rrawlins

SkinStudio doesn't recognize properties and completely screwed up a skin I was working. I thought it was my skin but I even opened up 5imple alpha and here's what I get. I uninstlled/instlled twice. WTF! WindowBlinds 5.0 System Information Report: STATUS : WB+ SRV+ HLP+ UI+ TRAY+ WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC. WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC Your machine supports per pixel borders on WindowBlinds skins. You h

I've had problems with bitmap could not be loaded error. Not sure if that's the verbiage. This happens frequently when I'm applying a skin I'm working on. I've gotten in the habit of unloading WB first, then applying the skin. It's time consuming but at least I don't have to reboot.

Thanks Neil that helped, much better. Why do buttons work though? Look at the taskbar. I'm using Segoe UI there and it's clean on a transparent button.

I'm using Segoe UI font which renders very crisply when using non-WB themes. I also tried other Tahoma and Verdana and same issue.

The skin is my first creation. It's a work in progress, however if I could upload it privately somewhere I'd be happy to do so. I DOUBT it's the video driver, if I switch to a normal Visual Style like Windows Classic, Luna everything is crisp so ClearType is working. You can also see this from the Windows client area in the screenshot above. There are newer video drivers for this chipset but they are slower and cause other problems. WindowBlinds should be the latest version. I use your

Hmmm .. forum won't let me edit my own posts, but lets me create new ones. Anyways, here's a screenshot of the XML configuration file for my slicer utility.

Sorry guys, can't post a sample of the XML config file. I tried PRE tags too.

<slice fromFile="window-tx-inactive.png" fromPoint="0

Try this again: </merg

I've created an image slice/merge for any file supported by .NET. Why? It's much faster to go from mockup to borders than graphical import. Once you've set up the XML file you can run the utility from the command line. For example to create transparent borders, complete with alpha channel I run slicer to create the borders from my active/inactive mockups. > slicer window-tx.xml Where window-tx.xml is <merge toFile="window-tx-top.png" width="1024" height=

NEVER MIND, USER ERROR! I manually inspected the code (ini file) and saw other close buttons had 0,0 for size. For some reason this particular button had 18,18 size. I set to 0,0 and it works! It was really bothering me since I'm a developer too. I know you had to be using the same function. Thanks for the code view, it's sometimes easier to work in there than the preview.

This is really strange. The inactive window title close button seems to be picking up the wrong bits on mouse over. As you can see the same glyph works when not hovered over. I thought it may be an overlapping button but I verified all close buttons are at the same offset. What's even more strange are the max and min buttons work on inactive. I'm sure you guys are using the same code. If you inspect it closely it's the right button size as if the image is shifted. <img src="http://img22

Can't seem to get title bar text rendering cleanly. I thought it was my use of transparency but even on a completely opaque border, the font rendering is ugly. Any advice? I've set anti-aliased to enabled. I have latest version of WB5 and SkinStudio as of yesterday.

No help for you. Just kidding. If you like the default Luna theme, you should really try Luna Element. Other options are ClearLooks and XPMC. Dowload the plain visual styles. These themes may be used for extended periods of time. The eye candy in most WB skins is too much for me too and even the WB styles I like I can only stand for a week or two.

Search for autoruns by Systernals. It's a free utility that lets you control what gets loaded all the way down to drivers. I'm sure you can prevent all WB DLLs from loading. Be careful, it gives you a lot of power so you better know what you're doing. My system couldn't be any more stable. I upgrade my hardware frequently. I was surprised how many drivers Windows XP continues to load after changing hardware.

Let's be fair about the way StyleXP changes the way uxtheme works. It changes UXTheme in memory not physically (from what I've read, I could be wrong). WB must also have to do something to give itself priority over UXTheme. I've used both. I didn't really see much value in StyleXP. But then again, I only change styles, icons and cursors. When I was using plain Visual styles I used an easily found patch on uxtheme, IconTweaker for icon replacement and the free version of CursorXP. <b

You have? Maybe you have the per pixel setting turned off like Neil suggested. I've tried these themes aerial, Royal Vista and a few vista themes and only the client/menu area is captured. Who came up with "per pixel", why not just call it alpha blending? Is there a difference? It's a horrible name.

Thanks. I thought about that an hour after posting. There's not a visible difference and the hit testing works as I expect.

Let me rephrase, Camtasia Studio is not able to record borders, etc when using a Window Blinds theme. It only records the Window client area.

I create a lot of video tutorials with Camtasia Studio. Camtasia Studio does not record borders, etc only the menus and client area of a window. Is this because of DirectX? Is there anything I can change? I have to go to a normal Visual Style before doing any recording?

I'm working on an open source 'aero' skin and noticed that when I click on a completely transparent area of a windows border, it doesn't activate that window. Is this intended? I was going to make buttons with part of the glyph being completely transparent. This will definitely change my design.

I've seen this problem as well. It usually happens when I'm creating or modding a skin in SkinStudio. The taskbar just goes haywire and it makes me think I screwed something up. It's definitely a bug. I've seen it too many times. I updated to the latest version of SkinStudio and WindowBlinds through the Stardock Central app and haven't seen the problem since. SkinStudio is horribly slow now when applying skins. Aaargh. I preferred the older version.