I was wanting to change the PortableApps heading on the menu and have seen many other requests to do so.
I have tried using the 48 x 48 section for this purpose, but it is an extremely limited space and looks quite bad on Windows 7 where the graphic size seems to expand.
I was wondering if the development team has considered giving some real estate to those who would like to do this while retaining control over their brand?
The idea would be to give more space to add another logo.
One thought I had was to have the left side of the menu widened and place the portableapps logo there, while top logo position could be occupied by whomever had assembled a custom drive. Windows 95 through XP had this on the start menu a long time ago. To me this is preferable since preparing since the effort in preparing a special drive is done to gain brand value with those I give it.
A second, easier to implement approach, would be to simply widen the left side of the background and anyone could add branding on the left side by creating a custom theme.
I think you'll see a real boost in adoption if you allow some level of cobranding by those who take time to create custom drives.
Thanks much for a great product - looking forward to the release of 2.0
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You are correct in saying that this has been asked in the past.
A quick search of the site will turn up this request.
While it is ultimately up to John to address this, there is a very straightforward way to brand the menu now.
The right side of the menu has an area just under the Help icon that is about 130x150 pixels, far more substantial than the 48 x 48 picture.
All you need to put a logo there is to create a background.png image that has your custom graphic, and do a minor tweak to the patheme.ini file.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
I had worked out this work-around since posting.
My concern is that this space is not dedicated for this purpose, so at any time it could disappear.
A frustration with using the background is the gradients applied to all backgrounds - even though my branding is very compatible with black and white theming it is hard to create something that stands out and does not suffer from pixel stretching on Windows 7.
Another idea I had while editing the background graphic is to allow just a little more space under the existing portable apps logo for a subtitle as a form of branding.
I would really like to be able to have the primary spot at the top and have the PortableApps be the sub-brand along the left side.
For anyone interested in the platform, it will be plenty evident that my company did not create the platform - so they will quickly be able to identify who did and give credit.
On the related topic of how cobranding helps - I have done extensive custom extensions to the PSPad text editor - so I give it as a specialized tool to every customer I touch and they love it.
https://portableapps.com/node/24556
The gradient that you are referring to - that sounds like the chrome files, which are a semitransparent layer in the theme.
That can be turned off, so that your background is exactly what you see with just your background.png file.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
solanus,
Very helpful! Thanks.
Would be awesome if there was a new branding spot like the current 48 x 48 personal photo - that is not affected by the layering, but is larger and not directly editable by clicking it.
Thanks again,
D.