I wanted to begin a discussion on the actual setup of themes in PortableApps.com Theme Format which is what we'll be using for 2.0 and up. I did a quick example theme that you can download to play with. Get it here:
https://portableapps.com/downloads/app_extras/platform/themes/PortableAp...
It's a ZIP right now, but the themes will actually be zip files renamed to .patheme when we're ready to start releasing them. To try it, unzip it to your X:\PortableApps\PortableApps.com\App\DefaultData\Theme folder. It replaces your current theme so back it up first. Remember that it will be replaced when you upgrade the Platform.
The details of the theme are included in a file called PATheme.ini. The contents for this example theme are (NOTE: This has been updated to what will be supported in the next release):
[PortableApps.comTheme] PortableApps.comThemeVersion=1.2.1 PortableApps.comThemeType=Simple [ThemeDetails] Name=PortableApps.com Classic Version=1.2.1 Author=PortableApps.com URL=https://portableapps.com/ [ButtonApplications] FontColor=000000 [ButtonFolders] FontColor=FFFFFF [DriveSpace] FontColor=FFFFFF FontShadowColor=888888 StretchImage=true [DriveName] FontColor=FFFFFF
As you can see, this is for what we're calling Simple themes which don't alter the layout of the form. The PortableApps.comTheme section includes details on the type of theme and the theming engine version it uses (1.2 in this case). The ThemeDetails section is the basics of the author, version, website, etc. We'll be adding FontHoverColor and FontPressedColor to the ButtonApplications and ButtonFolders sections so themers can colorize the font on hover and press as well.
The ButtonApplications section allows you to set color of the font for the app icon labels. The ButtonFolders section allows you to set the color of the font for the folder button labels. The DriveSpace section allows you to set the color of the font for the foreground and shadow for the label and to define whether the image used to display used space should be stretched/compressed or just shown (which would cut off the right side of the image).
The following images are included:
background.png - The menu background (this must be a non-transparent PNG with any areas you want transparent set to the magic color aka magenta - #FF00FF)
background_opaque.png - Background used on older operating systems that can't do transparent areas (this must be a non-transparent PNG without any magenta)
button_*_hover.png - Used when the mouse is over the button
button_*_normal.png - Used for the button
button_*_pressed.png - Used when the mouse button is pressed down
etc...
The appbutton_hover.png and folderbutton_hover.png are alpha PNGs that allow what's underneath to show through. This is what gives us such a nice effect. Incidentally, the button_*_... images above can also be alpha PNGs. They are in the current menu and the classic, actually.
Alright, so I wanted to open up to see if we're missing anything yet in terms of Simple theming. We'll be doing Advanced later (new folder layouts, etc).
Also, please don't start posting themes in new topics yet. This is just to get discussion going. We'll have a dedicated forum for themes on the 2.0 release once the theme switcher is included.
Thanks!
Updates
Some updates have been made to the example theme INI above that are not yet supported in a release of the PortableApps.com Platform.
1.2.1 (2009-03-19): Added ability to change color of drive name font