WindowBlinds 10.57 Beta Now Available

Good that it (WB) is being looked after to work awesome on Win 7, 8 & 10 -for everyone !

Ok. Do I need to uninstall since I'm still on Win 7 Ultimate x64?

Yes.  For the betas please always uninstall WB, reboot and then reinstall.

So far so good on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Neil. But can I make a feature request when installing WB? Is there any way to put in a step where the user can activate a checkbox to indicate whether or not they want to install the WB non-mandatory WB skins during the install process? I have nothing against the skins that come with it, but I never use them and they just take up disc space. So every time I do a fresh install, I delete those skins in WB, then I have to reboot and go to the WB folder to manually remove the folders for those skins, because if there is a font supplied with the skin and you delete the skin inside WB, it does not delete the folder if there is a font in it. Rebooting allows them to be deleted.

If one has multiple PC's and/or OS's to install the new WB on, having to do this every time is a real pain. Checking a box to not install them would be really helpful.

Thanks for the update! 

OK, I lied I guess as there is an issue, and it is an issue that changes with every single new release of WB, beta or not. The sizing grip on the status bar image keeps being moved. A perfectly aligned grip on all my skins is now showing up 4 pixels higher and 1 pixel more to the left. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit  

Ok, and another issue. The left and/or right hand lines in explorer are not showing up in TONS of skins. You have to go in and edit the paint margins to get them to show up, even though they worked fine in WB 10.51 beta and prior versions. This issue occurs on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit and Windows 10 Professional 64-bit. 

Thanks Neil.

I agree with LightStar. Put a ckeckbox to prevent the non mandatory WB skins from being installed.

(Win10 64bit Home)

Looks like the StartMenu User Pic is being placed about 30 pixels low, at least on some skins.  I'm not sure where the shipped skins belong, but it's obvious to me on Agenda, Krome, LCD, Penthouse, VOX.  I couldn't say whether or not they were on the previous beta.

I installed v10.57 and when I open an explorer window I get an empty space (circled). When I click the desktop or change focus the empty space fills in. It doesn't matter which skin I load it happens to all (I'm using Aero Midnight in the pic). This happen with v10.51 but not all the time.

Win 8.1 Pro 64bit

Looks to me like you are using OldNewExplorer ALMonty. I had that same issue in Windows 8.1 until I unchecked something in OldNewExplorer, I think it was the Enable Glass on Navigation Bar setting. Uncheck that and see if it helps.

Your a genius Tom. That was it, Thank you.

Bump... Neil, could you pleases address replies 4 and 6? Thanks. 

Quoting LightStar, reply 4

So far so good on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Neil. But can I make a feature request when installing WB? Is there any way to put in a step where the user can activate a checkbox to indicate whether or not they want to install the WB non-mandatory WB skins during the install process? I have nothing against the skins that come with it, but I never use them and they just take up disc space. So every time I do a fresh install, I delete those skins in WB, then I have to reboot and go to the WB folder to manually remove the folders for those skins, because if there is a font supplied with the skin and you delete the skin inside WB, it does not delete the folder if there is a font in it. Rebooting allows them to be deleted.

If one has multiple PC's and/or OS's to install the new WB on, having to do this every time is a real pain. Checking a box to not install them would be really helpful.

Thanks for the update! 

OK, I lied I guess as there is an issue, and it is an issue that changes with every single new release of WB, beta or not. The sizing grip on the status bar image keeps being moved. A perfectly aligned grip on all my skins is now showing up 4 pixels higher and 1 pixel more to the left. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit  

Ok, and another issue. The left and/or right hand lines in explorer are not showing up in TONS of skins. You have to go in and edit the paint margins to get them to show up, even though they worked fine in WB 10.51 beta and prior versions. This issue occurs on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit and Windows 10 Professional 64-bit. 

End of LightStar's quote

Are the margins set incorrectly?

The newer WB will be stricter about skinner errors.

The sizing grip position is not being altered in WB.

