Hi!! I want to ask you all outthere if there is some progress on making themes to K-Meleon? Is there anyone that is making themes to the browser?

Well a while ago I was playing around creating a "new" theme for my own use for K-Meleon, however all I've completed is a toolbar which despite some help from Eyes-Only, still shows up alright under 16bit high color mode but shows a magenta background on the icons when in 24bit true color mode, so I've basically put it on the back burner for a while until I *feel* like having another go at it. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week who knows. ;-)

As for themes though, are there any in particular you'd like to see "imported" (which to me should be plagiarised) into K-Meleon perhaps?

Aww... sorry I couldn't help you with any ideas Al. Maybe next time I might have an answer? I operate mainly on guesswork on all of this anyway---and am only successful about 80% of the time. I guess that's not bad for guesswork because I actually don't know a thing about computers. LOL!

Actually Al, while porting a theme seems like plagerism (I spelt that wrong >sigh<), it really only is if you don't write and get prior authourisation from the theme's authour. Like there's a really popular one out right now in the Mozilla Community called "Smoke". If I had the time I'd like to port that to KM. I know I could do it easily. However, if I didn't get the okie first from Aaron then I'd be stealing it and offering it on our pages could get us into trouble. OUPS! But, knowing Aaron, I bet he'd like to see it ported to KM! However, he's so busy that he just doesn't have the time. So if I write and he says "Okie", then technically, I think it *should* be entered on the theme page as: "Smoke, by Aaron Spuler. Ported by: Eyes-Only." At least I hope it'd get entered like that because as a theme artist I really have no talent whatsoever! But KM is sooo easy to make for that I could port to my heart's content---if I just had the TIME. Now my grandson and his mother should be moving out in about a month. This will give me about 4 days a week free for spare projects. I hope to get cracking on some ports then.

And hopefully that answers Rapido's question too.

I feel sad though Al that I couldn't have helped you with that problem you were having. What are you using for an image editor? I use Paint Shop Pro and sometimes, even after changing resolutions, etc., I have to go back over and re-paint the area with 255. Time consuming? Sure is! But in the end it's worth it. Let's see... I recently added an "Up Directory" button to my theme and it makes the 3rd time I had to re-paint the 255 on that area. >sigh< I think I'm getting good at doing pixel-by-pixel painting.

Well, I'm rambling...

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Ok I might have another stab at the problem now I have your attention again. For the editing of any images I usually use Arcsoft Photostudio 2000SE, and if there is any fine tuning (intricate editing involved) I use Microangelo (which is an icon editor which can also edit PNG and GIFs). Once I am happy that the images/icons look clear enough, I then fire up Photostudio and commence assembly of the toolbar. Usually with the images I prefer to have them saved as seperate GIF files, and once the toolbar is assembled I save the toolbar file as a BMP. Now this is where I might be going wrong: the first step I usually follow is to create a new layer with the size being the height of the icons multiplied by how many there are to be included with the toolbar (say five as an example of a simple toolbar), so if the icons are 24pixels * 24pixels, then the dimensions of the first toolbar layer should be 24pixels as the height, and 120pixels as the length. Now this initial layer I do not color magenta as then for me it would be hard to tell where to place the icons when I paste them onto it and position them next to one another. Of course the icons/images themselves I always give them a magenta back ground before pasting them one by one onto the first toolbar layer.

Ok, once done pasting and positioning the icons into place I then save the whole of it as toolcold.bmp (for testing purposes), and then create the toolbar.cfg file making sure I include the toolbar icon size 24,24 within it. The rest is pretty straightfoward, I fire up K-Meleon, select the Theme's name from the dropdown list, and then close and reopen K-Meleon again.

Now this is the dilemma: is the problem caused by my choice of editor perhaps (I might have to try another program to confirm that one), or is it somewhere in the process I follow assembling the tollbar icons/images together? Or is it something simple like the initial toolbar "layer" not being magenta in the first place?

btw the whole procedure for putting together the toolbar from scratch I had to basically work out for myself, so just for the record I am not following any recommended procedures or such as there aren't any mentioned anywhere in the Wiki or these forums, so if I have cocked up well it's because I have made a false assumption. ;-)

Actually Al, while porting a theme seems like plagerism (I spelt that wrong >sigh<), it really only is if you don't write and get prior authourisation from the theme's authour. Like there's a really popular one out right now in the Mozilla Community called "Smoke". If I had the time I'd like to port that to KM.

