image backgrounds in skinstudio

from Stardock Forums
Hey all,

I'm trying to get a UIS2 skin working with my application using DirectSkin. I've gotten all the controls skinning, but the background to the form is not showing up as the tiled image the artist laid out in SkinStudio DE. Instead, it is showing up as the color defined under classic colors/3D-Controls/Button-Face color.

The app is written in C# .Net 2.0 and uses a basic System.Windows.Forms.Form as the form.

Any ideas? Is it even possible to have an image tile over the form background?

Thanks for you help

Brandon
1,919 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
In case anyone else runs into this problem, be aware.
1) MDI Backgrounds are not the same as Dialog backgrounds. If you click Miscellaneous/Personality/ on the right hand side of the screen, you should see several types of back grounds. Make sure the widget you are setting is the one you really want to see (you have the option of setting a MDI, Explorer and Dialog background).

2) The REALLY important step. If you are viewing a dialog, and your dialog background does not appear to be working, go into the code tab and under the [Personality] header look for a line that says "IgnoreDialogBitmap=1" and change it to "IgnoreDialogBitmap=0"

Step 2 is what was screwing me up for a while. Thought I'd pass on the information in case anyone else becomes stuck like I was.

Brandon
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, not sure if this is in the documentation anywhere, and I haven't officially confirmed it, but it looks like their might be a 128 character limit on how deep your art resources can be in the path. So if the path (including the filename) is greater than 128 characters, some parts of your skin might not show up.

Again, I need to confirm this, but this appears to be another problem that is happening when I was trying to set an image on my background.

Brandon
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I can confirm the 128 characters. I thought it was less but I never counted.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, well, I'm just assuming, since my skin path was 114 characters long, and some of the skin assets showed up, but others (that reached to 144-152) did not, that it was probably a logical number like 128.

Brandon