Quoting Neil, reply 12

Quoting LightStar,

reply 4

So far so good on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Neil. But can I make a feature request when installing WB? Is there any way to put in a step where the user can activate a checkbox to indicate whether or not they want to install the WB non-mandatory WB skins during the install process? I have nothing against the skins that come with it, but I never use them and they just take up disc space. So every time I do a fresh install, I delete those skins in WB, then I have to reboot and go to the WB folder to manually remove the folders for those skins, because if there is a font supplied with the skin and you delete the skin inside WB, it does not delete the folder if there is a font in it. Rebooting allows them to be deleted.

If one has multiple PC's and/or OS's to install the new WB on, having to do this every time is a real pain. Checking a box to not install them would be really helpful.

Thanks for the update! 

OK, I lied I guess as there is an issue, and it is an issue that changes with every single new release of WB, beta or not. The sizing grip on the status bar image keeps being moved. A perfectly aligned grip on all my skins is now showing up 4 pixels higher and 1 pixel more to the left. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit  

Ok, and another issue. The left and/or right hand lines in explorer are not showing up in TONS of skins. You have to go in and edit the paint margins to get them to show up, even though they worked fine in WB 10.51 beta and prior versions. This issue occurs on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit and Windows 10 Professional 64-bit. 

Are the margins set incorrectly?

The newer WB will be stricter about skinner errors.

The sizing grip position is not being altered in WB.

End of Neil's quote

1. Are the margins set correctly? - Of course they are, they were all fine before on 10.51. 

2. The newer WB will be stricter about skinner errors. - Nice to know, thank you. But if all skins worked fine on 10.51 so what was done in 10.57 that created the above issue? I have 100's of skins being affected, am I supposed to go back and have to fix all of them now?

3. The sizing grip position is not being altered in WB. - Yes, it is, on many, but not all skins. It has been changing on and off over the last several WB releases. I was in the middle of updating my Crucible skin and had the grip positioned perfectly while using WB 10.51. I upgrade to 10.57 and the grip is 4 pixels higher and one more pixel to the left, but on other skins the grip position is fine. Totally weird.

Could some please test the left and right hand lines on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 - 64-bit OS's? For a start, the following skins are having the issue where either the left line, or the right line, or both are missing: Acoustic, Acronic, Altero, Ansaro, Antique, Aragon, Art of War, Aurialis... and that's just the skins beginning in A...

Heck, even my just released Black Sails Master Skin is having the issue on the left hand line, it's not showing up. It uses a 21 pixel tall x 5 pixel wide image. The paint margins are top-2, bottom-2, left-4 and right-0. Those margins have worked on all my skins in the past. If I change the left margin to 3, the line shows up. Being 3 or 4 should not matter, the right hand line has the exact same margins and it shows up fine. I am not about to go back and fix 100's of skins that have always worked fine.

Oh, and the status bar gripper on Windows 7 in Black Sails? Totally screwed up, as with many other skins.

Going back to 10.51 and will wait for next non-beta release. Vertical lines are fine now, but I had to adjust the status bar gripper image of course though, again.

So now I'm confused. The left, right hand lines and sizing grip are on win 7. So for many years most skins have work perfectly. Now you are saying skinners made errors on 1,000's of skins. Now the very few of us left that make WB skins have to revise every skin we made and upload them again.

All I can say is I'm going by what Lightstar said and will have to get my skins looked at by someone that will have the latest WB program installed. See I never installed any version of WB10 on my win7 so I can't see any of that. It worked fine so why install something for win10 on win 7. That was my thoughts. 

So on my win10 computer I have the latest WB10 installed but I don't install betas and don't run into these problems. So when a final release is available I will install it. Guess I will be forced to install it on my win7 computer to fix the skins that need fixing. Other wise people will have skins with problems.

I may be reading this wrong and if I am sorry. As per the latest beta it appears this is causing all these situations. Maybe it would be better to have 99% of everything work as it was and if a few want to use programs that 99% don't use then don't worry about the 1% if it's going to mess up the 99%.

NEIL: EDITED: Since writing this Tom (Lightstar) has checked a few of my skins on his own, which was very nice and said all is fine. So when the next final release is available I may put it on my win 7. Thank you Tom.

