New Suites: Creation With The New Theme Manager

From WinCustomize Wiki

Using Theme Manager For Screenshots By: Sir Zubaz

When ODNT 2009 was released, subscribers were able to finally see the latest version of Theme Manager.

In addition to being able to appply both MyColor themes and Suites from Wincustomize the ability to create new suites based on your desktop has been very much improved. The aspect that I think is the coolest is that now we can create suites built on internet content, not just what is packaged in a theme: If your screenshots are built using content found on Wincustomize you can repackage and upload them. Other users can then apply your desktop. It's super easy to do, also!

Start Theme Manager and navigate to the My Desktop tab. Then click the Create New Theme button.

[1]

The app will default to the suite Information section. Fill in the Author, email, website, and comments. I'd include all the skin names, authors, and a thank you to be polite.

Then select the Suite Preview section and browse to a small and large preview. Easy so far, right?

The next item is the icon: Any will work. Please make sure that it's your own or that you have permission from it’s creator to use it.

[2]

Select the app for whatever you have skinned. Fill in the skin name and author. If it's your own work you can browse to the local file that you created. If the work is from another author on Wincustomize, you should enter in the URL of that skin. If you don't know exactly where it is on WC check out the search feature; it is much improved!

[3]

In this example I selected the Bootskin library and searched for “zubaz”.

The last entry in the skin list is a “readme” where you can add any information you want. This is a good place to give thanks or post permissions.

Click on the Save this Theme link and you are done. If you need to see where the suite is stored you can click on the View Themes Folder link.

Upload the *.suite file to http://www.wincustomize.com/upload2.aspx?libid=22

When a user downloads and installs the suite you built it will go out to WC and collect all the components that you included.

The advantage to this system are:

1. No permissions are needed (because you are not modifying the original artists skin)
2. The original artists get download credit for each download
3. The user doesn't have to click around trying to find all the apps and skins in the shot

So all you folks that want to share your visions . . go out and do it!