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Vista skinning questions.

I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

Vista skinning questions.

Help me,help you...God help us all.

Vista,WB and me got off to a rocky start but after some super tweaking help and finally getting WB installed correctly...my hatred of Vista has cooled to merely annoyance with some of the gui decisions microsoft made.With the right tweaks it runs fine even on my mediocre system.(turn off LOTS of stuff,all animations,popup thumbnails,superfetch and on and on...)

WB now does some pretty neat stuff on Vista and thats what finally won me over...well,at least I dont leave Vista at the earliest opportunity.

SKS6 still cant touch 5 for ease of use(and never will in its current layout),but to skin Vista you have to get over it and dig in.You may click yourself silly but it DOES have some nifty features.It supports all the latest tricks now and the subframe builder is pretty cool.Vertically stacked images are back!YAY Neil.

So I'm gonna use this screeny to ask some questions while I test different areas to see what they do.If you KNOW the answer please chime in.If you have a question,please fell free to ask.

My first tip for the counterintuitive section is...User pane icon would not move DOWN on the pane til I used NEGATIVE top content margins in the text tab.

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I never used SkS 5 so I thought that anything buggy is just Skinstudio itself, but from this thread (and others)...

another thing, that bothered me is, that pixels with alpha=0 are replaced with black in popup menu background. As a workaround I add a background layer 50% grey 1% opacity which is almost invisible.
Anyone an idea?

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

Some menus(according to vStyler)are either using trans wrong,doubling up,or just plain screwed.Wrong text colors,mouseovers messed up etc...

We need Neil to help us out with this one.I dont think its anything we can fix.(I havnt got into the menus yet other than the ones that imported from XP into the substyle,so things MAY get better...but vStyler says we are stuck with some of the ugly for now)

Nothing about this menu is correct.

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

I never used SkS 5 so I thought that anything buggy is just Skinstudio itself, but from this thread (and others)...

SKS in either version isnt so much the issue...Adam finally drilled this into my head(the old SKS developer),SKS just writes the code...code can be added by hand if need be...its up to WB to implement the code.Something it sometimes cant do.

Such as entering a content margin for text,SKS will put the numbers there for you but WB cant always implement it.You can add sizing margins for any graphic by hand...but unless WB supports sizing in that section...nothing will happen.

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

Push buttons when used in the example below don't support transparency (at least no skins on my system do). This is ugly in the ugliest. The push buttons look fine everywhere else.

I'm seeing this all over Vista...Neillllllllllll!We need you!

Now I'm seeing it around tabs too.WTH?

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

They are showing the classic button face color around them.

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

Anyone know what button type two is and what its used for?6 states but no reference to it in the preview.

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

Anyone know what button type two is and what its used for?6 states but no reference to it in the preview.

I never skin it and I haven't seen a skin yet that skins it. Possibly for future?

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Anyone know what button type two is and what its used for?6 states but no reference to it in the preview.

it´s used for the menubar of explorer (press Alt)

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PixelPirate

Join Date 07/2003

+17

For the start menu search icon. Take a look at the size of your bottom image. If it's over 58 px tall, you need to bring it down below. Why beats me, but (iirc) 58 is the magic number before the search icon aligns properly.

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

it´s used for the menubar of explorer

The "toolbar style menubar button" is the correct image to skin for those buttons but they probably do the same thing.

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

If it's over 58 px tall

If I go over 40 pixels tall the icon misaligns.

I suppose I'll spend some more time exploring this new info.

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PixelPirate

Join Date 07/2003

+17

I had the issue when I did the Pirate theme. The bottom image is 57 pixels high on that one. And it appears Brainy added extra transparent space to his bottom image on the screenshot to lift it over the huge start button. Content margins have nothing to do with it. It's the physical size of the image itself. It shouldn't mess it up, if your bottom image is below 58 pixels.

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

It all works as Lasse says now. Perhaps something was reworked cause I spent an entire day a couple of weeks ago trying to understand what I can and can't get away with.

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The "toolbar style menubar button" is the correct image to skin for those buttons but they probably do the same thing.

hmm strange, for me only the images of "button type 2" (in Vista) show up there (I use a blank image for TSMB).

here´s my memo image for some things in vista explorer...

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2of3

Join Date 10/2006

+816

It all works as Lasse says now.

I hope you don't mind, Lasse that I added this tip to my Vista WB skinning shared knowledge and tips thread

Important information

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

hmm strange, for me only the images of "button type 2

Yeah, they both do the same thing. Button type 2 has priority over TSMB if you skin them both. Perhaps they are used differently between diferent software but I haven't run into that yet.

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Adam finally drilled this into my head(the old SKS developer),SKS just writes the code...

yes shure, it´s WB (together with Vista).

But sometimes SkS even boosts confusion.
e.g. toolbar buttons: text states to modify are messed up.
mouse-over=disabled
disabled=mouse-over

The problem now is in the preview of SkS: It doesn´t show how WB reacts to the code but what would show up if those states were correct. So no chance to realize there´s something wrong and complete confusion is perfect...

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Yeah, they both do the same thing. Button type 2 has priority over TSMB if you skin them both. Perhaps they are used differently between diferent software but I haven't run into that yet.

ok. well, this comes out with this annoying trial-and-error-thing...

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

And it appears Brainy added extra transparent space to his bottom image on the screenshot to lift it over the huge start button.

Start button not huge...top 3 leaves are on the logoff graphic...same end result tho...tall logoff graphic...not going to redesign it so misaligned it shall be.

Thank you Pixel Pirate for clearing up the mystery.

Now,has anyone got the IE7 background to work...right now its using the rebar background(normal toolbar background).I added one but it didnt switch. (

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

Now,has anyone got the IE7 background to work...

nope

Maybe you can use the start button glow image set to always show for the leaves instead of it being part of the start panel

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Xiandi

Join Date 07/2007

+840

I just wanted to pop in here and say thanks to you all. This Q&A session has been answering some questions I had myself, and I'm sure there are many other skinners following this thread as well, for the same reason. Keep it up!

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SKoriginals

Join Date 03/2005

+68

has anyone got the IE7 background to work

Is there even a 'section' to skin that? I don't recall and can find it if there is. I do know it uses the toolbar background to skin that and (for whatever odd reason) pure white acts as clear on the 'tab corners' and 'Bottom Tba Bar' (just wierd).

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

Maybe you can use the start button glow image set to always show for the leaves instead of it being part of the start panel

That would make it tall enough to interfere with status bars and minimized windows like the ones SKS and photoshop use.It already does enough that I have to move the first in a row up a little before I can click the restore button.

Is there even a 'section' to skin that?

There is a section in Rebar controls but it dosnt seem to work.I wanted to see the bottom of my IE7 toolbar background so I made all elements of the tabs transparent exceept for the tabs.But that leaves some extra space at the bottom and I needed to use a diff background to compensate...no go so far. (

Plus I wanted some seperation between the toolbar and the page frame...like between the address area and toolbar.A diff graphic would allow me to do that.If it worked.

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I.R. Brainiac

Join Date 05/2003

+281

These minimized captions buttons are wrong too...its showing a button inside a button...and the outer button isnt even rendered correctly...it has a color block in the center.

The white area is your window color...the green part is either classic menu or menubar color.(the same color on this blind)Text is window/system text color.

crappy box around my buttons is classic buttonface...grrrrrr

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2of3

Join Date 10/2006

+816

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