Saturday, September 26, 2009

my girlfriends sketch


this is a portrait sketch of my girlfriend that i made while she was lying on the bed....not so good in sketching someone live but i think it resembles her a lot

Friday, September 11, 2009

Some Themes to use with ATM-the theme manager(Nano Blue and GoldiKwarc)

There are a lot of themes made for icewm but not many of them are customised to provide images for tabs of the launcher on easy mode of eeepc .So when i started using ATM to customise themes, i started customising some of the themes to include the images for tabs.i will be adding new customised themes in this post.Most of the themes are not mine but downloaded over internet.

Before using any of the themes make sure that you are using AsusSilver theme using personalization under settings tab.Also make a text file in /home/user/.Asuslauncher called launchermode (if it is not already there) and replace any content inside it with single word "business"

Nano Blu

I got this theme from www.box-look.org and customised it to include images for tabs.The original theme can be downloaded here
screenshot













download

the customised theme can be downloaded here


goldikwark

First saw this theme in the screenshot posted by eeeuser member rokytnji and i liked it.I got this theme from a zip folder called FMThemes.zip posted on the antix forums.The look of this theme is quite like kde (kwarc theme)with the default kicker look (the kde panel)
After downloading the theme , i made the following customizations:

  • added a taskbarbg.xpm which is a gradient image to make the icewm taskbar look more close to kde(actually i downloaded the kicker.deb file and extracted it to get the background for kicker and resized and processed it to make a taskbarbg.xpm)
  • changed the menubg.xpm to make its look more gradient-like by overlaying resized taskbarbg.xpm over original menubg.xpm
  • changed the menuseparater(menusep.xpm) to make it look thicker
  • downloaded a wallpaper that would suit with the theme
  • and ,off course ,added the backgrounds for tabs to complete the look for easy mode
screenshot












download
Download the customised theme here.The wallpaper shown in the screenshot is copyrighted and not included with the theme.Download the wallpaper here or any other wallpaper you would like to use with the theme

useful tip:
To make sure every time you apply the theme the background also gets changed to the wallpaper image , copy the wallpaper to /home/user/.icewm/themes/goldikwarc/AsusLauncher/wallpapers and rename it as business_all_wallpaper.jpg .Now every time you apply the theme using ATM the wallpaper will also get applied(this works for other themes too)


KDE4


KDE4 is a dark theme with a big panel/taskbar. I got the original icewm theme from here.After downloading it, I customized it to include the same colored tabs for AsusLauncher.This theme doesn't include a default wallpaper.A default background for the theme can be set by copying your wallpaper jpg file to /home/user/.icewm/themes/KDE4/AsusLauncher/wallpapers/business_tab_wallpaper.jpg

screenshot


download
you can download the customised theme from here

original post
kde4-Another theme for ATM 

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

ATM-the theme manager for my eeepc

For my eeepc vanity needs i used to use theemer a wonderfully designed application with great gui.However,of late,i have not been using theemer as there is a bug in it on using gradient based images for the tabs in AsusLauncher the text on the tabs disappear which seems to be due to resizing of images in theeemer.I like changing my desktop look often and since i was unable to get theemer to work the way i wanted it to , I decided to make my own little script with gui using gtkdialog .

ATM which is short for Anshul's Theme Manager originally started developing as a command line tool to change themes and backgrounds.However while changing backgrounds i realised a simple gui would do a better justice to the tool by showing previews of the backgrounds selected(still working on preview part though).As i started developing it ,i started learning many things about bash scripting ,gtkdialog and how the icons and other components of gui work in the easy mode.New ideas started developing and i started implementing some of them into my new gui based script.Now ATM is the theme manager with features that include changing themes , backgrounds , and icon modes.
The bouncy icon mode is the one i like the most it increases the size of selected icons on the launcher by 12% compared to normal icons displaying a nice and cool bounce roll over effect when the icon is highlighted.

