Tools for skinning the UI of an application

kotikoti · Post by **kotikoti** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:22 am

Hi all,
Any advice on the development aspect of skinning an application?
What tools are used in the development of the skin assets?
Any examples (rev) would be appreciated.

The look and feel of default rev applications on windows XP is not nice at all.

Kind regards,

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:29 pm

Well, the default lookAndFeel is compliant with the Windows Guidelines, which aren't exactly the most spiffy looking graphics on the planet (though Motif is a lot worse). Anyway, recent versions of rev have added quite a few graphics improvements:

since version 3.0 we have very nice gradients (linear, radial, conical...);
since version 4.0 we have a slew of graphic effects to apply (drop shadow, inner shadow, outer glow, inner glow, color overlay) - each with a collection of settings to tweak the final look

If that's not enough, you can always resort to rebuilding all controls yourself, making clever use of images and graphics primitives. But that's a lot of work. Maybe one day, we'll have a way to apply application-wide skins using CSS or another mechanism...

Jan Schenkel.

kotikoti · Post by **kotikoti** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:42 pm

Thanks Jan,
I develop in Vista and hate the look on XP of the widget. Still on RR2.9 (I know!!!!) but will check version 4.0, sitting in my Desktop awaiting a clear weekend to play with...

I was more looking at what tools can be used to generate/develop the image assets that would replace default buttons images/icons etc.

Janschenkel · Post by **Janschenkel** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:58 pm

Another interesting source might be Altuit Interface Builder - but I'm not sure on the status of its development.

As for making images and graphical assets for skinning, I believe Richard Gaskin is fond of ex-Macromedia-now-Adobe Fireworks.

Jan Schenkel.

whelkybaby · Post by **whelkybaby** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:54 pm

Hi,

On the downloads page of my website, www.theworcestersource.com , I've placed a stack called texturedbutton.rev . It contains a simple example of one way to create a custom object. However, with version 4.0 it's very likely that we could use graphic objects and effectcs rather than bitmaps to pull this off now.

Cheers,

Steve
www.theworcestersource.com

kotikoti · Post by **kotikoti** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 1:21 am

Jan/Steve
Have a copy of Altuit ID as you noted, from the apps video tutorial, there was mention of planned enhancement of the tool but have not heard anything as yet.
Will download your stack Steve and have a look.
Cheers guys

dickey · Post by **dickey** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:25 am

Hello kotikoti, Jan and Steve,

A suggestion inspired by your discussion.

http://forums.runrev.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4290

Kind regards, Andrew