Buzz - Syles / Themes / Skins / GUI - Topic.
At the moment (as i write), there is no central place to share Buzz - Theme's or - Style's , often also just called - Skin's.
This forum-topic, here, is the best place (at the moment) to share ...
you'r own Themes for Buzz.
Most Buzz users will course this forum once in they'r life and may they search also for you'r nice, beautiful, interesting or just boring Buzz-Theme's.
Just to keep such offers together in this forum and the whole internet,
to not loose the one or the other, may intresting, theme in a unknown topic at the last ending of the internet and ... so on.
OK. Here is the way to offer some or all of you'r cool Buzz-Theme's ...
Each Posting is one Theme / Theme-Pack / Theme-Pack-Bundle
If you feel to do double postings (one posting after the other for each Theme),
you should do a Theme-Pack and use one Posting per Theme-Pack,
you can also bundle serval Theme-Pack's into one Theme-Pack-Bundle and use one posting.
You can upload Buzz-Theme files as a plain *.col file.
You can put ".col files into a *.zip package and upload the *.zip file.
if you post them as plain text, it would be a favor, to every one, if you put your Buzz-Theme into a Code-Box and mark it to use tiny text.
In that way user's can copy this text and paste it into a text editor to read it, or what ever users will do with a theme.
BBCode to create a Tiny-Code-Box
Code: Select all
YourColFileNameIsHere.col
[size=50][code]
ReplaceThisWithYourBuzzThemeCode
[/code]
The result will look similar to this
Code: Select all
your Buzz-Theme goes here
If you maintain a Theme-Pack, you can edit you'r posting to share new parts of your Theme-Pack,
or you can create a new posting to reannounce your Buzz-Theme,
or you do both
How to create Buzz-Themes?
Buzz - Themes are stored in a sub-Folder of the Buzz application folder, it has the obvious name "Themes".
Buzz-Themes do only work in this Theme folder, subfolders do not work.
Buzz-Theme files have, hopefuly, an unique file name and end with the file extenssion ".col".
Buzz-Theme files are just text files and any text editor or notepad can open them as plain text.
Colors are given in the HTML-colorformat 000000 means RRGGBB, where R stands for Red, G stands for Green and B stands for Blue, each pair of 00's is a hexadecimal number value between 00 and FF, 000000 is Black, FFFFFF is White, FF0000 is Red, and so on, just try it )
If you need comments you can use the # character at the begining of a line, so you can have line-comment's.
You can open an existing Buzz-Theme, edit it and save it under a new name, if you like.
The other way is, to use a great tool by CyanWerks, its name is CyanWerks CyanBuzzTheme 1.5, this tool comes with the old Buzz Files and you can find it in the old Buzz packages.
This tool allows you to apply custom colors to some Buzz-Elements.
If you are realy intrested in creating Buzz-Themes, this tool will be you'r friend!
It has some slight bugs and crashes each time if you cancle an action, but who cares
How to install a Buzz-Theme?
You need a valid *.col file, where the * is a placeholder for any name and .col is the file-extenssion.
You can find them every where, and mostly here.
If you get the Buzz-Theme-Code from a Buzz-Theme-Box, in here, you need to copy the text in the box, open a text editor and paste the code into the editor, save this file as a *.col file.
If the creator of the *.col file offers a name to use, you should use this file name, or you will end up with the same Theme under many names and in a total chaos
Once you have such a *.col file, you just have to put it, or a copy of it, into the Buzz\Themes folder.
Copy the file and open your explorer, move to you'r application folder and locate the Jeskola folder, there you will find your Buzz folder and in it the Themes folder where you paste your file into.
After installing a Buzz-Theme you need to start or restart Buzz, after that your Buzz-Theme will appear in the Buzz-Themes-Menu, select it and enjoy.
What is about the new Buzz-Themes?
Honestly, i have no idea.
They use a *.xaml format and there exists some where a free editor called "Kaxaml" (http://www.kaxaml.com/).
You can find such Themes in the Jeskola\Buzz\Themes folder as sub-folders, where they belong into.
The process to edit such new Buzz-Themes can be frustrating, it may start when you try to load some Buzz styles with errors and it will maybe not load the file properly.
If you like to share you'r new Buzz-Styles, it would be the best if you pack all the files and folders into a *.zip file.
Put you'r readme.txt into the sub-folder of you'r Buzz-Style or at the top of the *.zip file and then all your Buzz-Style files into an empty Themes folder.
So a user can copy you'r fresh Buzz-Style into his Buzz with out any pain.
Last word's
Theme's and Skins, GUI (Graphical User Interface) -Design is a complexe Topic.
If you have an interesting question about Buzz -Theme's and -Skin's, search the topic where your question belongs to or open a new topic/thread where it belongs to.
It would be nice if we all could focus here on just sharing Buzz -Theme's and -Style's.
If you are in the mood for a nice smal talk you should visit the off-topic
It would be also nice if some one could create a detailed, but seperate, tutorial-topic about xaml or col files.