Before you dig in  to this tutorial I must remind you that this is the second installment of the tutorial that I made last week, and in order to follow this tutorial the way you should I feel obligated to point you to the  first one again. I really hope that you  already got your grasp on Total Commander and have set Notepad++ as your default editor. Good news is that our buddy and one of Aston2 masterminds Dimpal (Dmitry Cashev) has compiled a great Skinning Manual that contains almost all technical details that you need to know in skin making process. If there is something that you don’t understand it is most likely that it is explained there.
I hope this video will help you get started and give you an idea of how it can make the whole process a bit easier. I apologize if my spoken English is not that good, if it is hard for you t o follow me I’ll “write” it next time.

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?

Skinning Aston2 Menu is not for the faint-hearted, it is hard, it takes a lot of time but that is something that you already know and it is time to finally  give you some useful info on how to make the whole process smoother . Ok buckle down here we go.

What will I present you here is two “anatomy maps” or “cheat sheets” and the way to use them. Easiest way  to make a skin for Aston2 Menu is to find a skin that has the layout that you like, analyze it and make your skin on top of it.

Step1

Go to the skin location (in my case on Vista 64 – C:\Users\krsta A2\AppData\Roaming\Aston2\Skins\Menu\) and copy skin to location where you want to work with it (E:\NewSkin\…or something), I’ll use my Chillounge skin so I’ll copy Chillounge.a2menu. Normaly I would use Total Commander but I’ll write special tutorial on using TC for skinning. Now extract Chillounge.a2menu by using any zip application (I recommend 7-zip ) and unpack it to for instance to E:\NewSkin\Chillounge\ you’ll see this files