Singularity v0.004 for LiteStep - Menus/Popups

Well, I've reinstalled Windows2000 on a partition on the Linux box to get back to LiteStep skinning (rather than doing it all through VirtualPC on the Mac.... SLOW). The next step was to get LiteStep installed, for which several installation options exist. I opted for one I'd never tried before, the LiteStep Open Source Installer (LOSI), principally because it's using the latest LiteStep core files by default. Although the installation and configuration of LiteStep through this installer appeared to go fine, installation of 3 out of 5 themes resulted in errors that completely hung the computer and required resetting of the shell back to Explorer through the Task-Manager. Not entertaining.

After uninstalling LOSI, Omar's 3.0.2 installer was my fall-back, the tried-and-true method with a mighty fine default LiteStep theme (one of my favorites, truly). Since the core files in this installer are a bit outdated, I quickly downloaded and installed the latest LiteStep 0.24.7 Core files in my LiteStep directory and updated to the latest version of NetLoadModule. All went well, and in the end, I had no problems installing themes. I've praised Omar before, but I'll do it again... fantastic installer, fantastic utilities, and it just plain works.

Minor Setback: no backup...
After all the LiteStep installation, I was eager to fire up my work-in-progress, Singularity v0.004. A thorough sweep of my archives, however, revealed that the config files for the theme were nowhere to be found. All the graphics were there, but the previous theme.rc, script.rc, themevars.rc, and popup configs were non-existant. Dang.

Starting over quickly: Menus
Without further ado, I began crafting what to me is the most critical part of any LiteStep theme: the Popup Menu. Without this, you're not going to be navigating far. I quickly set-up a new theme.rc file and gave it some basic instructions for where to find files (the typical directory tree, config, images, misc...) and then added the line to get NetLoadModule to load an old favorite, and something cutting edge:

*NetLoadModule jdesk-0.73
*NetLoadModule xpopup-1.3.1

jDesk is an old desktop module that will let the user right-click the desktop to activate a popup menu, the traditional way, and xPopup is Andymon's incredible popup module. I specifically went for xPopup over alternatives because of its ability to quickly render alpha-transparent images as the menu, allowing me to do cool things with drop-shadows and glass effects.

In the graphical design stage, I couldn't figure out which prototype popup menu I liked most, so I decided to include all three and let the user pick what they want. This means unique settings for each popup menu, as icons and text position is slightly different between them. This necessitated splitting the popup configuration parameters into 4 parts:

1. Theme.rc: all popup settings common
2. Popup-1.rc: all settings specific to popup style 1.
3. Popup-2.rc: all settings specific to popup style 2.
4. Popup-3.rc: all settings specific to popup style 3.

After all the configuration, here's a preview of the three different styles in action:


Now I'm working on getting the graphics layout completed using either the Layer-Cuts module or one of Andymon's shortcut modules. The taskbar and system tray will be soon to follow!

Singularity for iPulse

In the process of re-creating a new Singularity suite, I've updated the layer-styles significantly. To see how it works on a fully functional skinned program I applied the graphics to iPulse, a novel system meter for Apple's OS X operating system. Below are the results:

There are essentially two graphical variations, and then two meter-color variations. Actually, there's a third option I've made, too, more monochromatic for the actual meters to the skin shows up (the meters can sometimes hide the graphics, although the meters are, of course, the bread-and-butter of the program).

I'll be trying it out with color variations next. BTW, although this theme is essentially ready for publication, I'm gonna use a little restraint and wait until the rest of the suite is largely completed before releasing this.

Update on Singularity for LiteStep
The audio module graphics are completed and diced. I'm in the process of selecting which LiteStep modules to use, and I've been out of the LiteStep loop for some years. Then the coding commences. Also in the works is a completely revised System Meter that will be skinned onto SysMetrix as well as RainMeter. All I will comment here is that it will be significantly different from the previous incarnation of the system meters in the Singularity suite ;) More to come later.