Liquid Light theme for Aston shell by Nash Mason aka Crazy World Alex
Advanced and Basic versions (choose Liquid Basic in theme wizard for Basic version or Liquid Light for Advanced version)
Readme Contents:
Part 1; General info for all versions (basic and advanced) - Everyone should read this!
Part 2; Required info for the Advanced version only - Read this if you want to use the Advanced version.

Part 1 - General Info
-----
Resolution: 1024x768 only
Included Customizations: Taskbar, Main Menu, Quick Launch, Right and Left Toolbars, TopPanel, DCClock, Desktop Elements, 4 Wallpapers, complete set of custom cursors, custom icons for Recycle Bin (you'll see why), Rainlendar Skin (get Rainlendar at http://iki.fi/rainy) Windows color scheme (for use with "classic" style appearance). All original art based on Original concept by Nash Mason.
All Original Creative Content by Nash Mason is Copyrighted material not to be used other than for personal home use, If you wish to release any of my work in your own projects or in a collection/compilation you may do so only with written permission from me and you must give me credit for my work.

Installation: unpack all files to \Aston\themes\ directory

Additional Wallpapers must be added to your Wallpaper library manually (they are the only JPEG files in the Liquid Light directory), only WetWall.jpg is meant to be centered - the other three are meant to be "tiled". the extra Wallpapers are certainly worth checking out (Confusing is way cool although a bit ...well... confusing!)

Rainlendar Skin can be found in the "Rainlendar Skin" directory within the Liquid Light theme directory (should be \Aston\Themes\Liquid Light\Rainlendar Skin\). Of course the Rainlendar skin must be manually moved to wherever you have Rainlendar installed. If you don't have Rainlendar you can get it at http://iki.fi/rainy - To place Rainlendar on screen use coordinates X=125 Y=0 or check the screenshot below for placement. Of course the button labeled "calendar" should point to rainlendar (I don't like to leave it running all the time).

Take a look at my toolbars in the last screenshot in this readme, The left toolbar fits well down by the clock if you just put one folder in it and then subfolders under that. No folder icons (looks cool with my skin) use shell32.dll for the Icon path (default - unless it has been changed it should allready be on this) and set the icon to number 50. Also the left toolbar has no caption (turn it off in settings), the caption is useful and looks nice in the right toolbar. Also I have "show desktop" in the right bar, but for some reason, from the bar it doesn't work to UNshow desktop that is why I have the desktop button on the desktop also, they work together, you can quickly hide all with the toolbar button and bring everything back up with the desktop button.. The color value 77, 94, 130 is the shade of blue that everything is antialiased to so if you want to use a solid color background or make a new wallpaper bear that in mind (though I tried to make it so it would not look to bad on any nuetral background - to light or dark and it looks a little off - 77, 94, 130 is perfect). The text Labels on all four BIG buttons on the top pole are seperate from the buttons so they can be easily removed or replaced.

WARNING:
ALL .tfa files are set to read only - so you can not save changes to this theme - just save it as a new theme with a different name (there is a good reason for this, see below for details).

IMPORTANT!!!
If you don't want to read through this document you are advised to use the "Liquid Basic" theme, the others will be troublesome unless you understand some of the things I outline in this document. Of course even if you just use the Liquid Basic theme you are still encouraged to read on.

Liquid Light Min and Liquid Light Non are both just *parts* of the Liquid Light Advenced theme and don't need to be loaded manually with the theme wizard. If you want to use the Advanced version choose the theme called "Liquid Light" and read on.

Part 2 - Advanced Info
-----
I have implemented several advanced features into this theme and in order to customize the interface for your own needs certain measures will need to be taken or else these features will be lost because the Theme Wizard will not save them when you save your "personalized" version. I will first outline what those features are and then I will explain how to preserve them when you save your personalized version. This will either be very simple for you or it will be a nice learning experience and a chance to gain a little more control over Aston.

