First installment of skinning A2 my way. It is the way I do it and I’ll show you some tools and tricks of the trade. Skinning Aston2 is still very hard at first but later is getting … well … not so hard.. I mean it is getting easier. First I’ll show you what tools I use and how to set them up for maximum productivity.

Notepad++ – Or some other text editor that supports syntax highlighting. You can use Windows built-in Notepad but Notepad++ has some great features and it is absolutely free.

Total Commander – download, install it and set it up like in video below. Watch it on youtube directly for better quality.

What features are important that makes TC (Total Commander) ideal for skinning?

First of all much better file manager than Windows built-in explorer will ever be from my point of you. Windows Explorer is  better (In Vista and newer versions) for file previewing, modes of view and such but for skinning purposes I would strongly recommend TC.
- Great archive handling since Aston2 theme formats (a2theme, and a2menu ) are infact zip files with renamed extensions.
- Fast editing by pressing F4 key
- Better workflow
- More control over files
In next tutorial I’ll show you TC in action and how these features come handy in actual skin making process.

Graphics Editor – I suggest Adobe products such as   Photoshop, Illustrator or Fireworks but feel free to use what ever to make your graphics files. I use them all but in the past two years or so I am more focused on Illustrator and Fireworks.

How to start and how the hell do I use these tools?

First thing first choose a theme that has a layout that you like. It will be much easier for us to work with something that has a taskbar style, or menu style that we would like to apply in our own theme. Download it (do not apply it) from website to a location where you want to work from,(for instance e:\theming \new skin\) and follow these steps.

1. Make new folder name it backup  inside e:\theming \new skin\backup and copy the theme to that folder for safe keeping in case we make some mistake.
2. Now rename the theme – give it a name test.a2theme, you can change that when ever you like so don’t worry about that.
3. Drag the theme to TC toolbar for fast launching and testing. Why? – In order to apply theme you can just double-click it or even faster you can drag it to TC toolbar and apply it with just a single click when you make changes, and believe you’ll be making them a lot.
4. Enter the theme by pressing Ctrl+PageDown keys, if you just double click the theme file the theme will just be applied this way you’ll enter inside the theme without unpacking it.
5. Edit basic theme info by pressing F4 button and save it.
And we are ready to truly go.
Watch all this steps in video below, it should all start having sense. Of course this is the beginning, from here we are really ready to make serious theme alterations which will happen  in the next tutorial.

I’ll give you few days to get to know these tools before we continue.
You can use other tools that have similar functions to TC like Directory Opus or even better FreeCommander which is btw free but I don’t use them so I cannot guarantee that all the stuff will work the same way.