Making a theme for FZ3

[eddan]

I had some time to spare, and wanted to check out how easy it was to make a new theme/icon set for the forthcoming FZ3. Let me outline how I did it and what I discovered.

As I'm not much of a graphics designer myself, I used some icons from the Tango Desktop Project. I couldn't find all the icons I needed, but the point was not to make a complete theme either, just to explore and learn.

Fortunatly Botg has written some icon specs*, so the first thing to do was to read through that document. I soon discovered that the names for the icons(.png files) you are told to use in the specs, does not comply with what FZ3 actually want you to use. Here is a list of the errors I discovered:

Code: Select all

Explanation: wrong(specs) -> correct(what FZ3 actually used)

localtree.png -> localtreeview.png
remotetree.png -> remotetreeview.png
messagelog.png -> logview.png
queue.png -> queueview.png

Also remember that since FZ3 is not finished, all the icons in the icon specs are not yet used. However, if you want to make a new icon set for FZ3, you should make a complete set.

Then I created a folder named "tango" (just a logical name for my set) under C:\Program Files\FileZilla Client\resources (location may vary on your system), and then a subfolder with the name "16x16" where I'm supposed to put icons sized 16x16 pixels. You can also make folders named "32x32" and "64x64" and place the appropriate sized icons to provide more icon sizes. I then had a folder structure that looked something like this (I only made 16x16 icons):

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C:\Program Files\FileZilla Client\resources\tango\
+ C:\Program Files\FileZilla Client\resources\tango\16x16\

Then I put all the 16x16 icons into the "16x16" folder and made sure I named them according to the specs.

Next step was to tell FZ3 about my newly created theme. In the "resources" folder I quickly found "theme.xml" and modified it to include my new theme:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<FileZilla3>
  <Themes>
    <Theme>
      <Name>Classic</Name>
      <Subdir />
      <Author>Tim Kosse</Author>
      <Mail>(edited out to prevent spam)</Mail>
    </Theme>
    <Theme>
      <Name>Cyril</Name>
      <Subdir>cyril</Subdir>
      <Author>Cyril Burnet</Author>
      <Mail>(edited out to prevent spam)</Mail>
    </Theme>
    <Theme>
     <Name>Tango</Name>
     <Subdir>tango</Subdir>
     <Author>tango-project.org</Author>
     <Mail>(edited out to prevent spam)</Mail>
    </Theme>
  </Themes>
</FileZilla3>

I then fired up FZ3, changed the theme, enjoyed the new look and was pleased to have learned something new today as well.

There really should be a FileZilla wiki imho. Botg?

*Icon specs: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/* ... nspecs.htm
(link doesn't work properly using bar, foo or just typing it without any bbcode because of the * in the URL. Not only that, but at the time of writing the link doesn't work at all because of sf.net's CVS problems.

[eddan]

A good example of a well organized wiki btw: http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page

[botg]

Thanks eddan, I've updated the specs.

About a wiki: Even though Wikis have the nice property of self-organization to some extend, every wiki still needs a moderator, someone to work on the main pages, removing spam, wrong information and such. I just don't have time to do it myself.
There are so much things left to do and I just can't do it all, so I try to focus on the development of FZ3 atm.

[eddan]

Noticed when upgrading to a newer nightly, that the installer wrote over my (self-modified) theme.xml file. It didn't do anything to my "./resources/tango" folder though.

Don't know how you want to handle this, botg, but if you plan to let people install their own themes, some sort of method to make sure they don't loose their themes.xml would be nice.

[botg]

User themes will go to the settings directory (once implemented)