btw I hope I didn't offend you with my "plagiarism" remarks, as I do realise that there are those (including yourself) who seek to do the right thing, but do keep in mind when looking at most of the themes available for K-Meleon that there probably was a huge degree of plagiarism involved. I mean you can't tell me that the one who created the default IE theme for K-Meleon actually got permission from Microsoft in order to then port it to K-Meleon. If you keep that one in mind then you'll get the bigger picture. ;-)

As for that Smoke theme for Mozilla, yeah Ive seen it and it don't look too bad either, however the images used for the toolbar were created by a guy called Freundt, and in fact he has a website with all of his creations (wallpapers, icons) on display: http://www.freundt.org/florian/index.htm
From there you can also obtain the complete icon collection which (some of) was used when the other guy created the Smoke theme for Mozilla.

Hi! Again I just want say that I made a theme that become a mess and it was not good at all to use so I just flushed it in the drain. I want to know who made a mozilla theme for K-M I downloaded it and I don't know where I downloaded it. I'ts a nice theme and I like it very much. Can someone outthere please tell me where to download it?

Hi! You asked me if I wanted a particular theme inported and I have to say yes to that question. I want to see Skypilot as a theme for K-M but check out some themes from the Neo-planet, the adress is: http://www.neoplanet.com/cgi-bin/skinViewer/skinViewer_new.pl . There is some good skins there on this site.

Hi Al!

You wrote:

"btw I hope I didn't offend you with my "plagiarism" remarks..." Oh no! Not in the least my friend! If you really knew me Al then you'd know that it'd practically take an atomic bomb going off in my backyard to do that. I just don't offend easily. It's not worth it. And yes, I agree with you: The vast majority probably don't give a moment's thought to, "Gee... should I write to the person who put in all those hours of work on these icons and actually ask for his permission to use these? Or should I just go ahead and steal them for my own glorification?" I've actually seen some big battles happen between themers, with the artists asking the rip-off artist to take his theme down, and he refusing to. The artist was unable to do anything either. Why? It was the one time he was asleep at the switch and forgot to copyright before putting his theme out on the net. Sad situation!

As to the rip of the IE theme? My thoughts? Papa Bill did it to Apple. Tit for Tat. With his $450 billion increasing exponentially daily I doubt that we're going to be worth a class action suit.

On to other matters: What you described to me in working with icons sounded extremely complex! Wow! How do you keep track of the process? Being a person with brain damage myself, and therefore easily confused, I immediately change everything I'm going to work with over into the highest resolution possible .bmp format and then take it to the size that I need (for iconbar/toolbar, etc.) and then I work on it. I work upon nothing in its native .gif or .jpg format---always in .bmp. Like you, I figure the bar size (18 width x18 icons = xxx width) against usually a white background so I can see where I'm pasting them. Then Paint Shop Pro allows me to magnify the bar however large I want. I usually take it 4 or 5 times magnification and then do my 255 colour spraycan at 2 pixels wide and paint the entire background. Yeah, takes a little while but I'm retired. Then I save the results, load it up in KM and see how it looks. If 255 is showing then I do another touch-up, etc., until it's gone. Sometimes this means too that I have to touch up the icons as well---something I did have to do with Netscape Modern as the shrinking process blurred the 255 into the edges of the icons. Let me tell you Al---that was a fun job (NOT!) because I'm colour-blind and my wife had to help me sometimes pick the right colours.

At any rate, that's how I do it. And this is how I do it for my shell programme themes as well.

I hope this was of perhaps some help?

À la prochaine!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

"Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done. "

Hi Rapido!

I wasn't ignoring you in my last post there! I'm just having a terrible time posting to Sourceforge today. I wonder if others are as well? Oh well...

Anyway, yes, SkyPilot is a beautiful theme! I doubt though that it's something that I could port myself, however. It would be extrmely difficult to get it to come out right on each other's computers for starters since so many people have a different setup for their KM. Oh it wouldn't be impossible to port---but it would take more expertise than someone than me has that's for sure! It sure is an interesting idea though and would really look nice!

Another thing is that I believe the authour of that theme, ultimately, is cdn (though he goes by many different nicks) and I don't personally know him.

One thing about "porting a theme to KM": Where KM is so different from the other Gecko browsers certain "liberties" (freedoms) have to be taken with it. Gecko browsers, per se, don't have icons on the drop-down menus---we do. So liberties have to be taken there. Same goes for popup menus as well. Plus the fact that we can make an unlimited number of toolbars, each with its own three icons... So while KM is so easy to theme for it can also be the opposite, a nightmare. "What do I include?" That was what I ran into.

