Total Commander

OK, I know this is a heated subject, but hopefully, my concept will deal with everyone's concerns.

I know that many of us don't want themes/look-and-feel changes. And that is fine.

However, it is no news that Total Commander's appearance is preventing many people from appreciating this amazing software (and in turn, reducing the financial support it could have).

So, this idea supposedly takes the best from both worlds, as TC could remain bare for anyone who wants it so.

The concept is simple. If there are "theme" files in TC's directory, it loads them. If there are not, it doesn't. If you don't want a theme on TC, you don't have to have one. It's just a quick check that will be executed in a millisecond.

Ofc we don't want TC to have a full theme editor embedded on it. It could easily be another executable. Installing it could be optional (or even a separate installer).

Offering TC with 2 or 3 themes (presenting a modern UI, with modern icons and a dark theme) would bring more users.
The current dark theme could be just another additional theme.

It didn't have to be fancy. Just changing colors, icons, etc, and pack it in a theme file (that could be a zip with the icons, images, and an ini file).

If later it is found that it is too expensive to maintain this editor, it could be released as open-source. The only thing TC would need is the ability to read the theme file and apply the cosmetic changes. So it would have to provide the support for reading these properties and eventually add new properties as the interface changes.

It's been already suggested. See here: Feature Request - Multiple color set profiles for TC

I swear I looked for "theme" and "skin" before I posted. "Color set" is a low blow. haha

Even though it similar, it does not quite accomplish what I'm looking for. I was thinking of a neat editor where there would be an image of TC's window, we could click and change the color of the component we clicked on (or select on a dropdown and see in the image what we selected), build a single file that could easily be published/shared and that could be deployed on TC as if it was a drop-in plugin or something like that.

I'm proposing something for NEW users, not someone who already knows how to tweak ini files. And a couple of "official themes" to download from the official site, to give TC that new fresh look people complain that they don't have. I'm trying to take down the adoption barrier.