Designing Themes

To demonstrate the use of the theme designer, here we will take a closer look at the 'Standard' theme which ships by default on all bundles of Bandwidth Monitor 2.


To access the designer as above, press F2 on your keyboard. Alternatively, right click and navigate through Themes --> Design Active. (If the Default theme is not already your active theme, you must load it for the purpose of this demonstration. For information about loading themes, click here)

The designer paints a representation of the elements which exist in the designing theme. Each element is represented by a bounding box, with some shade of purple.

The intensity of the purple denotes how close the element is to the front of the theme, that is; the boldest purple elements will be painted on top of less bold elements. This 'depth-cue' system is designed to enchance clarity in the designer


Clicking an element highlights it in green. While the mouse button is held down, the coordinates and dimensions of the element are displayed in the bottom left hand corner of the bounding box.

In addition, while the mouse button is depressed, you may drag the element around the designer to alter its position. The changes are reflected in real-time on the main display to give an indication of how the change will appear. To paint a preview of the element content within the designer, click the 'Preview' button on the designer window (Denoted by a magnifying glass). With this mode enabled, the element is painted underneath the bounding box.



Elements can be brought backwards and forwards by right clicking them and choosing as appropriate.

To change the appearance of the physical Bandwidth Monitor window, choose "Edit Elements" (denoted by a Cog-Wheel icon) and select "Edit Background..". Here you may change the colour and appearance of the Bandwidth Monitor window itself. Similarly, you may edit any attribute of selected theme elements by selecting it and choosing "Edit Selected.." (or double click the desired element). For more information about specific element properties, see their seperate help pages accessible from here