I tested Unify, PinPoint, Real Wood and Newgen for you on Windows 7 using WB 10.57 Dave, they are fine. 

Well thank you Tom. That is good news.

In any even when the next non beta release comes out guess I better install in on my win 7 so I can check it with that version.

Quoting LightStar, reply 13

1. Are the margins set correctly? - Of course they are, they were all fine before on 10.51. 

2. The newer WB will be stricter about skinner errors. - Nice to know, thank you. But if all skins worked fine on 10.51 so what was done in 10.57 that created the above issue? I have 100's of skins being affected, am I supposed to go back and have to fix all of them now?

3. The sizing grip position is not being altered in WB. - Yes, it is, on many, but not all skins. It has been changing on and off over the last several WB releases. I was in the middle of updating my Crucible skin and had the grip positioned perfectly while using WB 10.51. I upgrade to 10.57 and the grip is 4 pixels higher and one more pixel to the left, but on other skins the grip position is fine. Totally weird.

Could some please test the left and right hand lines on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 - 64-bit OS's? For a start, the following skins are having the issue where either the left line, or the right line, or both are missing: Acoustic, Acronic, Altero, Ansaro, Antique, Aragon, Art of War, Aurialis... and that's just the skins beginning in A...

Heck, even my just released Black Sails Master Skin is having the issue on the left hand line, it's not showing up. It uses a 21 pixel tall x 5 pixel wide image. The paint margins are top-2, bottom-2, left-4 and right-0. Those margins have worked on all my skins in the past. If I change the left margin to 3, the line shows up. Being 3 or 4 should not matter, the right hand line has the exact same margins and it shows up fine. I am not about to go back and fix 100's of skins that have always worked fine.

Oh, and the status bar gripper on Windows 7 in Black Sails? Totally screwed up, as with many other skins.

 

Going back to 10.51 and will wait for next non-beta release.

End of LightStar's quote

I have investigated the line and as expected it was a margins issue.

The space to paint is 3 pixels wide, but your margin is 4 pixels.  This caused a problem with the new rendering code where the margin exceeding the space resulted in the item not painting.  This has been addressed for the next update.  Ideally the margins should be set based on the skin bitmap rather than reusing the same values as this can result in better performance in some circumstances as there are transparent areas being drawn for no reason with a larger margin.  WB is quite clever about how it paints things and the more accurate the information provided to it, the more optimisations it can apply.

For the status bar gripper, which skin (one I have access to), and where in the OS are you seeing it?  I ask as grippers are used in many places and in some they are unpredictable (Firefox being the best example).

I would recommend continuing to use beta updates as had the issue with the lines above occurred in the release it is unlikely we would have put out an update for it quickly.  I appreciate that it having issues in the current beta makes skin making a pain, but once the line issue is addressed for the next beta you should be able to use it again.

Quoting Neil, reply 17

Quoting LightStar,

reply 13

1. Are the margins set correctly? - Of course they are, they were all fine before on 10.51. 

2. The newer WB will be stricter about skinner errors. - Nice to know, thank you. But if all skins worked fine on 10.51 so what was done in 10.57 that created the above issue? I have 100's of skins being affected, am I supposed to go back and have to fix all of them now?

3. The sizing grip position is not being altered in WB. - Yes, it is, on many, but not all skins. It has been changing on and off over the last several WB releases. I was in the middle of updating my Crucible skin and had the grip positioned perfectly while using WB 10.51. I upgrade to 10.57 and the grip is 4 pixels higher and one more pixel to the left, but on other skins the grip position is fine. Totally weird.

Could some please test the left and right hand lines on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 - 64-bit OS's? For a start, the following skins are having the issue where either the left line, or the right line, or both are missing: Acoustic, Acronic, Altero, Ansaro, Antique, Aragon, Art of War, Aurialis... and that's just the skins beginning in A...

Heck, even my just released Black Sails Master Skin is having the issue on the left hand line, it's not showing up. It uses a 21 pixel tall x 5 pixel wide image. The paint margins are top-2, bottom-2, left-4 and right-0. Those margins have worked on all my skins in the past. If I change the left margin to 3, the line shows up. Being 3 or 4 should not matter, the right hand line has the exact same margins and it shows up fine. I am not about to go back and fix 100's of skins that have always worked fine.

