i didnt suspected it to be in there but now it makes sense ~ kinda ...thanks a lot gmc2

I want to skin the left side of the windows explorer (treeview) but i cant find it in skinstudio would be nice if you cold tell me where it can be found.
I looked for it but did not find it.

+ i do have some trouble with my popup prview on the taskbar i dont know if the gradient is causing it or something else but i know that this happens in all of my skins and im kinda frustrated about it. The apps like impulse and avira for example shiow just fine its just that single one.
made a Screenshot.

Thanks very much CountryYokel, so i can only change the color of the background because if i skin the folderbaritself  it will also not appear

Yes, Roloccolor, the folders bar will show in Vista but not in Windows 7, but it has to be skinned in 7 if the change of color of the folders part of explorer is to show.

Correct me if i'm wrong as I'm always ready to learn. When I start to make a new skin I open the new skin in sks. Guess I should but never change this graphic as one comes in the new skin. My folder colors change just fine as long as I leave that graphic in there. So it's my understanding that you don't have to make a new graphic as some do and some don't but a graphic just has to be there.

Thank you Cyndie

2of3 thanks for your help, i found out that it is not the background or the text color that is causing this problem its the program itself since it has the very left part skinned it will behave strangely. The background needs to be 1 color without any sort of gradient only then it will work but then the "menu item" button doesnt display correctly".
i want this to work and i spent all night to figure out the problem but it just did not work.
The left picture is absolutely the same graphic as in the right picture.
Just wanted to show that it does work but then again not here -----------------------------------------------------^

greg, change your disabled colour in system colours.. make sure the font is os default for now so its not  a factor in affecting anything

and to be on the safe side make sure use flat menus is disabled

you also mentioned one of those programs was ps7  most times, photoshop skins bad, one solution i have found with the drop down menus,

is sometimes it helps to give those fonts and outlined text in the font settings, this seems to calm down everything. just make sure the outlined colour is going to suit in with the rest of your skin, for example, dark green like your menu background colour, and that mint green for the mouseover

hope you get where im going with this xxxx

Greg, your menu color in the colors section should be the same color as the graphics used in the popup menu section (dark green)

i came across another problem i just changed the jumplist backgrounds again to match the menubar and i wanted to change the normal state color from black to a blue color since i only found DWM options in the text section of the jumplist, so i thought i have to change the "starmenu- left hand side-item mouseover" text color to get the desired effect on the jumplist ( since the background of that button is also used there ) but it wont change its just stays black and even if both states mouseover and normal are on default black they will show grey on a mouseover in startmenu... ( i have a solid gradient background for that button ) so i beg for some help here again since im to dumb to figure it out once again

are you sure? if you change the start menu text color you change the jump list text color as well. but your start menu text and jump list text can not be different colors.

thanks for the clarification Tim.

oh, and I've given up on the text issue, what a bummer.