Thanks for the reply Heigar, yes although Skinstidio7 does seem to have the facility to apply an image or a color to the navigation pane background, I could not get it to work and neither could I find a reference to the preview pane
So I used the shellstyle.dll in Windows > Resources > Themes > Aero > Shell > NormalColor as I've often done before and it works fine , however I was hoping Skinstudio7 would make it possible to avoid altering system files.
I could find no clear instruction on how to change the preview pane background color via any system file so I will have to leave it unchanged I guess.
Was really hoping Skinstudio7 would cater for skinning one of the most often seen and used parts of Windows 7 i.e. explorer.