Apr

23

Customizing Themes Even Further

Filed Under Bento Tips, Themes, Tutorials | 2 Comments

Long time ago, my fellow Bento gold digger Barbara sent me a screen shot of a funny custom Theme she had created. Initially I didn’t see anything unusual. But after all this time I happened to run across that image again and all of a sudden I noticed that the Theme included a visible Column Divider. Interesting, I thought… No regular Bento Theme has that. The Column Divider usually only becomes visible in edit-mode and it just looks like an outline.

Today I figured out how my friend created a Column Divider image!

Here is the solution:
When you edit a theme to customize it (see my tutorial on theme creation/customizing), the plist file contains this line that I had never even noticed:
<key>columnImageScaled<⁄key>
<⁄true>
… which is very similar to this line:
<key>separatorImageScaled<⁄key>
<⁄true>
… which refers to the image of the horizontal separator you can add on a form. That image is called Separator.tif. That told me everything I needed to know…

So this is what I did to create an image for the otherwise invisible column divider, and it worked like a charm:
I opened the Separator.tif image in Preview and simply rotated it to make it vertical. Then I saved it under the name Column.tif. That was it!

After re-starting Bento the column divider became visible for that theme – like Magic!

Have fun!

May

12

Printing Theme

Filed Under Themes | 38 Comments

Long time – no Theme. I did publish a tutorial about theme creation, but it might be scary for many people. I also haven’t heard any success stories, so when I finally got a request for a Theme, I happily obliged. And here it is for all users to enjoy.

It’s actually a themePack file with two variations of the same idea: both are for printing purposes – your Forms will look like regular text documents. The fonts of the “Printing” Theme are true black with no transparency and in five popular sizes (Times: 12-14-18-24-36). I also matched the 12 pt. size for the medium size of the field label font (Arial). Additionally, I removed the Media field border. An empty Media field still shows a border, but once it has content, the border disappears. The borders for the text (number) fields you can turn off yourself – from the View menu.

When you get to the Print dialog, still check the box “don’t print background,” because the background isn’t true white.

And here comes the clue: the second Theme variation (I call it “Invisible”) sets the Field Label font color to true white, which makes your field labels disappear and invisible on the print-out! This feature had been requested before, and I would like to give full credit to my friend Barb for the idea.

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Nov

27

Neutrals Theme Pack

Filed Under Themes | 18 Comments

Description
Geared towards improved legibility, the Neutrals theme pack includes three themes which make use of subtler tones and consistent fonts to provide a cleaner Bento work environment. The themes are:

  • Neutral – light gray with subtle darker highlights
  • Shade – darker charcoals
  • Chlorine – clean and bright

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