- The Rip Saw
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- Exalted Mythic Member
If you wish to continue, I'll tell you a few very important things you'll need to know:
1. All of the files in the images folder except "HeaderBackground.jpg" are .gif files and need to be saved as GIFs in paint or Photoshop. HeaderBackground.jpg needs to be saved as Jpeg in Paint and Photoshop. Make sure you do this, or else the themebuilder file won't be able to read the file!
2. Some of the files in the images folder have no readily apparent use as to how they work. My advise is, before running to me asking me what it does or exactly how it works, play around with changing its colors to something that sticks out. Make the top half green and the bottom red and save it, then open the themebuilder page. It'll stick out real nicely, so you should be able to figure it out.
3. All the parts in styles.css have meaning too, although a bunch are not apparent. Some of them only appear when you hover over a link, and some don't appear at all. I'm not a genius with .css, so even I am not certain as to what these ones do. My best advise is to pick a color that matches your theme and stick it in all the places where that particular type comes up. Like all the "BGCOLOR"s should probably be the same color, and all the "VISITED" colors should too.
4. The "COLOR:" field should either have a color name after it, or the number symbol then a hex number. Don't put down #red or #blue and don't put down just 3Ed5F1 or 5F1B8A.
5. Hex numbers represent the amount of red, green, and blue in the color. F means the most, and 0 means none. The 6 digit hex number is split into 3 areas, the first 2 digits are for the amount of red, the second 2 are for the amount of green, and the last 2 are for the blue. You can choose between 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e, and f for your digits. 00 would mean none of a color, and FF would mean a lot of that color. 0000FF would mean no red, no green, but a lot of blue, and 00ffff would mean no red, a lot of green, and a lot of blue. This would combine blue and green to make cyan. Red and blue makes magenta, and red and green make yellow (yes, yellow.) All the colors combined make white. And none of the colors is black. The first digit for a color is a course adjustment, while the second fine tunes it. F00000 is about as red as FF0000, while 0F0000 would be very little red. Use Google for more information on hex colors.
6. When you're done and ready to send your theme to Bungie, please make sure you have removed all extra files from the images folder. You'll have a lot of bitmap (.bmp) files in there if you used Paint. Bungie doesn't want those, so they only take up added space. Remove them and put them somewhere safe, but not anywhere in the themebuilder folder.
7. All your images in the images folder must be the same view size as the originals. They must have the same dimensions. Bottomgraphic.gif MUST be 564 pixels wide and 116 pixels tall. No more, no less.
8. Show your theme to your friends online and get their opinion on it. I won't go into what a "good theme" looks like, but your friends can probably give you good objective criticism.
Up to this point, you should now be able to make your own theme, granted that you really wish to do so. Even some people who are really good at this stuff lack the time to get one done. Others choose to do a little here and a little there. If I've made the whole themebuilding business sound time consuming and difficult, then I've done a good job in conveying the truth. No one can build a (great/phenomenal/worthy of Bungie) theme in a day from scratch. No one. Those who are good could do it in a week, those who are smart will take longer. No one (who knows what they're talking about) said this would be easy.
Although I did find a way that may be easier for people with Photoshop. If you have Photoshop, and are still thinking about making a theme, I'd go ahead and download this (302k zipped) (188k rar) I'd explain what it is, but Louis Wu has a much better way with words. Basically, I made this to help myself, and then decided I'd spiffy it up so that others could use it. I updated the file Louis linked to be a little more computer friendly. It really helped me with making the theme I submitted, and most people I showed my theme to liked it.
Open it. It'll unzip the same way as the themebuilder did. Now, open up theme.psd. First off, can you open the folders within the file? I used Photoshop CS to create the file, and not all previous versions of Photoshop will be able to see the layers inside the folders. If you can't, then I'm afraid that file will be of no use to you. (However, the file Louis mentioned in that news story could still be used as it has no folders in it.) Whichever file you use, look at the names of the layers. You should recognize these as the same types of names that appear in styles.css, as indeed they are. You can use theme.psd as a reference guide to where all the things in styles.css appear in the themebuilder.htm. You could even color in all the text with the colors you want, and thus design the whole theme from Photoshop, with an easy template to guide you.
There is one more folder in theme.psd that is of importance, and that is "gifs and header.jpg" This folder contains all of the gifs and the header in their exact locations (save a few that appear segmented in multiple locations). This part of the document will help anyone to design their theme. It allows the designer to design the entire theme in Photoshop, just the way they want it. It's all lined up properly so you don't have to guess and check. I have just that part of the file here (99k zip) (87k rar) for those interested in just that part. It's the same one I mentioned in the second paragraph.
Well, I guess that about does it. This write-up should be comprehensive enough that anyone could figure out how to create their own theme, but someone always manages to prove that no matter how good you are at typing directions, you're not perfect (although I'd like to think I am, ask anyone). So if you ever have any trouble with any of the steps, first, come back to read the FAQ I will undoubtedly make at the end of this last post, and if your question isn't answered there, feel free to PM me with your question. If your question has to do directly with how to do something on a Mac, I don't know the answer. Ask a Mac person. They'll know.
Any Mac question answerer volunteers?