Take a careful look at the example Skin or download some sample skins from the Drastic web site location specified above. You will now need to create a number of bit maps corresponding to the list below.
Skin images for the skin editor may be saved as BMP or JPEG files. BMP are recommended as they will be compressed before being combined into the .dz skin package. You may design your skin any way you like, but there are a few standard styles you might want to follow:
Tracking: The buttons here normally lighten when the mouse passes over them, indicating they can be pressed.
Selected: This indicates the current state of the player and is normally brightly lit.
Disabled: A disabled button is normally darker then the main button, indicating nothing will happen if it is pressed.
Mask: The mask is a very special bit map. It indicates what parts of the other bit maps will be displayed as the user interface. It consists of two colors - black to show the interface and white for transparent. The background behind the player shows through the white area, allowing for non square skins. Please note, all skin masks MUST contain two colors, so for a rectangular skin, add one pixel of white in the upper left corner.
The main image contains all the background and button elements in their normal state. This will be used for areas and controls that are NOT either selected, under the mouse or currently active.
The mask allows you to create non square control surfaces. The color of the first pixel on the bit map (upper left) is the display color. The second color on the bit map (there should only be two colors for this mask) is the mask color. The display color will show the desktop or applications below DrasticPreview. The mask color will show the DrasticPreview control surface. We have used white for the display and black for the mask, which allows for a high contrast mask image and small image mask file size.
The tracking bit map will be used for areas that are currently under the mouse pointer. The only parts of this bit map that are used are those buttons within the selection boxes.
The controls on this bit map are shown when a control button is selected. For example, in play mode the play button above would be displayed to indicate play.
The disabled bit map is used to denote controls that are not available.
The normal slider bit map is used to show the current state of the position control.
The mouse down slider is used when the position control is tracking the mouse (e.g. the user is dragging the slider with the mouse).