Upgrading Custom Theme from 2009 Q3 Release

[Jim Cline]

We recently moved from 2009 Q3 release which we had extensive themes built and now they don't seem to work in the themebuilder for Q2 2010 release, how do I import our custom themes or convert them?

[Deyan]

Hello Jim,

Thanks for writing and for your question.

Themes created with the old version of our Visual Style Builder are not compatible with the new theming approach and cannot be opened and edited directly in our new Visual Style Builder. The reason for this incompatibility is that the new theming approach introduces the concept of visual states for the separate items, whereas the old theming mechanism relies on conditions based on Rad Properties. These conditions cannot be directly parsed to visual states.

That said, you will have to recreate your old themes by using the new VSB. To simplify the process of migrating themes, we have created a tool within the Visual Style Builder which opens an old theme, extracts all styles from it, and creates repository items which you can then assign to your controls in the new Visual Style Builder and thus recreate your theme.

Here is a good help article that gives a hint on how to extract a style repository from your old themes and use it to quickly recreate them in the new VSB:

Loading old Themes in the new Visual Style Builder

I hope this helps.

Greetings,
Deyan
the Telerik team