At any rate, I'm hopeful that when my daughter and grandson move out in about another month that I'll be able to start porting something as I'll have 4 days a week to myself. Plenty of time for projects! And I had fun doing the Netscape Modern---so I'd like to try some other things as well. I got my hands on some truly beautiful BeOS and Ximian icons yesterday and I'm dying to do something with those, both with my shell AND K-Meleon. And I'd love to try porting "Smoke" if Aaron would give me the okie. Unfortunately a lot depends on my health as well as like just recently I had yet another small stroke.

Time will tell...

À la prochaine,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Hi! I have made an update to a theme made by Jordan the theme is Mozilla theme.
It was ported by Jordan so it's still his credits but that theme didn't have any bookmarktoolbar and favoritestoolbar and some more features that I have made to it.
And I wish that he let me put it out in the theme page but i just remebered that I don't know how to submit themes to K-M. Can someone tell me how please? And I still wish that someone else outthere makes some themes so it wont stop with the themes that there is on the themes pages and the skin page because this browser rocks for me right now.

As long as we are talking themes, my all time favorite is the early Mozilla theme, appropriately called "Early Blue." Very nice, imo.

<g>

N

but i just remebered that I don't know how to submit themes to K-M. Can someone tell me how please?

It's difficult to explain how to edit wiki pages here. If you're not comfortable with wiki...you can post a link to the download file in this thread or you can email it to me at jsnj@(NOSPAM)mail.com

Hi! I've mailed the theme and a screenshot to jsnj and hopefully we will se the result soon here at K-m world

Looking forward to seeing it Rapido and downloading it! The more themes the merrier! We need to really fill that theme page up, eh?

I'm almost counting down the hours when I start having time to myself so I can get working on some more themes. I recently finished a semi-BeOS theme for my Aston shell programme. Doesn't look a lot like BeOS, no. But has all the icons. So I'd love to try something like that for KM. I don't know what I'll do. Something hopefully. (/me crosses fingers...)

À la prochaine,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Hi! Eyes only I agree with you and hopefully it will be more users that posts themes to download. I have some more themes on my mind to put out with some help in a near future with jsnj's help so all of you outthere keep your fingers crossed that he will
help me to finish those and put them out on K-M world.

Well whilst we're on the subject I've just added a theme which is essentially an older skin which needed some adjustments and now is working nicely under K-Meleon v0.82. It's nothing highly original but still follows along the lines of Eyes-Only's repackaging of the Netscape skin and theme.

WhistlerXP is now available in the Themes section for anybody interested in trying it out.

Hi! I can't find it on the themes page please tell me wich theme page you refer to!!!

Just checked it, it's top of the list: WhistlerXP. Now if you're not seeing it in the Themes section, try reloading the page as K-Meleon might be pulling up a previously stored page in your cache.

Just keep in mind that whilst it is reasonable complete there are a couple of other things I'll be adding and adjusting over the next week or two.

Al,

It has a nice background. But it is actually very incomplete. It makes use of no changes that were added for v0.8. So it is essentially a v0.7 skin. Actually it's also missing menu images that were available in v0.7. So it's an incomplete v0.7 skin too. Please try and make it more complete when you can. Maybe you'd prefer to move to the Skins & Throbbers page until it's complete or perhaps a new section can be made to the Themes page labeled "Incomplete". What do you guys think? Should a new section called "Incomplete" be added to the Themes page or should the Skins & Throbbers page be the storing place for incomplete skins? Or does anybody even care? LOL :-)

Maybe an "Under Construction" section would be more appropriate. I agree with what you've mentioned, at the moment I've only made a few minor adjustments to it to at least get it working under 0.82, so there's a few more things to be done.

Thanks Al I found it on the themes page when I cleaned the .cache

FWIW: jsnj? I kind of like Al's idea of, "Under Construction" for a theme page. And what maybe could be done by some of we themers, is that our incomplete themes could be placed there with the understanding that if someone would like to finish what we've started then they could get in touch with us, perhaps through an address in the Readme.txt or something, to let us know that they'll take over the project.

Or maybe it could be understood that themes placed on the "Under Construction" page are "open game" for those who would like to try their hands at being creative. Hey! Now there's an idea! That might get even more people into theming once they see how EASY it is! Because they'll be encouraged: "Take this theme apart! See how EASY it is to make a theme for K-Meleon! Play with this. Finish it for your personal use. Now go for it and make one for the 'Theme Page!'"

What do you guys think?

I really do like that idea of an "Under Construction" page though Al & jsnj!