Wallpaper Changer: located in the top right corner.
This changes wallpaper just by clicking on it - it works with the Wallpaper Changer plugin (ChngWall.plg) So you need to have that installed and enabled for this to work. What it actually does is changes on recycle and that button just recycles (this is usefull because it also causes Aston to let go of unneeded RAM). This is cool, but it means you may want to clean out your Wallpaper library of all wallpapers that don't work nice with the theme. It also means that when you load this theme it imediately switches wallpapers so you will need to cycle around to the right one by clicking this button a few times, bear in mind it is doing a recycle so don't go clicking away like mad on it while your computer is doing 10 other things. This can behave a little bit odd now and then, not sure why but sometimes it only wants to scroll through a couple of the images in your Wallpaper library, making sure that all Wallpapers are the same format (BMP or JPEG but not both) may help, also removing and re-adding your Wallpapers will ussually fix this.

Mode Switcher: located in the top left corner.
Three buttons that switch between Full (default), Minimal, and None modes. I like to play music visualizers and other things directly on my desktop sometimes but I need to set my wallpaper to none in order to do this, the "Minimal" mode gets rid of the trash icon and sets the wallpaper to none (it also disables the wallpaper changer so that it will stay set to none). The "None" mode is the same as the "Minimal" mode except that it also gets rid of EVERYTHING on the desktop except the three little "Mode Switcher" buttons (so you can easily get back to Full or Min mode). This works just by pointing those three butons at the different .tfa files (Liquid Light.tfa is "Full" mode Liquid Light Min.tfa is the "Minimal" mode and Liquid Light Non.tfa is the "None" mode). *If this feature does not work for you then check the end of this file for info on how to fix it.

The problem with all this is that the Wallpaper Changer plugin's settings are being changed by my .tfa files but the Theme Wizard will not put those settings into the .tfa file when you save the theme after you have personalized it. If you want to be able to keep this functionality (of the wallpaper changer and the mode switcher) you will need to take certain steps which I shall outline.

This has to be done in two sections, first you will customize everything except the top panel (the menus in the thin pole across the top) which must be done seperately - If you customize the Top Panel before folowing the steps below you will probably end up having to do it over again.

First make all the changes to paths and such that you want to (except for the Top Panel - we will customize that later) and then save it as a new theme (be sure you have everything selected to save with the theme - like cursors, icons, etc.) then load up the "Min" mode and make all the changes again there and save that as a new theme, finaly switch to the "None" mode and do the same thing again (allthough there is not much to change in this mode). Now rename the .tfa files in each of those theme directories that were created to names that are the same as my .tfa files (so call them Liquid Light.tfa Liquid Light Min.tfa and Liquid Light Non.tfa respectively). Then copy the Min and Non .tfa files into your newly created "Full" version's directory (now you should have a directory that looks very much like the original Liquid Light directory but with no Basic version .tfa file). Now you are going to need to copy some pieces out of my original .tfa files and paste it into your new.tfa files. Basicly you want to copy the whole plugins section of the .tfa file and paste it over the whole plugins section in the new file, you'll need to do it seperately for each file. So open my Liquid Light.tfa and copy the plugins section then open your Liquid Light.tfa, highlight the whole plugins section and paste. Now do this again from my Liquid Light Min.tfa to your version of the same file and then do the same thing with the Liquid Light Non file. It sounds complicated but it is not so hard. The Plugins section of the .tfa files is around halfway down the file, just use the find feature in notepad and search for [plugins] (include the brackets). Select from [plugins] right to the end of the file, copy that and paste it into your .tfa file replacing from [plugins] to the end of that file.

On the Min and Non versions you will want to go to the very top and add Wallpaper=none just under [appearance], look at the Full version .tfa file (with a wallpaper) to see how it goes in then make yours look the same but change the name of the wallpaper file to none in the min and non versions. The Full version will probably have Wallpaper=Wallpaper.jpg and you may want to change this to WetWall.jpg and then copy WetWall.jpg from my theme Directory to your theme directory and delete Wallpaper.jpg from your theme directory (not essential but it works a little smoother this way - of course you could make this a different wallpaper alltogether as well).

