General Theming Question(s) - Inheritance Order and Colorization

[JebDude]

1) Just wondering how things usually go with inheritance.  Is it the highest member of the hierarchy overrides the lower members?  Or the other way around?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

2) What's usually the best way to do a theme?  Top-down?  Or go straight to the elements you want to change?

Is it me or is the inheritance scheme "inherently" screwy (hah!  I made a funny  :-)  I've noticed that WSB shows you who inherits who in the status bar.  Just wondering what inheritance overrides which?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

3) Regarding colorization, I'm referring to the "Personalization > Colors" setting in Windows 8/8.1.  It seems to be related to windows Aero stuff.  It also seems that if colorization settings are used properly then one can avoid the need to install some 3rd party version of Aero?

I've actually managed to get a theme that supposedly needed Aero to function properly to work fine.  Granted it usually requires a reboot, but at least it works, and that's one less process I have to run!  But I'm wondering what the odds are that I'm seeing things work properly, VS me just seeing a lucky glitch.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I'm trying to find the "ground-zero center" of WSB so i can better understand the layout of an .msstyles file.  It seems that there are many, many, many versions of editboxes, textboxes, comboboxes, etc.  In fact, it seems that some comboboxes aren't even comboboxes at all, given how some respond to the global color changes I try, while other combo boxes don't respond at all to most of the global color changes.

So am I headed in the right direction with my way of thinking?

[JMB]

The best method is to change whatever items that you can (whichever ones that don't have an 'inherited from' property regarding said items, and the .msstyle will automatically change whatever is inherited from the items you can change. You can start from anywhere, as far as order goes. There is no correct 'start-point'. Some people start in Fonts, Colors, & System Metrics, some start with images in various locations, etc.

See, if you change any items that DON'T have an 'inherited from' notification in the properties sidebar (right side, WSB) or in the bottom status bar, it's likely that that same item is the 'Parent' to some other item, the root which some other item inherits from. Get it?

The "ground-zero center" is any item that ISN'T 'inherited from' somewhere else. I call it the root....or the 'Parent'. And there are many. The 'child(ren)' of any 'Parent' will change automatically through their inheritance. You CAN'T change the 'child(ren)' first and expect the 'Parent' to inherit from the 'child(ren)'.

Hope my explanation helps, JebDude.  

[3am]

deleted

[JebDude]

Yah that makes sense.  Thanks for the feedback!  So far I'm getting the hang of this.  I'm currently in the process of trying to map out everything that inherits everything else, and I'm trying to find the items that seems the have the most immediate effect.  I noticed that inheriting has a tendency to confuse things sometimes.