beauty is skin deep

[erciyes]

great!
my favourite xplorer just got better! *happy*

[MCHAL]

I do not have artistic skills

me neither, let's hope we'll attract some other people's attention!
I was thinking, in the worst case there won't be any skins to download immediately, but down the road there will be some user-created icons for all to share

Maybe one of us could try to contact Everaldo http://www.everaldo.com/ and get help from him. Just an idea.

[snemarch]

*phew*, for a second I thought you had added custom skinning to x^2  :shock:, and I was just about to throw a fit (or have a heart attack) - and then it turns out just to be replaceable toolbar graphics. Nice to see that you haven't caved in yet

[mikelino]

16x16 icons are hard to pimp. There is no way to exploit any effect that makes icons nice. I think that is the reason why there are so few nice 16x16 icons available. The best one could get are clean, minimalistic and ergonomic icons, but I think the current ones are quite close to that what is possible using this resolution.

[johngalt]

One thing you should realize:  Free icons are available all over the Internet.

Another thing you may not but should also realize:

Dynamic Drive, an *invaluable* website for Web related stuff, has a very nice favicon generator script on their page at:  http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

Now, you may ask so what?  Well, it takes your images and makes little 16X16 icons - see where his is going?

You can take some really exquisite larger .PNG /.JPG / .BMP /.GIF  images and using this tool make some really nice .ico files to use.

That being said, have fun every one!

[pschroeter]

The the Dynamic Drive FavIcon Generator has a 150 kb limit on file size, so the image can't be too large.

I use Paint.NET
http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

with the Evans Icon/Cursor Paint.NET Plug-in
http://www.evanolds.com/pdnicocur.html

to create icons. There are probable better choices but these are free. I sometimes do screen grabs of smaller, simple (at this size the simpler the better) graphics from Google image search that I think will work, shrink them to 16X16 and then save them as icons.

[johngalt]

Good point - I did neglect to mention the size limit - must have deleted it out and forgotten to paste it back.

I haven't looked into the plug-in for Paint.Net yet, sounds promising - I can say that thus far I love Paint.Net though, but not being a graphic artist, I only use it to occasionally save an image / create an image as needed.

[paNET]

I'm using Inkscape, GIMP and IcoFX (a good freeware app.) to create icons. I can help you if you tell me what you need. Usually I'm under the pressure of time for my current tasks, but I still can resolve some small things.

[johngalt]

The plugin page gives me a 404 when I try to download it....

re - images - nothing yet - I usually find very good high quality .PNGs to use when I feel the urge, usually allowed to be copied by Creative Commons license....

Or I steal them from my own .DLL files on my system

[nikos]

paNET, we are still looking for creative people that could furnish a complete set of xplorer2 icons in various alternative themes and styles. If you could find some time for such a task you'd make a lot of xplorer2 people happy

[lutz]

Is there an example skin available anywhere? - just to see what is possible.

[nikos]

nothing that i know of. If any artist has developed a skin they must be keeping it for themselves!

we can only hope

[ZoNi]

I have tested this new option... And nothing happened!

I made this custom skin (actually, only few icons are changed, for testing purposes), then placed it in x2 folder, restart x2 - and all is same!

What is wrong?

Here is BMP file: http://rapidshare.de/files/38622402/toolbar256.bmp.html

Btw: XP SP2, x2 1.7.1.0 [Unicode]

[nikos]

you have to call it x2skin.bmp and put it in the installation folder

[ZoNi]

you have to call it x2skin.bmp and put it in the installation folder

yes, it works now!

You should write that in your blog entry and in skin developers pack  :idea: