Step 10 - Save, Load and Export
- Skipping the hotspots and menu editor, we will move on now to the Theme tab, where we save our work (and load, import and export themes). At the begining we created a folder with the name
of our theme - Sinter. Type this into the box directly below 'save theme', add your name as the author. If we had used a non-standard font rather than Tahoma, we would check the 'save fonts' box.
The 'save wallpaper' checkbox is not essential. When we come to exporting our theme we will find that the wallpaper.jpg file we put in our
folder will be included in the theme zip file. Clicking on 'save wallpaper' will just add a duplicate .BMP version of our .JPG image.
- When you are ready, click on the 'floppy disk' button to save the theme. You should notice the theme name is populated in the other 'Theme:' text boxes on the screen.
- Since we are planning to post our new theme to a website like WinCustomize, DeviantArt, LotsOfSkins or Customize, we
need to export the theme to a zip. This is done simply by selecting the theme name in the drop-down list below 'export theme to zip' then clicking on the 'export' button
below it (with the box on).
By default this will end up in the winstep\export folder under the name of the theme with a .ZIP extension.
I have a habit of loading this zip file into WinZip and checking that I haven't included any unneccessary files (my original templates
for example) and deleting them from the archive to keep the zip as small as possible.
- If you now click on the 'load theme' floppy disk button, you should see your theme load. Close the preferences window by clicking on the 'Ok' button.
- Sit back and admire your menus!
(Note - We have only created a theme for NextStart up to now. The second part of the tutorial will go on to creating
a matching WorkShelf theme. You might not want to export and post your theme until you have completed both! )
Essorant
Tim Dagger - September 2001
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the finished menus
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