SkinStudio 6 Beta Feedback

By Neil Banfield Posted August 7, 2007 14:43:09

Please post general feedback about SkinStudio 6 here.

You must have WindowBlinds 6 beta installed to use SKS6, but any skins made with it should work with WindowBlinds 5 as well.

This is a beta so you should expect missing sections and bugs. If you find SKS is missing support for a specific section, please let us know!

If you are working on a new skin it would be best to ensure it is backed up before using SKS6. Remember in this beta all changes are saved instantly!

+22 Karma 157 Replies 24 Referrals

My submittal was called minimally. Everything apart from the default skins was hand-made by me in photoshop...

Hey Neil, follow-up to reply 36, can you give us an idea when for start menu and taskbar that trans and blur will not be linked so we can have just trans or trans with blur. Now it is blur or nothing.

To be honest, I hate Skinstudio6 (Well, I never really liked SKS5 as well...) it's worst than SKS5, there no tabs for more than one skins, the window popups just make the skinning progress slower and confusing, where is the code part to manual editing?, bug analyzing and correction?, shellstyle in XP?... Well, there lot of lacking features that SKS5 as. XP/Vista differences just confuse me, there must be a better way like put a selector to show only XP skinning or only Vista skinning parts. Sorry for the bad commenting dev team but I needed to let that out. I hope the current SKS6 Beta is far from the final form, take your time, there is no fire...

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NEE77: I am sorry you do not like SKS6, but many of the changes are by design.

There is no need for a skin author to directly access the UIS code.

If you want to edit more than one skin, open another copy of SKS6. Think of it like notepad. If you want to edit two txt files you just open a second copy.

The bug analysing and correction feature in SKS5 was more trouble than it was worth. Frequently it flagged things which were not issues and gave the user the impression that the skin had serious problems. Worse, the correct these errors feature can damage a skin.

Shellstyles can be edited under the XP specific sections.

I was trying to make a right hand version of flahorns classic leopard, all buttons but one could be moved, thats that one that was right side and should be left now - sorry no knowledge how to explain it better, but no access to that button.

Ideas why??

Ruben

Which button were you unable to move?

the one which is in his version on the right side - thing it has no real function, can be move with uis frames, but doesn't stick that way

Ruben

There is no need for a skin author to directly access the UIS code.

o.O I do... It's the best way to compare two skins. And when I'm importing a part from another Skin, I import the picture then copy/pastle the code for instant change, there better way to do it? Also, any Web Developper will check the code itself one time or other even when using a prog like Dreamweaver.

If you want to edit more than one skin, open another copy of SKS6. Think of it like notepad. If you want to edit two txt files you just open a second copy.

But SKS5 where using tabs... tabs are used in Browsers and power utility to replace Explorer (IE: Dopus) and Notepad (IE: PSPad) use tabs... that's why I see that change as a backward move.

The bug analyzing and correction feature in SKS5 was more trouble than it was worth. Frequently it flagged things which were not issues and gave the user the impression that the skin had serious problems. Worse, the correct these errors feature can damage a skin.

Thanks for telling! I didn't know it and I thought I was the problem when it was screwing my skin...

Shellstyles can be edited under the XP specific sections.

I noticed that, but where is the "import" feature to import from a shellstyle.dll after importing a MSStyle?

Thanks for the reply Neil, I appreciate to get in contact with the man behind WB and SKS!

Seems to be a problem in the taskbar buttons area, on the horizontals, the states listed in the Help tab and on the pulldowns for changing text values are Normal, Pressed, Disabled, Highlighted, Activated and Activated & Highlighted. On the verticals it is listed as Normal, Pressed, Disabled, Mouse Over and Focus & Default. The vertical mouse over state does not change no matter what you do either. Probably just an oversight, but the vertical states should be exactly the same as the horizontals.

Will there be a Vista-compatible version of SKS5?

PurrBall: SKS6 is the replacement for SKS5. There will be no additional work on SKS5.

the one which is in his version on the right side - thing it has no real function, can be move with uis frames, but doesn't stick that way

Ruben

Anyone??

Ruben

One other thing, why does it seem impossible to change the Active and Inactive titlebar text colors in SKS 6, and in SKS 5 for that matter? I set them in the Edit Colors area, but they refuse to change.

Ok, I see on Shelby GT's preview that the logoff, shutdown buttons have changed. I can't get mine to show. Nor do the arrow buttons show (I have them at 27 x 27 with 2 images). Any ideas? My fingers are exhausted. Thanks.

If I am not mistaken, did not SK5 have a XP theme you could edit? Will SK6 have a Vista theme (actual basic looking Vista) you can edit?

I would like to change the Vista look a little bit, because I searched for hours looking for a theme for my Vista operating computer, but I can not find anything I like. When I click to create 'New Skin', it gives you the Diamond skin to edit.

When I import a png file the transparency does not carry over. How can I get the transparency to carry over? This is the basic taskbar background.

Am I missing something? It doesn't seem to have the option of multiplying images from a single on import.

Does this mean I have to create images with all states in mind? for ex. make a start button consisting of 5 images from the start and then import?

Maybe I'm just not doing it right.....

Nevermind, changing the location of the pngs fixed the problem.

Could you elaborate a bit more on this, Alan? Moving them from where to where resolved the issue? Not sure why file location would make any difference to the conversion is why I'm asking.

Yeah very weird. I had to move the pngs to a directory outside the skin folder to get them to work properly. I have no idea why this made a difference. But after moving my pngs to a totally separate location on my hard drive they would import correctly with transparency and alpha blending.

Thanks for the feedback, Alan. I expect Neil will look into this.

How long will it be before it's released to the public?

Not sure if this has been brung up.
I noticed today, that whenever I want to put in a "Negative" number for any section, I get an error saying, "Please enter an interger".
If I need my margins to be ( -153 ), I don't really want to hit the button 153 times. I just want to type in -153.

Also, there needs to be an easier way to pull up skins. I have 2 choses,
1. I can click on "Open Skin" choose which skin I want, then choose which version of the WB I want.
2. I can click "File - open current windowblinds skin" then still have to choose which version I need to work on.
Both are time consuming because you have to do it every time you open Skin Studio.
Sure you have the "Recent skins" but you still have to choose which version to open, if you have more than one version in the folder. It's ok if you only have "one" version.

In the old version of Skin Studio, you could click a button and choose between the last 4 skins you were working on. It didn't matter if they were XP or Vista, it would keep the "Version" of the WB you were working on.

Just something to keep in mind.

I can't open skins I imported in version 5 from visual styles. It crashes the program.

what skins?