How-to Use This Tool

Note: For some reason the tool works slowly in Firefox, yet blazingly fast in Opera, Chrome, and even Internet Explorer. Personally, I use Opera. - Tatwi

Installation:
Customizing your UI color scheme in SWGEmu is very easy, thanks to the hard work of the modders of yore. All you need to do is download the ui.zip file here and unzip it in your SWGEmu folder. The file contains a folder called ui, which contains a slightly modified version of the style sheet the game uses for color themes. It also comes with about 15 community created color themes that you'll be able to pick from next time you load the game.

Creating a New Theme
I made this tool because I wanted to make my own ui color themes, but it was such a pain in the rear to manually edit the template file, look up colors, figure out what values do what to the game's ui and then try to remember all that another day. This tool removes much of that frustration and time sinking, by providing you with two things:

1. An array of all the colors used in the theme, which makes it easy to evaluate how they work together.
2. Tool tips with verbose descriptions of what the colors do in the ui.

1. Choose a pre-loaded theme as a starting point. There is an all grey one if you'd like a clean slate.
2. Personally I would suggest starting from the left and working your way down each column, as that is how the entries flow alphabeticaly. Read the tool tips for help and remember that back1 is the one color that sets the tone for your whole theme.
3. Pick the colors you would like to use simply by clicking on a color block and using the JSColor selector to highlight your desired color.
4. Once you have the color you'd like for a slot, close that JSColor box and move on to the next one.
5. When you have all your colors setup how you'd like them, go ahead and give your theme a name and press the build button.
6. Back Up You Hard Work! Copy your variables, from the "Save Variables" box, to a plain textfile on your computer by clicking in the box, doing a "control A" to select all the text, and a "control C" to copy the text to the clipboard. Paste it into the text file and save it. Personally, I name my variables text files "Name of the Theme VARS" to help me remember what they are. :) If you want to modify your theme again another day it's as simple as coming back to this site, pasting your variables into the "Load Variables" box, and pressing the Load button.
7. Ya did it! You now have a new ui color theme to use in SWGEmu!

Using Your Theme:
This is a very simple matter of copying all of the text output in the "Your Theme:" box above and pasting into the bottom of your SWGEmu\ui\ui_palette_ground.inc file. It's a plain text file, so go ahead and open it with Notepad. After you've saved the file, start up the game and you'll find that your theme is in the drop down list to select from. Note that the game needs to be closed and opened again for it to read any changes you've made to the ui_palette_ground.inc file.

Further Reading About Mods for SWGEmu:
Here is a great thread about mods in the official SWGEmu forums. Mod the Galaxy and Modsource are also excellent forums (and where many of these mods came from).

Useful (and free) Color Tools on the Web:
ColorBlender.com - Use RGB sliders to generate an array of complimentary colors.
DeGraeve.com - Color scheme generator that uses a picture as a source.
ColorSchemer Online - Make large palettes of complimentary colors with a few button clicks.