Create themes?

1

Is there somewhere a tutorial how to create themes? Or do you need to use C++ to create them? I have Visual Studio, but don’t know C. VB only.

2

No it is very simple, it is just a simple XML file. Currently we don’t distribute a list of themes (but we plan this in future). You can create an XML file when you follow these steps>

  1. open Settings>Themes
  2. Select From Color and select base color for your theme (now you can apply theme based on this color and it will work)
  3. Or you can customize theme even more with button Save theme to file…
  4. It will generate XML file with color definitions
  5. it will look like this>

#FFB5B5
#FF2F2F
buttontext
window
#F8F8F8
highlight
highlight
buttonface
buttonface
highlighttext
highlight
#F1F1F1

…
…
…
You can manually edit these colors in text or xml editor, you can use #RGB colors or system defined colors: see list here> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libra…

  1. Select theme from file (third option) and click on apply button
  2. Use it and if you want share it with community, we plan to create a webpage with themes created by community.

There are about 120 colors you can redefine, so it is quite a strong tool :slight_smile:

3

Indeed a string tool… Seems that I have to look into that another time.

4

Well getsatisfaction trimmed all xml tags from my sample, so it is now how it really looks like…

5

I looked into an exported XML, so I know what you meant. It’s about 197 lines of hex-color-codes.

6

yep

7

Is that it? Only color choices? How about design of menus? I need larger titles, bigger font sizes. Are there any themes available now online?

8

Fonts and font sizes are not supported currently, only color schemes. Event though menus can be redesigned a lot with these schemes. There are no online themes currently. We plan to make a page on our website with downloadable user’s themes, but it is not ready yet.

9

In the first reply 1 year ago you said, a list of themes were planned. What about this plan?

10

In celebration of eM Client v5.0, I am releasing the “Dark Frost” Theme I’ve worked hard on. It’s not 100% perfect, as it’s still a bit tedious to build a theme, but if you notice out of place colours like bright red/yellow, please attach a screenshot.

It’s quite tough to find and display every single UI element, then again in the XML file, so I’ve set these bright colours to act as ‘lighthouses’ - I will update the entire theme when there are changes/fixes to be made (the link below will always have the latest version):

http://scar45.me/file_download/2/Dark…

Hope you enjoy it!

11

Very cool!

12

Thanks George. This is great!

13

George. Thank you. I like the theme but better yet it gave me the background and tags to play with my own.

14

Glad you guys both like it, and can use it to your advantage :slight_smile:

15

Wow! that is so much nicer than the stock themes. Great job!

16

Really like that new theme! But they are right, ‘underlays of photos’ and the like will always make me keep the client open on my desk top. So far I’m love’n it! Really was able to clean up my Inbox! I’m sooooo glad that I’ll not have to use Google’s Client again!

17

awesome

18

you are now part of my daily life through your theme. Thanks for sharing. It’s easy on the eye, perfect, elegant, stylish. again, thank you from Switzerland.

19

Thanks

20

Thank you!!! Awesome…