Oh, and the status bar gripper on Windows 7 in Black Sails? Totally screwed up, as with many other skins.

 

Going back to 10.51 and will wait for next non-beta release.

I have investigated the line and as expected it was a margins issue.

The space to paint is 3 pixels wide, but your margin is 4 pixels.  This caused a problem with the new rendering code where the margin exceeding the space resulted in the item not painting.  This has been addressed for the next update.  Ideally the margins should be set based on the skin bitmap rather than reusing the same values as this can result in better performance in some circumstances as there are transparent areas being drawn for no reason with a larger margin.  WB is quite clever about how it paints things and the more accurate the information provided to it, the more optimisations it can apply.

For the status bar gripper, which skin (one I have access to), and where in the OS are you seeing it?  I ask as grippers are used in many places and in some they are unpredictable (Firefox being the best example).

I would recommend continuing to use beta updates as had the issue with the lines above occurred in the release it is unlikely we would have put out an update for it quickly.  I appreciate that it having issues in the current beta makes skin making a pain, but once the line issue is addressed for the next beta you should be able to use it again.

End of Neil's quote

Thanks Neil, very professional of you. Just a little confused as to why those margins on the vertical lines would have even been messed with if they were working just fine is all. As far as the gripper, there is only one status bar gripper in Windows 7, it is the one that shows up at the bottom right corner of an explorer window that you can use to resize the window. There are no status bar grippers in Windows 8.1 or 10. Try looking at the gripper in Windowblinds 10.51, and then again in 10.57, you will definitely notice a difference in it's position.

Unfortunately I will need to know a skin that the issue occurs in as things are being placed correctly in all the included skins that I can see.

Try looking at my Black Sails skin Neil, the gripper is not where I placed it when I designed the skin while I was using WB 10.51 beta.

Win10 64bit Home

In WBConfig, set the taskbar to fully transparent (only occurs if fully transparent, not partially)

Mouseover a taskbar button to display the popup preview

A blur occurs across the bottom of the entire screen in the preview popup area

Doesn't seem to be skin-specific

Hope this works right, skin is "Ice" here:

 edit- looks like you'll have to right-click the box and "open in a new tab" to get the image

Where is it supposed to show?  A screenshot of what you expected it to do would be useful.

It is very far up, but looking at the image that's not unexpected as you have put the gripper at the very top right of the image.

Further investigation is showing that WB may have had a bug before with statusbar grippers as in the older version many skins ended up with clipped images as they were too far down.  In the latest WB build this is no longer the case.  I am unsure why as no changes to the statusbar code have been made, but the end result is a bug appears to have been fixed and most skins are now working correctly (unlike before)

I had to put it where it is to get it to show at the bottom right of the status bar Neil. If I lower it, it goes off the bottom of the status bar and you cannot see it. Right now on 10.51, this is where it is positioned:

Quoting LightStar, reply 23

I had to put it where it is to get it to show at the bottom right of the status bar Neil. If I lower it, it goes off the bottom of the status bar and you cannot see it. Right now on 10.51, this is where it is positioned:

End of LightStar's quote

With WB 10.57 if it is in the logical position (i.e. bottom of the image), it will now appear in the right place.

If you compare your Acronic skin with 10.51 and 10.57 you should find it is correctly placed in 10.57 and slightly wrong in 10.51.

Quoting Neil, reply 24

Quoting LightStar,

reply 23

I had to put it where it is to get it to show at the bottom right of the status bar Neil. If I lower it, it goes off the bottom of the status bar and you cannot see it. Right now on 10.51, this is where it is positioned:

With WB 10.57 if it is in the logical position (i.e. bottom of the image), it will now appear in the right place.

If you compare your Acronic skin with 10.51 and 10.57 you should find it is correctly placed in 10.57 and slightly wrong in 10.51.

End of Neil's quote

I understand what you are saying on this concerning 10.57 Neil, but then again, anything made under 10.51 and prior gets ruined. Which is a ton of skins.