Apr

24

Customizing Themes – Logo Display

Filed Under Tutorials | 1 Comment

Several people expressed interest in displaying a company logo in the background of a Bento form. That’s another relatively easy theme customization.

Again, go back to the Resources folder in the package content of our test theme Starfield Casual in the sample ThemePack file. There you’ll find the picture file Background.png. That file makes up the main background of the theme. That particular picture is a customized photo I used myself as a test. You just have to replace that Background picture with your logo picture (in the theme you want to customize). But that’s not all…

You need to know that Bento tiles the background picture – similar to the tiling option for the computer desktop wallpaper. So if you just want one logo displayed (like a letterhead) then, first of all, you have to make your picture big enough to fill the whole Bento screen so it can’t be tiled. You could place your logo at the left top, for example, and then expand the rest of your picture background to the right and down.

Finally, to make your logo look as close as possible to the original picture, several background parameters in the .plist file have to be adjusted, which is a bit tricky. The test file (Starfield Casual) demonstrates the following changes.

First you should normally turn off the transparency of the title banner. If you don’t, your background picture continues as a mirror image in the title banner, as used in the Swimming Pool theme for effect, and in some other themes as well.
Find the <key> named bannerFill. The <string> below gradientColorBottom and gradientColorTop has four parameters. Change the fourth parameter of each to “1.” The first three make up the actual color.

Next I would change the <real> parameter of the first two keys in the .plist file: backGroundBrightness to “-0” and backGroundContrast to “1.” To be safe you could also change backgroundHueAngle (0) and backgroundSaturation (1).
Finally change backgroundTileScale to “1” to make sure your logo doesn’t look skewed.

That’s it. And please, give me feedback, ask questions. Have fun with your new logo!

Mar

19

Wanted: Enthusiastic Contributors

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Examples, Bento Tips, Editorial, Site Notes, Tutorials | 13 Comments

Hey, at his very moment I’m running BentoUsers all by my own lonely self. I know, I know, it seems I have this huge supporting staff behind the scenes. But that’s just a rumor. All I have is some people I can ask questions if I’m totally desperate. But I’m the only one publishing things and coming up with the ideas. That has to change! After all, the site’s main motto is:
Written By Bento Users For Bento Users. I clearly detect the plural form here and it wouldn’t sound very good to change it to the singular form…

I’m calling out to any other user, starting with my friends Dan and Barb, you know yourselves, how wonderful you are! I do appreciate the templates users have contributed. Keep them coming! But now I’m also looking for (regular?!) contributors. It could be a weekly column, the occasional tip or trick, special usage ideas, workarounds… pretty much anything. Even just someone who scours through the posts and leaves some comments on a regular basis. Point out the errors of my ways, make suggestions!

I hope I gave you some starting thoughts how to help out. Come out of the woodworks, get famous and help change the (Bento) world!

Thanks for listening…

Yours Truly, Lonesome Florian.

Mar

18

Customizing Themes – Fancy Free

Filed Under Tutorials | 1 Comment

Another request by many users is to remove the Media Field border. That might be the easiest and fastest alteration of a theme.

The Media Field border is simply a collection of several little picture files. Go to our test themePack file you downloaded in part one of this tutorial. Then open the Resources folder of the Starfield Casual Bundle, scroll down and you’ll find all those .tif files starting with PictureFrame. Above the files I created a folder called Pics. Do the same in your own themePack file(s). That folder is just for storage.
To remove the Media Field border just drag all those PictureFrame files into your new Pics folder. If you don’t like the result, you can always move them back out into the open.

Voila, you have a free-floating-looking Media Field! Don’t be alarmed: some themes still display a border as long as the Media Field is empty, but as soon as you add a media file the border disappears.
Off course, you can also add your own border instead, by creating your own PictureFrame pics.

Note: I’ll be traveling the world the next three weeks, so my posts will slow down. Whenever I have a chance to log on, I’ll still check for comments.

Mar

13

Related Records List Update – Part Three

Filed Under Tutorials | 4 Comments

I played around with Smart Collections as the source for Related Records and it got so complicated that I can only repeat: expect some strange behavior. The only real useful implementation would be a new field type which would combine a Related Records List with a Smart Collection that would update automatically– like the behavior of a stand-alone Smart Collection. Maybe sometime in a future Bento update…

Relational Loops are a wonderful thing. Example: you drag the Address Book Library onto the Projects Library, and then the Projects onto the Address Book. Now you create a new record for a project. In that record you choose any number of addresses from the Address Book to be displayed in the Related Records List Field.
Let’s say you added Mr. Smith. Now go to the Address Book and search for Mr. Smith: in his record you’ll find the new project listed automatically in the Related Records List Field! Very handy.
And it works the same the other way around: if you decide later that Mr. Brown should also be assigned to the same project, go to Mr. Browns Address Book record and add the project to the Related Records List Field. Now his name is automatically added to the right record in the Projects library.

Tip: you can rename any Related Records List Field. By default it gets the name of the source Library, but in the above example you might rename “Address Book” to “Team Members.” Renaming the Field has no effect on the name of the actual source Library.

I hope this update cleared up most questions. For more screen shots see the original tutorial. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment with additional questions.

Mar

11

Customizing Themes – Fonts Galore!

Filed Under Tutorials | 3 Comments

There are at least three good reasons to meddle with the default fonts of the Bento themes:

  • You want to use your favorite fonts
  • You like the theme, but not the font
  • You want to use different sizes or variants

Of course you can only use fonts that are installed on your system. To check out all your fonts open the Fontbook application (in the application folder). In there you can look at samples of all fonts in any size – you can even type in custom text:

font sample in Fontbook

Now it’s time for action!

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