How To Create A GTalk Theme

by LeVoltz on 23. Mar, 2009 in How-To Share

Quite some time back Google talk had an update, which included theme support. Now I don’t know about you, but I came to know about it only recently. The good news is that the themes are created with CSS, which means that you can copy an existing theme and modify it to get something that is more appealing to you.

To get started you need to navigate to the existing theme folder;

C:Documents and Settings<PROFILE NAME>Local SettingsApplication DataGoogleGoogle Talkthemessystemchat

Here you can see all the pre-installed Chat themes.

Select a particular theme and click on the theme folder and navigate to this folder;

C:Documents and Settings<PROFILE NAME>Local SettingsApplication DataGoogleGoogle Talkthemessystemchat<Theme Name>

Rename the chat theme folder you have just copied across to the name of your choice. This name will show up in the themes menu. Edit the themes CSS file ([ThemeName]ContentsResourcesmain.css) and then test your theme.
Here you see main.css file. This file defines the looks of Google Talk skins. You can edit these CSS and create your own custom theme. You can add your own custom images and colors to Google Talk.

Now open your Google Talk and select Settings->Appearance and you will be able to see your new theme.

You can also make the theme you developed available for public download.