techlobo wrote:
Hopefully once the theme builder is available there may be a renewed interest in creating / modifying themes, at least by a percentage of users.
That is what I hope too. I know it will at least make it pretty easy for many to make small changes to existing themes, changes that will fit their workflow better.
It will certainly make it a lot easier to get your feet wet at skinning Winstep applications, that is for sure. You take an existing theme similar to whatever you have in mind, save it with another name and then little by little modify its bitmaps and settings until eventually what you have is a brand new theme.
You can, but you probably should never start from scratch.
The Theme Builder will not completely eliminate the learning curve (there is still a lot to grasp, even with all the explanations and the GUI) but will certainly make it easier to start, which is the major tumbling block for new skinners.
techlobo wrote:
Nevertheless now that I have a workable setup, I tend to leave it alone - there are other things that take up my time.
Like me. I tend to settle on a theme I like and will run that configuration for years, if need be (in my case, I am currently using DarkTech which blends well with Windows 11 dark mode).
techlobo wrote:
I still haven't returned to resolving the workshelf right-click menu offset issues that we had a brief dialogue about during some earlier testing.
You will have to remind me again about it once this is over, please, my plate is more than full at this point, it is overflowing lol
techlobo wrote:
One thing I am curious about (apologies if you have already mentioned this) is whether the theme builder will work in a WYSIWYG manner. e.g. load in a theme, make a change and immediately (ish) see if the effect works as you thought / expect?
Kind of. The Theme Builder itself does not contain the code needed to assemble and display menus, modules, shelves, etc. Instead, you use the "Preview" button: pressing it sends a message to the running Winstep applications, telling them to apply the theme you are currently working on.
So you make a change, press Preview, and see the result in the actual applications.
It's much the same as how things worked before v9.5, when the skinning settings were still part of the applications themselves: you made changes in Preferences and applied them to see the result.
techlobo wrote:
This was the situation with the setting files unfortunately, no description of what each file / setting did - so it did become a bit of a trial and error situation.
Unfortunately yes. The initial learning curve was horrendous and mostly depended on the help of existing Winstep skinners to explain how things worked and what the settings did. I have no doubt many immediately gave up because of this.
techlobo wrote:
Provided that the new theme builder shows all of the settings with a reasonable description then this would be a big improvement, and if it correlates these into sensible groupings / action areas then it becomes even more significant.
That is what I am trying to do, and one of the reasons why I have been posting screenshots of the various settings pages. If you see something you do not understand, or think needs a better explanation, please point it out.
As I mentioned above, some learning curve is unavoidable, if only because of the astronomical number of skinning settings available.
techlobo wrote:
This is difficult Jorge - until you have the component to test you can't determine if it works as you would expect, and this will take time to understand (especially if you have little, to no, experience of theme building).
Yes, I understand, that is why we will have a beta to test things out and iron out rough edges, etc... by "speak now" I meant during this period and until the official release.
Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2026 5:42 pm 