Finaly the three buttons that switch modes will be pointing to the wrong files in your new theme (they will still be pointing to *my* original .tfa files but you will need to enter the right paths to your .tfa files manually because if you ever save changes now with the theme wizard you will lose all the work you just did. To enter the right paths manually first note the exact location of the three .tfa files you just made, then open each of your .tfa files in note pad and use the find function again to search for Liquid Light Min.tfa, now the other two entries should be right next to that and unless you have added elements to the desktop they should be the last three entries in the [desktop] section, just before the [syscolor] section. Each entry should look something like this
T=601
1=Icons\ConfigBtns_01.bmp
2=Icons\ConfigBtns_01-over.bmp
3=Icons\ConfigBtns_01-down.bmp
R="#\Themes\Liquid Light\Liquid Light.tfa"
Y=2
where it says "#\Themes\Liquid Light\Liquid Light.tfa" needs to be changed to point to your .tfa files I used the # symbol to point from the Aston directory but you don't have to do that, just replace the #\ with a C:\Aston\ or wherever you have Aston installed, and go from there. But if you have done everything right you should just be able to change \Liquid Light\ to \YourThemeDirectory\ (of course change YourThemeDirectory to the actual name of the directory where your theme was saved). In any case just be sure that where these three entries pointed at my .tfa files they now point at your new ones with the same names.

Missing graphic: if you think about it you'll understand why but you must also copy the file TopBtnLabel1C.bmp from the Icons directory in my theme's directory to the Icons directory in your theme's directory, you could also find this same file in the directory where you saved your min version to before you renamed and moved the .tfa file, curently this is the only graphic that any modes use that is not in the full version.

Last step - To avoid confusion, take my original Liquid Light theme directory and move it out of the Themes directory, you could just delete it, but you may just want to move it off to some temporary location for now in case you need to refer back to my .tfa files as well because my extra wallpapers and Rainlender skins are in there. This is because your .tfa files have the same names as mine so it may be confusing in the Theme Wizard not being able to tell them apart. Finaly it might be wise to set your .tfa files to "read only" in their properties (because if you ever accidentally save changes to these files you will lose all the tweaking you just did).

I know that probably seemed like a lot of trouble but this next part will be a breeze.

Customizing the Top Panel:
Once you have saved you customized theme and tested it to make sure it all works as it should, then go ahead and customize the Top Panel. Once you have it all setup the way you like then go ahead and save your theme as a new theme with a different name again. Go to into your newly saved theme's directoy and open the .tfa file with note pad. Use the find feature and look for [TreeTopPanel], now you are going to copy this whole section and the whole section that comes after it which is called [TopPanel], you can copy it all in one chunk because one is right after the other, but be carefull that you don't also get any of the section after these two, the next section will probably be [Dcclock] but you must not count on that - look carefully (sections always start with [nameofsection] and goes from there until the next section begins so look for the brackets). Copy these two sections [TreeTopPanel] and [TopPanel] and paste it into your previously created full and min version .tfa files replacing the entire [TreeTopPanel] and [TopPanel] sections in both those files. Don't paste it into the non version since there is no TopPanel in that version.

Now once you have made sure it all works properly it might be wise to go ahead and delete all those extra folders in Aston's themes directory. It also may be a good idea to set your .tfa files to "read only" in their properties (because if you ever accidentally save changes to these files you will lose all the tweaking you just did).

Once you get the feel for how that works you won't be affraid to change things in the future.

* If you are using version 1.8.2 of Aston and the Mode Switcher does not work, first try double clicking a .tfa file in a theme that looks very different from what you are using - this should automaticly change to that theme, if it does not load the theme when you double click a .tfa file you may need to download a new Theme Wizard (Thwizard.exe) and replace the one in your Aston directory with it. You can download the working Theme Wizard at http://art.astonshell.com/files/Thwizard.exe but this fix is ONLY for Aston version 1.8.2. Just download Thwizard.exe and put it in your Aston directory replacing the Thwizard.exe that is there (though you may want to back up your old Thwizard.exe just in case).