Is now up on Deviantart at http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/52731562/ .

It's been submitted to Wincustomize, so should show up there in a week or so.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

Burt

Very nice Burt!

Only one problem: you've submited it using the brand new .xtreme theme file format, which nobody - except registered Winstep users running the latest private betas of Xtreme 7.4 - will be able to use.

Not a biggie, I guess... I should have the official version out in a couple of days at the maximum.

Guess this means I have to start updating the User Guide right away. Sigh.

Nice theme. You should show the cool clock in your screenshot too. It looks great

You can change the .xtreme to . zip and use it. I did.

Actually it only *looks* that way. By doing so you lose the very first file that was added to the .xtreme theme pack:

Winstep changes the first two bytes of the original zip file to change its 'signature' and prevent IE from automatically converting the .xtreme theme pak into a zip file when downloading. The changed bytes correspond to the header of the first packed file in the original zip. When you manually rename the .xtreme file into a .zip, Explorer is still able to open it, but silently *skips* the very first compressed item because its header has been 'corrupted' when the file was converted to a xtreme theme pak.

It's because of this that I am going to add extra context menu entries to change xtreme files into zip files and vice-versa (the proper way).

Very nice Burt!

Thanks for adding to the available themes.

cef100

Hey Burt, the new theme is already up at Wincustomize! And I couldn't help to notice that it downloads as .xtreme - guess Wincustomize doesn't force you to upload Winstep themes as .zip files then...?

Wow! Wincusto is faster than I'm used to. And yes, they took the .xtreme file just fine...

By the way, notice the dock and subdocks. I like the way that I can suppress the overlay on the subdocks for a cleaner look. Nice touch JC! In doing that, however, I found that I wanted yet another option, where the overlay was below the icons, but above the dock background. In fact, as I thought about it, I don't see why you would want or need an overlay that was under the dock itself -- unless (and this just ocurred to me) you had a semi-transparent dock background, and wanted to see the underlay through it. I wonder if a third option is warranted here?

Also, I am having trouble picturing how the advanced tile skinning would work. Do you have a demo somewhere? I'd be interested...

P.S. Sorry for the double post. Shoulda previewed the first one.

What double post? (No, don't worry, you're not going crazy, I deleted it - you can also Edit a post after submiting, btw).



Thanks!



A good example where an overlay UNDER a dock would be useful can be found in the following mock-up (remember it?):



In this example, the dock is made of tiles, but the overlay is not, it's a single bitmap. The dock tiles overlap the background overlay.

Of course, if you are using a single bitmap for the dock background (as opposed to tiles) then, of course, an overlay is not necessary since you can then incorporate the overlay image into the background bitmap itself.



Ah, again, if you are using tiles for the dock (as opposed to a single background bitmap) I see where this could be useful as a third option.



Well, with simple tiling, the dock tile bitmap is NEVER rotated, regardless of the dock orientation. The same tile bitmap is used for ALL dock orientations.

With advanced tiling, the tile bitmap is automatically rotated according to dock orientation OR you can provide different tile bitmaps for each of the four possible dock orientations.