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Need help :(

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WinT says:

Ok, this is it... I officially throw in the towel on this VS thing. I was hoping to find things out on my own, but really need some help.

As most or some of you know by now, I recently upgraded to a brand new machine, which of course, came with XP. I used to think I'de hate XP, but I'm finding myself very fond of it. Lot's of things I can do that I couldn't do on 98, but anyway...

The whole visual style thing is just throwing me for a loop. I've googled for some tutorials on beginning to create your own, but not finding much to work with. I became so frustrated the other day, that I put in my old hardrive (FAT32) in this new machine, re-formatted, and installed 98 on it, but 98 kept stalling during boot, I'm assuming that it can't handle something this new machine has.

So, I realized, after exhausting all possible solutions to get 98 running again, that I'm obviously stuck with XP, though 98 WILL boot to the desktop if running in SAFE MODE, can't do much there though.

Anyway, I can grasp the concept of StyleBuilder, but, do you HAVE to have StyleXP installed as well in order for it to work properly? If so, I installed it, and StyleBuilder started working a bit better, but I still can't seem to import a VS such as Area04 that I'm using now, which I wanted to start with just to see, or get an idea of, how it's done.

My thing is, I prefer to create my own theme, just as I've always done. It might be inspired heavily upon someone else's creation, but I "build" it, and make it a bit different. I hate the idea of simply applying a VS, a wall, a WA skin, and that's it, ya know? <-- No offense intended to anyone by that

So, if anyone could point me towards some sort of information, somewhere, perhaps something that one of you did, would be greatly appreciated, but again, my main concern, is the StyleXP... as I'm NOT going to pay for that at all. I really do wish it did NOT have to be installed, is there a work-around for that? Is there some other way to mod or create your own VS? Can you simply reshack the images in the VS files? Will that do the trick?

If worse comes to worse, I'm just gonna put XP in classic mode, and start using BBLean again, hehe, as I'm already iconless again, using the reg trick for XP, but damn I hate that it blacks out the XP style start menu, hate that quite a bit, just using the classic start menu for now.

Ok, anyway, sorry for rambling, but again, any help would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
http://wint.virtualplastic.net

02:52 pm, Thursday, June 22, 2006 (3 years ago)
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WinT says:

Damn, half of my message didn't get posted, sorry...


Anyway, just looking for some information here, perhaps one of you have written tutorials on creating visual styles?

Is there any other way to mod or create VS's without using StyleBuilder? Reshack or ResEdit perhaps?

Is there a work around to make StyleBuilder work without having StyleXP installed? ( I hate the way styleXP applies it's theme's, it just resets everything, hate that)

Thanks in advance for any and all help :)

http://wint.virtualplastic.net

02:58 pm (3 years ago)
3897
guybrush says:

yeah stylebuilder works without just hit the "compile" button(not the one with "and apply" afterwards) works fine for me

#pimpmydesk.org

03:13 pm (3 years ago)
361
slowave says:

I've been modding heylove's "Simple Plan" for months using nothing but TGTsoft's freeware program "ResEdit". It allows you to import an existing VS and edit or even swap out all of its image files. Things like text states, window colors, and progress bar style can be edited through text files. After having worked with litestep for a couple years, I actually prefer to do things this way, rather than use some fancy gui-based skin. ResEdit does have some notable quirks though; you have to copy all image files to its root temporary directory before compiling, or it will claim that they don't exist.

I use StyleXP to install my VS's, but I'm pretty sure all it does is copy them to the Windows theme directory. Once a VS is installed, you should be able to apply it with Windows' Display Settings. Without StyleXP, you'd have to manaully install themes, and patch your uxtheme.dll to allow the use of VS's that aren't signed by Microsoft (although I'm not sure if that's 100% effective).

04:19 pm (3 years ago)
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WinT says:

Ok, this is starting to make some sense now, thanks guybrush and slowave.

I'm gonna try the ResEdit approach, as I've already done the uxtheme patch, and I certainly do NOT mind having to manually install a theme, which is what I've been doing since I upgraded, using just the Display Properties.

Thanks again guys, if you can think of any thing else, let me know.

http://wint.virtualplastic.net

04:33 pm (3 years ago)
 

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