VistaStyleBuilder

After wasting countless hours going through the resources in the aero.msstyles and shellstyle.dll files and seeing that it was going to take me several more hours just to find the right resources I decided to bite the bullet and purchase Win 7 Style Builder, thinking it might help, but it's been quite disappointing so far. Having worked with TGT Soft's Stylebuilder for XP a few years ago, which had a few things that could be improved but overall was a great software, I find myself missing it a lot. For example, that program was a lot better at showing all the different resources you were adjusting and where they were placed in the window, start menu, etc. W7SB only shows the tiny graphic that is being adjusted, and the only way to guess where it might be in the GUI, it's the name in the tree of items, such as Windows 7 - Start Menu - Aero - Top - More Programs, but that is not always evident, as I don't know all the names of the items and W7SB doesn't come with documentation that clearly shows that.

Also, the tree in the left pane is very confusing, as there are items that have no properties or graphics at all, and some items are duplicated, some under the root and then inside Windows 7, such as Explorer & Shell. Am I to assume that since I have Windows 7 I have to modify only the items inside Windows 7 if they are duplicated? There's no documentation that suggests that anywhere.

But I started modifying some items, mostly the ones with that horrible light blue color that MS puts all over the GUI and doesn't allow to change without hacking, setting PS4 as the graphic editor and basically desaturating all the instances of such color. I only modified a few of them to test if it worked. Here I found some more problems. One if that W7SB only saves the .msstyles file, but doesn't create the rest of the tree that Win 7 requires, such as the NormalColor folder with the shellstyle.dll file and all that, and the theme file that Win 7 requires to be able to add the new style to be chosen. When I save the style I was working on, a dialog pops up asking me if I want to apply the style, but if I click yes, nothing happens.

I had patched my uxtheme using the installer at http://uxstyle.com/ but I uninstalled it prior to installing W7SB because in its website it says that it has a "one-shot in-memory uxtheme patcher on board for testing themes on machines without patched uxtheme files". But at least in my W7SB, that doesn't exist. Also in the same page, a few lines above, it says "Furthermore, 1.4 makes it possible to test themes without having patched UxTheme files on the system." I have no clue where would that be, but the style I had been working on doesn't work without patching either manually or with the installer at http://uxstyle.com/

So I patched my uxtheme again, and created the tree under Resources\Themes with the name Sebaz, then sebaz.msstyles and I changed the references inside the theme file from aero.msstyles to sebaz.msstyles.

Then I went to Personalization and a new theme was below the Aero Themes under the "Installed Themes" section, but when I clicked on it Windows loaded the style but went into Basic mode, which made me want to put forks into my eyes so I wouldn't have to see that tasteless GUI that evidently MS designed with the purpose of people buying new graphics cards and computers. Just in case I put another downloaded style/theme in the themes folder, one called Lumens, and when I choose that one it doesn't go into Basic Mode.

As far as I know, I didn't touch anything in W7SB that said "Basic only", so I don't know what's going on.

Now, I don't want to do any drastic style editing until I receive my pre-ordered 7 Home Premium, but I want to at least take care of the urgent stuff that is really hideous to me and is not possible to change without software like this. I'm talking about this the bar in a windows explorer window that starts with Organize, Include in Library, etc, etc, and also the details pane at the bottom, both having that baby blue color, and also the selected file or folder baby blue color both in the left and right pane. Can anyone point me to where I can find that in W7SB, and tell me why I might be having the problem with Windows going into Basic mode when I apply the style?

You need to make .theme file to apply theme, edit aero.theme with notepad, I think it was [VISUALSTYLES] part.

Also you can edit detials pane from msstyle too. And that up part (called CommandModule).

I had already modified the theme file to point to sebaz.msstyles instead of aero.msstyles in the [VISUALSTYLES] section, and now I even opened the theme file for Lumens to see make mine as similar as possible with the exception of the style name, and still when I apply my theme/style, Windows goes into basic mode.

About the basic thing I dont know, but I can help you with theme name.

http://vishal-gupta.deviantart.com/journal/27223580/

Thanks, I actually figured out that part before when I looked into the lumens.theme file and I saw that the author had changed that part to his name, so I did the same and now my theme shows with my name, but still make Windows go into basic mode.

OK, so the style forcing Windows into basic mode is over now, I don't know what it was but I started a new style from scratch and not the style works in Aero.

However, I noticed that many times my style, when I choose it from the themes control panel, will not get applied. I can tell because I did a test changing just one thing just to test, which was the commandmodule bar, and I set it to a totally different color, and when I finished working on the style, saved it and copied it to its proper place, and then chose it, the commandmodule was still the same baby blue. Is this perhaps because the patcher I downloaded from http://uxstyle.com/ is not very good? Is there another patcher that I should get? But regardless of this, there is something not right with the style I saved with W7SB, because if I apply "Lumens" it applies everything just fine, and the same if I apply the native Windows 7 style.