[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] playing with themes

[From: Aleksandr Koltsoff]

the mailing list seems to be quiet today, so I'll put something in at 
least :-).

wanted to see how simple it is to do something about the graphics.

it's not very easy :-).

http://koltsoff.fi/770/bug-cap11.png

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure there is a better way of "doing themes" than going and 
replacing the respective image files, but since there seems to be no info 
(yet), I tried playing around a bit.

If you had any hand in working the theme engine, please do not be offended by 
my testing, I do not claim to be a graphics artist.

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the icons are in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x54 and 26x26. the "others menu" 
icon is in 64x54 and there were other task navigator related icons there as 
well.

hildon-home is the application which controls the "Home"-view.
on start it will check whether it has a cached copy of the pre-blended 
background (with the statusbar) and if so, will load the cached copy. I 
didn't look where it keeps the cached version, but someone will find it 
obviously.

anyhow, the parts that make up the theme itself are 
under /usr/share/themes/default/images/

the statusbar consists of three images:
1) a version that is used to blend the cached copy (on background image 
change): qgn_plat_home_status_bar_background.png
2) a version that is used directly when an application is running (this will 
not be blended against background picture):
qgn_plat_application_status_bar_background.png
and finally:
3) a subrect of (1) that is rendered on top of the blend result. I think this 
is where the applets will go. (qgn_plat_status_bar_background.png)

So in order to modify the status/titlebar, you need to change at least those 
three, toggle the background picture forward and backward (to get the new 
cached copy, done by hildon-home) and then that's it.

In my screenshot you'll notice that I also changed the hue of the task 
navigator. the task navigator is about 20 images or so, best way is to view 
the images-directory with some program that is able to display thumbnails and 
image sizes in pixels directly. The sizes will point to the correct images.

PS, the cute penguin was stolen from CrystalSVG icon set, I added some drop 
shadow to it, it looked so flattened without it.

ak.