[UPDATED v0.2][3.0] tool, Original xtheme-blue.css Theme Color Changer

[syscobra]

hey Javier,

really nice work!

Some notes from my side for inspiration:
* a live preview while playing with slider would help a lot. One control having some elements in would be enough. I don't know how difficult it is to change skin on the fly
* would be nice to switch between HSL and RGB mode

Thanks for the feedback.
1.- a live preview is almost imposible because the script has to change the hue saturation and lighting of the images. If you run the project and created a new theme you must have seen the log of the script and it says you it makes 182 new gif's and other png's so if i am going to get it live when someone move the hue one by one i will have to regenerate all the images and the colors of the theme to make that available so if you move hue by 1 you then have to wait like 60-120 secs to get the preview (maybe more depends on how is the current cpu charge on my server). But i am thinking on making another aproach to this and maybe in the future i can have it done (i will try to make an small file with only (lets say) the window control, to make the live preview), thanks for sharing your notes though to make me think on it.

2.- why you want to change to RGB? to change color by color of the file? that would be in a future version of the tool. (Maybe a too far future)

[steffenk]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback.
1.- a live preview is almost imposible because the script has to change the hue saturation and lighting of the images. If you run the project and created a new theme you must have seen the log of the script and it says you it makes 182 new gif's and other png's so if i am going to get it live when someone move the hue one by one i will have to regenerate all the images and the colors of the theme to make that available so if you move hue by 1 you then have to wait like 60-120 secs to get the preview (maybe more depends on how is the current cpu charge on my server). But i am thinking on making another aproach to this and maybe in the future i can have it done (i will try to make an small file with only (lets say) the window control, to make the live preview), thanks for sharing your notes though to make me think on it.

yes, that's really impossible. For me it's difficult to know how the result is whicle playing with the sliders. May be a simulate view could help, the color chart doesn't give the impression how the skin will look after.

2.- why you want to change to RGB? to change color by color of the file? that would be in a future version of the tool. (Maybe a too far future)

yes, it's a bit future. May be some more for future: define a base color and generate other colors in relation - would make it possible to create a blue, orange, green skin etc.

Don't understand it as critic, i really like it

[mystix]

Thanks for the feedback.
1.- a live preview is almost imposible because the script has to change the hue saturation and lighting of the images. If you run the project and created a new theme you must have seen the log of the script and it says you it makes 182 new gif's and other png's so if i am going to get it live when someone move the hue one by one i will have to regenerate all the images and the colors of the theme to make that available so if you move hue by 1 you then have to wait like 60-120 secs to get the preview (maybe more depends on how is the current cpu charge on my server).

there is, actually, another way to do this.
since the set of colours, hues and saturation is limited, you could simply cache each generated theme on the server i.e. you end up generating each permutation only once, but only on-demand, leading to less overhead overall (requires disk space though).

with that in place, a buffer on the slider controls for hue / saturation + a modal loadmask while the theme is being generated should take care of trigger-happy users.

just a thought

[jay@moduscreate.com]

technically you could also just create a script that goes through all the possible permutations and save them for caching. one such job can run for a few minutes

[mystix]

technically you could also just create a script that goes through all the possible permutations and save them for caching. one such job can run for a few minutes

+1

definitely better.

and yes, i'm finally back home. only flew back last friday. woot.

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I was going to ask you about that.

Glad you got home safely marc!

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I was thinking about this last night when going to bed (i think a lot about programming when i'm not in front of the computer) and my post earlier reminded me of the 'rainbow tables', which hackers use.

Read up here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table

[jay@moduscreate.com]

One last bit, if you need help automagically creating sprites with Image magik, i've been able to do it with the famfamfam by using a simple shell script.

http://tdg-i.com/57/tdg-iiconmgr-upd...for-iconviewer

[syscobra]

there is, actually, another way to do this.
since the set of colours, hues and saturation is limited, you could simply cache each generated theme on the server i.e. you end up generating each permutation only once, but only on-demand, leading to less overhead overall (requires disk space though).

with that in place, a buffer on the slider controls for hue / saturation + a modal loadmask while the theme is being generated should take care of trigger-happy users.

just a thought

technically you could also just create a script that goes through all the possible permutations and save them for caching. one such job can run for a few minutes

hehe, thanks for your feedback guys, but thats almost impossible. Why? well you have this:
-360 .. 360 of hue values = 720 possible values
-100 .. 100 of saturation = 200 possible values
-100 .. 100 of lightness = 200 possible values
That means that i can have 720*200*200 possible values, its 28.800.000 possible permutations. So for 90kb (the zip) file and like 65kb(in windows it takes 500kb) (the images)+38kb (the css) of the theme file, for the whole theme in disk...that said i must have a 5.300 GB disk. or a 6TB disk lol, So this aproach sorry but i dont think so. Can you imagine caching all that up?

What i am thinking is about to have an small control, like a window, with an small css and only 2 or 3 image files, so when people move the hue saturation and lighting only change on the fly that small css and files. that will end up in like a 3 or 5 secs after moving. Guess i will have to try that before i implement it.

I was thinking about this last night when going to bed (i think a lot about programming when i'm not in front of the computer) and my post earlier reminded me of the 'rainbow tables', which hackers use.

Read up here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table

Well i look into it and it looks like space science to me... lol, i am intelligent but i can't see the point to use on this. Anyways thanks for that info.

P.D.(I think a lot about programming not in front of computer too, just last night i end up sleeping at 2:00am because i couldn't get my brain out of thinking about the future of this application and others i am making)

One last bit, if you need help automagically creating sprites with Image magik, i've been able to do it with the famfamfam by using a simple shell script.

http://tdg-i.com/57/tdg-iiconmgr-upd...for-iconviewer

Don't worry i have looked into a lot of this image editing stuff. Before i make this tool i read about HSL HSV spaces and also all the formulas, of course i knew some image related operations with php (the language i use) but i think i have this controlled. At least for this app.

Thanks all for the feedback and ideas. I will take care of them and look into it.

[Foggy]

A nice addition will be colorizing. For images you could use http://ch2.php.net/manual/de/function.imagefilter.php with IMG_FILTER_COLORIZE to perform that. CSS Values you have to recalculate...
With 3 slider for Red/Green/Blue, that would be really nice

But anyway, that is a damn hot tool