
Note: If you have downloaded the PillarSoft Suite, most of the following has been done for you during the installation.



Data Shield will use bitmaps to change the look of the program. We have built some example skins and a cmd file to change them. To use the skins you must unzip the DS_Skins.zip archive directly into the same directory that Data Shield resides in. This should create a subdirectory of your Data Shield directory named "Skins" and a few directories under that.

Once the archive is unzipped you can run the "Install.cmd" file to build a desktop object to change skins easily. If you add skins, you may wish to modify the parameters of the desktop object to include the name in the prompt. Example:

You have created a skin called "Rocks". It resides in the \skins\rocks\ directory. You would open the "Properties" of the desktop object for the skins and change the parameters entry from this:

[Choices: Marble Cyan Habu Logs]

To this:

[Choices: Marble Cyan Habu Logs Rocks]



The skins are merely a collection of OS/2 bitmaps (bmp). There are two ways to do build you own.

1) Edit a set of existing bitmaps to your specification. This will give you the exact size and name for each of your skin bitmaps.

2) We have included a set of three GDO files in the \skins directory for use in TrueSpectra PhotoGraphics. (Panel, Edging and SideBar) The GDO's are all set up to render the bitmaps exactly twice their size. This allows plenty of detail and by resizing them with PmView, for example, you will gain some anti-aliasing properties. To build highlight buttons etc you will use the "Panel.gdo" and render small portions of it. There are a few instructions included in the GDO when you view it with TrueSpectra.


You may also want to index down to 256 colors in order to keep the bitmaps smaller. TrueSpectra PhotoGraphics is very nice for building the bitmaps and PmView is great for resizing and indexing the color palette.


