Thread: Ribbon Skinning Guide
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January 24th, 2017 09:19 PM #1
Ribbon Skinning Guide
Ever get sick of the default ribbon? Ever want your crazy awesome Visual Style to look consistent but you don't want to have to ditch the ribbon with OldNewExplorer? Well fear not, for at long last, there IS a solution!
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HOW TO RIBBONS:
1. In WSB, go to Fonts, Colours, & System Metrics > Fonts & System Metrics, and change the BTNFACE and BTNTEXT properties to either #000000 and #FFFFFF or #FFFFFF and #000000. They cannot be the same, they must be at opposite ends of the colour spectrum!
2. Go to C:\Windows\system32 and copy UIRibbonRes.dll to somewhere, and extract all the BITMAPs from the copied UIRibbonRes.dll . I recommend 7zip for this, as unlike Resource Hacker, 7zip preserves the resource numbers. This is very useful, especially for cases like this.
3. Modify the BITMAPs as you wish, but DO NOT RESIZE THEM, and make sure you save them as 24-BIT BITMAPS. 8-BIT AND 32-BIT WILL NOT WORK CORRECTLY, THUS TURNING YOUR ENTIRE RIBBON INTO A COMPLETE FUSTERCLUCK. DON'T DO IT. SERIOUSLY.
4. Replace the modified bitmaps in the copied UIRibbonRes.dll as desired.
5. Take ownership of the original UIRibbonRes.dll , then rename it and add your new one in its place.
6. Restart Explorer
7. ???
8. Watch as things don't work quite as you intended.
8.1. Repeat steps 1 through 8 until step 8 does not occur and is instead replaced by step 10.
10. PROFIT!!! ^-^
11. Repeat steps 2 - 10 for C:\Windows\sysWOW64\UIRibbonRes.dll if you want to support 32-bit applications (including Windows Style Builder) ._.
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HOW TO WHICH BITMAPS ARE WHAT (WIP):
To the best of my awareness, the order of the bitmaps, although to be honest I'm not 100% sure.
Windows 7:
NYI
MOAR COMING SOON
Windows 8.1:
1517 and 1519 are the ribbon tabs. 1517 can be transparent. Sadly, 1514 is only 1px wide, which severely limits what one can do with it.
1538 is small buttons, with or without text.
1542 - 1544 is those gallery box thingies.
1546, 1548 are the context menu hovers.
1577 is the File button.
1696 is the Quick Access bar's background when it is at the top.
1698 is the panel backgrounds.
1700 is the panel footers
1704 - 1710 are contextual tab headers.
MOAR COMING SOON
Windows 10:
NYI
MOAR COMING SOON
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Please note that a UIRibbonRes DLL from Windows 7 will work on Windows 8.1 SO LONG AS you also copy over the Windows 7 versions of UIRibbon.dll and [LANGUAGEFOLDER]\UIRibbon.dll.mui . This also removes the "File" text on the button in the top left of the ribbon. However, this complicates installation for the end-user and requires you to distribute MUI files for all languages, so keep that in mind. Windows 10 is...not as co-operative, sadly, so there's no way to remove the "File" text on there :/
Also, if you find out what a bitmap does, or any other useful information, please post that below, and I'll try to stay on top of adding that to this post! (Seriously...it'd really help.)
Oh and if you need help, ask. Seriously, do it.
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CREDITS:
Urko, for discovering the means of doing this back in 2013.
devillnside, for pushing me to actually get a tutorial written.
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(Mods, feel free to move this thread, I wasn't really sure where to post it .-. )
Last edited by 2635599; January 25th, 2017 at 11:42 AM. Reason: made more readable
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