of your Desktop by means of applying various Themes.

If you have selected a single Theme on our web site and are sure that you'll never ever wish to change it to another, you can actually apply it without using Theme Wizard. The regular way to install a new Theme in Aston 1.9.2 and later versions is the following: just click on the "Download" button under the Theme you like and select "Open with..." option. The Theme will be automatically saved and applied to your Desktop.

But in case you have a few (or lots of) Themes you enjoy and would like to switch between them from time to time, you'll need Theme Wizard.

Theme Wizard has four tabs:

• Set Theme
• Icons
• Save Theme
• Get more Themes from Aston web site

 !   The tabs are represented by the corresponding icons, so don't get taken aback when you start Theme Wizard and don't see the tabs titles. They can be seen as tooltips, if you place the mouse pointer over the icons.

Here you can see the list of the Themes you've got. From the version 1.9.2 on all the Themes have previews, which makes their choice much easier. The Description field beside contains some general information about the Theme and its author. Clicking on the preview you select the Theme you need.

Please pay attention to the dropdown under the preview image - here you can select the Theme resolution. There can be either a few resolutions defined, or the field can just say "All resolutions". In the first case you may select the one most fitting your screen resolution, the second case means that the Theme is designed to support a wide range or most popular resolutions.

Theme application

After you've made up your mind which Theme you would like to use, do the following:

• Click on the Theme preview or its description
• Select the necessary resolution, if there are several of them in the dropdown
• Click "Preview" button.
• You'll get a dialog window asking if you would like to save changes to the Theme you are currently running. If you select "Yes", all the changes you've made to the Theme (changed the wallpaper or Thene elements, re-set the Theme parameters of the plug-ins, etc.) will be saved, and in case you decide to get back to this Theme you'll see it the way you have it now. If you select "No", in case you switch back to this Theme you'll get the configuration, previously saved for it (that means all the changes you have made to the Theme before switching to another one will be lost).
• If after that you like what you see on your Desktop, start Theme Wizard once again and click "OK". If the Theme is not what you expected it to be, click "Cancel".

Here you can define the icons which you prefer to use istead of the system ones or the ones pre-defined by the Theme designer.

The Icons tab has 5 sub-tabs:

• Desktop
• Folders
• Drives
• System
• Files

Division into these groups makes the search of the icons you'd like to substitute much more convenient.

So, if you would like to change this or that icon from the list, you should find and highlight it (just click on it). After that you'll see two buttons to the right from the icon name - "def" and ">>". Click on the ">>" - thus you'll be able to browse for the icon you are planning to substitute the selected icon with. After you've found what you need, click on "Open".

If you would like to bring back the icon you've changed to another, click on the "def" button.

In the left part of the window you can see the following buttons:

• Load icons - lets you load some icon set, previously saved as a single catalog. For example, if you don't want to change every single icon after you have switched to a new Theme, you may save them before switching and then re-apply them in the new Theme with the help of this button.
• Save icons - with its help you can save your current icon set.
• Restore icons - in case you have changed several icons and would like to change them back to default, you can just click on this button. Alternatively, you can do the same by clicking the "def" button for each changed icon, which will definitely take much more time. :)
• Cursors... - calls out the regular Windows dialog window for the cursor setup.
• Rebuild icons - refreshes the icon cache. If you have selected some alternative icons instead of the default ones, but nothing actually changed and your machine still displays the default icons, click on this button.

This tab is needed in case you have created your own Theme and would like to save it with some unique name. The detailed description of the procedure can be found in our Skinning tutorial.

Clicking on this tab will bring you to the on-line Aston Themes collection.