For changing the icon modes i settled for no backup of previous icons for restoration as space on eeepc is less.I would recommend any one using it to make a backup of /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher folder on memorycard or usb to easily restore in case something doesnt work out as expected.

summary
ATM- Anshul's Theme Manager-The beauty kit to beautify my eeepc
features

  • tabbed interface with a tab each for applying entire theme(icewm,tabs and background);applying background for selected tabs;appling only icewm theme;and changing icon mode
  • icon modes include bouncy , silver, sunset,blue and green
  • bouncy icon mode creates a larger icon for highlighted image as compared to normal icons
  • silver , sunset ,blue and green give the normal highlighted background as found in the original themes of eeepc
features to be implemented
  • easy installation of packaged themes(like theeemer)
  • themes containing a .mode file and highlighted icon background to direct their own icon background (changing the icon background is rather slow that is why it is yet unimplemented)
ps:this is something i designed for my own use and has been designed to work on some customized settings in the easy mode

image
here is a preview image of my eeepc with bouncy icon mode the webcam icon is larger than others as it is highlighted













video
here is a link to original video posted by me on you tube of my desktop using bouncy icon mode...in reality it is smoother than it appears in the video




download
(updated)
i noticed today that the beta version ATM-0.1-1.0 has a problem that the tab for applying icewm theme didnt use to work properly.Here is the download link to beta ATM-0.1-1.1.The beta ATM-0.1-1.1 version could not parse simpleui.rc for 900 so the updated script ATM-0.1-1.2 can be downloaded here.The beta ATM-0.1-1.2 has been verified to be working fine on eeepc 701 and eeepc 900 .So, here is the first stable release of the script ATM-0.1
click to download ATM-0.1
(a deb file shall be available soon)
a minor feature update of ATM is available as beta.For features added refer here
click to download beta ATM-0.2-0.3
(beta version 0.2-0.3 has been updated to include a feature in the installation script to have seperate wallpapers for favorites and internet tabs in the default tab setup)


installation

you can either use the installation script or do this manually

manual installation

  1. install gtkdialog using synaptic,apt-get or aptitude(the version that i am using is 2:0.7.9-1(stable) and is preferable as it is verified to work properly)
  2. install imagemagick (the version i am using is 7:6.2.4.5.dfsg1-0.14(update.eeepc.asus.com) and is again preferable)
  3. download the tar.gz and extract it( i will assume you have extracted it to /home/user)
  4. issue the following commands in a terminal:
    #sudo mkdir /opt/ATM/
    #cd /home/user/ATM/
    #sudo cp libthemechanger.sh themechangergui.sh /opt/ATM/
    #sudo ln -s /opt/ATM/themechangergui.sh /usr/bin/ATM
  5. to use the script you need to do the following:
  • copy simpleui.rc from /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ (for 701) or /var/lib/AsusLauncher/(for 901 and people who have updated 701 with Asus updates) to /home/user/.AsusLauncher/
  • make sure you have ~/.icewm/ containing the file theme and themes directory containing all the themes you would like to use
  • it is recommended you make a backup copy of /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ directory if you are planning to change the icon modes
    installation using the installer script

    1. follow the steps till step 3 of manual way
    2. open a terminal and type cd /home/user/ATM
    3. type bash ATMinstaller.sh
    4. the script will ask you wether to copy themes file from system directory to /home/user/.icewm/themes.Answer "y" if you want to use the themes file stored in the system directory /usr/share/icewm/themes/.Answer "n" if you already have themes in the /home/user/.icewm/themes and you dont intend to use the themes in /usr/share/icewm/themes/
    5. next the script will ask you wether you want to make a backup copy of the icons in /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/..(it is recommended you make a backup on some external drive)answer "y" to make a backup and type in your preffered location.The script will make a backup with a folder named AsusLauncher_bkup in your specified location
    6. after creating the backup the script will complete the installation
    changelog

    0.2-0.4 beta
    updated the installer script to ask the user if they want to edit simpleui.rc to have seperate wallpapers for favorites and internte tab

    0.2-0.3 beta
    added a reload of launcher screen on changing of icon modes and creation of new icons

    0.2-0.2 beta
    fixed the entry field bug and made the libthemechanger code clearer and less ambiguos

    0.2-0.1 beta
    added new feature to create individual icons in easy mode.More details are here

    0.1

    first stable release


    0.1-1.2 beta

    fixed the simpleui parsing issue on 900 and made the parsing more generic in libthemechanger.sh

    0.1-1.1 beta
    fixed the icewm theme changing issue under icewm tab