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Theme Manager Product Page |
New ThemeTo start a new theme, click the blue button (lower, left corner) called
The first item in the "Included Elements" list is "Suite Information" where you provide basic information about the new theme. Next is "Suite Preview" which allows you to add a screenshot or other graphic image of your theme. This is the thumbnail & larger preview image you will see on the "Themes" tab for your new theme. These will be covered first, then you will shown some of the different elements in the list. Suite Information"Suite Information" is the first thing you select to add the "Author"
(i.e. real name or an alias), "E-mail" address
if you are going to share the theme with the
public on WinCustomize.com,
or with friends, your "Web-site" (if you have
one), and any "Comments". You
can also also select an icon to represent your
theme (suite) by clicking the
If you have trouble changing to a different folder, you can turn on the "Navigation" pane, by clicking on "Organize" (upper left corner), select "Layout", then "Navigation Pane". This will add common folders, etc. (on the left) to allow you to change folders more easily. Then as you click on each folder, if it finds any elements (i.e. icons) they will be listed.
You can also use the "Search" bar in the upper, right corner to locate files on your hard-drive(s). However, you should change to the root folder on your hard-drive so it can find more files in all folders on your computer. To do this, click on "Computer" in the navigation pane, then double-click on your hard-drive (i.e. Local Disk (C:)), then click on "Search" and type in what you are looking for. If you use the file types listed in the table in the section (2. Introduction) or look at the File Type (lower, right-hand corner) you could type "*.ICO" (without quotes) and it will find all icon files (or whatever element you are looking for). The asterisk (or *) is called a wildcard character, meaning Windows will find any file with a .icon extension. After you locate & click on the desired icon file, double-click it
(this will auto-close the window) or click
Suite PreviewThe next item in the "Included Elements" list is "Suite Preview" which allows you to add a screenshot or other image to represent your theme. You can have a preview for Windows XP, Vista or both. The "Small Preview" is for the thumbnail and preview seen in Theme Manager, while the "Large Preview" is for a web based screenshot of your theme.
You can create your own screenshot by arranging icons, windows, etc.
on your desktop, then press the <Print Screen>
key. Next, open a graphics program (i.e. Windows Paint, Paint
Shop Pro, Photoshop) and select Edit, then Paste (from clipboard). From
there you can save it as a .BMP, .JPG or .JPEG. Then you can
use that file as your preview. Included ElementsThe remaining items in the "Included Elements" list are actual elements, most being graphic, with a couple that are sounds. Most of the elements ask for the same information, except these will be different: DesktopX Gadgets, Sounds, and Wallpaper. Each of these four types of screens will be detailed here. The first type of screen is seen when you click on any element, except: Sounds, DesktopX Gadgets or Wallpaper. So for our example, we will look at adding a CursorFX theme to our new theme. First, "CursorFX" is located in the list & clicked on.
The screen changes to display the following, asking you for the "Skin/Theme
Name", "Skin/Author", "Local File" and "Download URL". If
the theme is on your computer, click
Clicking If you did not find the desired theme or none were listed, you can
click If you prefer to search WinCustomize.com for a different theme, click
the round (radio) button next to "Download
URL" and click
If you did find something interesting
in the dialog box, you can right-click on each
theme and a menu of choices will appear: Add,
View... and Preview... . Clicking Add is the same as clicking
Once you found the desired theme in
the dialog box, click on it, then click
As you add elements to the new theme, you will see the elements appear on the bottom of the Theme Manager window.
Clearing InformationIf you ever want to start over with a theme element, like the CursorFX
one we just did, click the View Themes FolderIf you ever want to view the Theme Manager themes folder, click the
DesktopX GadgetsAdding a "DesktopX Gadget" changes the screen to include:
Clicking
Clicking (For reference, on Windows Vista the default path for Desktop Gadgets is: C:\Program Files\Stardock\DesktopGadgets.) To download a gadget instead, on the "Add DesktopX Gadget" dialog
box, click the round (radio) button "Download
URL" and click
To select the desired gadget, click on it, then click To remove a gadget from the box, click on it, and click
SoundsThe Sounds element includes a list of Windows Program Events, which are actions that you can attach sounds too. For instance, you could change the default sound Windows makes for "Device Connect" (when connecting a new device (i.e. USB device) to your computer) or a new sound when you "Exit Windows". This list will not show any existing sounds attached to events, only ones you add in creating a theme or editing a saved theme.
Scroll
to an event you want to change, click on it. You can attach
an existing Windows sound to it by clicking
the pull-down arrow under "Sounds" (left of
After clicking on a sound in the list, an icon will appear to the
left of the event (i.e. Program error, Select). You can also
add other, non-standard Windows sounds to events
which is how SoundPackager works. You can browse your computer
for other WAV type (.wav) files by selecting
the event you want to change and
clicking the WallpaperThe last unique element is "Wallpaper", clicking on it displays a form with a box to add wallpaper files too "Local File" and "Download URL". You have two wallpaper size choices, either (4:3) ratio (non-widescreen monitor) or (16:9) ratio (widescreen monitor). You can add multiple wallpapers to a theme, and make one of them your default one by checking the box for "Default Wallpaper Set".
Select a wallpaper by clicking the
When browsing, to see what wallpapers look like, click the "Views" button (upper, left corner) to change to a preview mode. You may need to click it a few times or you can click the pull-down menu next to it and select an Icons view.
To download a new wallpaper instead, click the radio button "Download
URL" and click
Save ThemeOnce you are down adding elements to your new theme, click the Open Existing ThemeIf you ever want to change a theme you created, click
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. This will clear any existing information from the various
elements, leaving you with a clean start.
button. This
allows you to locate an icon file (.ico) on your computer. A
familiar Explorer window will open to help you locate the file.
. (Click 
or 
to
abort.) The icon you
selected will appear to the right of the 
to
verify the link works.
.
button at the bottom of the dialog box, which
will add it to your theme. Clicking "View..." will open your web
browser and display the WinCustomize page with
details for that theme. Clicking "Preview..." will open your web
browser and display a screenshot of the selected
theme on WinCustomize.
button and the form will be erased. 
button. You can use this to see what files
are on your hard-drive and where. To close, click the 
buttons
for adding/removing gadgets and a 
. (Click 
to remove it. (Click 
or 
. A dialog box will open, type
in a wallpaper name or author from WinCustomize
and click 
button. An Explorer window will open with any existing suites
(themes), type in a filename. Theme Manager will add the .suite
extension. Click 
to store the theme on your hard-drive. (Click 
and an Explorer window will open displaying
any in that folder. Select the desired theme (suite) or browse to
the correct folder, select the theme and click
