BentoUsers » Themes

Customizing Themes Even Further

Florian — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:30:03 +0000

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:
columnImageScaled<⁄key>
<⁄true>
… which is very similar to this line:
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!

Printing Theme

Florian — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:55:00 +0000

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.

Screenshot (Printing Theme; field borders turned off):

Click for a Larger View (Original Size)

Partial Screenshot (“Invisible” Theme)

You can’t see the field label (“Picture”)! This opens up new opportunities: for example, you could use this to create a stationary with a logo – which was another frequent request.

Enjoy!

Download: Printing – Theme
Unzip the file and double-click it: the two Themes will be installed automatically, regardless if Bento is running or not. They will go into the Neutrals folder in the Theme Chooser. If that folder doesn’t exist, it will be created.

Neutrals Theme Pack

Simon — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:45:20 +0000

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

In addition, each theme is available either in its original version or in a new VR version where the font size increments are not as dramatic.

Installation Notes
Unzip the file and double-click Neutral.ThemePack. Bento 2 will open and install the three themes under a new Neutral category in the Theme Chooser.

Note to previous Neutral users: You should delete the Neutral folder from USERNAME>Library>Application Support>Bento>Themes PRIOR TO INSTALLING the new bundle.

Download: http://www.laroqueimage.com/neutrals

Screenshot(s)

Click for a Larger View