By the way Al, though I haven't downloaded it, it looks nice! Colours on the icons are great. I should download it and take a look when I have the time. Hey---can we lengthen the day? I'm so short on time!

À la prochaine,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Actually as an addition to this discussion and keeping on the topic of themes "under construction" I've just finished uploading to the Skins and Throbbers section a skin based on Konqueror, which I basically created from scratch. Oh yeah, this was the one I mentioned that I was creating for my own use and had problems with the magenta icon backgrounds under 24bit color mode. Well after much troubleshooting I nailed the problem which was due to the graphics program I was using discolouring the magenta after saving the icons. So I had to go back to basics and ended up re-firing the GIFS back through Microangelo to correct the colour problem, and in the end all is well. :-)

The Konqueror skin itself is compatible with K-Meleon 0.82, and contains the basics of the toolbar graphics, plus a toolbar background and a matching "Konqueror" throbber. I don't know if I'll have time in the near future to take it any further than that and create a fully fledged theme, but who knows.

As for the suggestions regarding the Themes "Under Construction" section well that is exactly what I had in mind, with the incomplete themes at least being there so as others know which ones are in the process of being put together, and if anybody else wants to "chip in" to complete the theme(s), well that would save time and make it easier all round.

By the way Al, though I haven't downloaded it, it looks nice! Colours on the icons are great. I should download it and take a look when I have the time. Hey---can we lengthen the day? I'm so short on time!

Funny you should mention that as personally I feel that the edges are a little rough on them, and they also could be smaller in size, thus creating a toolbar which is in line with that of IE6 under WindowsXP. I have thought about trying to locate and extract the toolbar icons from IE6 itself, but as I don't know the exact location of them in WindowsXP itself, and also the fact that they also have alpha-blending and are stored as "32bit bitmaps" apparently, then there may end up being quality-loss as a result of trying that. So for now we'll just have to settle on the icons which are there.

Hi! Jsjn how is the work with the theme I sent you going? And I also wonder Al wat kind of program you use to create themes with sence I have some trouble with a new theme i'm creating. I could use some tips on programs you thememakers use. Please let me know!!!!!

Ok no problem, let's see...

I would recommend for graphics editing, The Gimp. Unfortunately the other program I normally use (Photostudio) came with my PC, so it would cost you to purchase it. You can find The Gimp for Windows here: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/
It is a very good graphics program and really there isn't much you cannot do with it, plus it's free.

Other than that I normally use Microangelo for cleaning up icons and also for adding the magenta into the background (for transparency purposes). It can be found here (do note though it isn't freeware though): http://www.microangelo.us

Now believe it or not when it comes time to assemble any icons you have to create a toolbar, then I have just found that plain old MS Paint can do a sufficient job at it. The other graphics program I was using to do the same thing with kept discolouring the magenta backgrounds of the icons, so I had to find an alternative.

In order to keep things simple then that's about it.

Oh almost forgot, to assemble "Throbbers" into an AVI file I use AVI Creator which is a nifty small and free program. You can find a copy of it here:
http://www.bloodshed.net/avi.html

Hi! jsnj how is the work with the theme I sent you going?

Sorry, haven't worked on it. Have you made any other attempts? The email I sent you should've pointed you in the right direction. It's best if people who like the skin, work on it. Since you like it, you should try and finish it. It's more time consuming than it is difficult.

Other good little freebie graphic editors are:

IrfanView, XnView, Toolbar Paint, & AVIQuick

You can use right-click Highlighted Text - WebSearch to take you to links to download them.

Hi! jsnj I lost your mail when I had a mailcrash so could you point me in the right direction. I would be your mate for eternity if you will do this favor for me. And i will also tell everyone that I have made some more themes that I'll hope to deliver in a near future there is however some adjustments left do do before I will deliver.
I need some tips for a throbber to a theme I called ImacOs wich is a remake of an
Opera theme I saw on the Opera community, that theme was called ImacOs Lars Native and I also need some tips on a main icon for that same theme. Perhaps a blue
main icon? Or a red? But with some unic style. Oh I forgot I need a program that can convert gif's to avi. Tips anyone?

Along with the apps I specified in the previous post, the tutorial skinning page spells it out pretty clearly. The transparency color numbers of "magic pink" for the bitmaps are 255, 0, 255. You can port any of the skins from MyIE2 pretty easily since they are bitmaps and most have transparency. That's where MonkeeSage and I got ours from. The skin address for MyIE2 is:

http://www.skinnable.com/myie2/skins.asp

Just a quick mention that the WhistlerXP theme is now completed, and of course updated on the Wiki.