rrawlins

Shellstyles hit 'n miss in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

Shellstyles do not work consistently. I've been working on a skin and I thought my editing of the UIFile were the cause of my shellstyle woes. As a sanity check, I imported one that works flawlessly as a normal visual style, Smooth Alternative's. The shellstyle shows common tasks at the bottom. After a few clicks, the common tasks moves to the left unstyled or sometimes just disappears. Another issue, MDI buttons do not seem to skin on translucent windows. If I turn off per pixel, it wo

Reply to how to disable morphing of default buttons in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

Thanks for the clarification Mike. I'm using monochromatic colors. If I don't catch the morph at the right time I have to stare at at a button for a second or two. At least it seems that long. I don't think it enhances usability if that's what was intended. Please make this feature configurable.

how to disable morphing of default buttons in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

I'm not sure if it's WB. My default button cycles between default style and normal style. It's really annoying. Is this an XP setting?

Reply to Is there any difference between windowblinds 5 and windowblinds xp in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

There are two categories on DeviantArt, WindowBlinds and WindowBlinds XP. That's what is confusing. Most people post alpha blended skins in the WindowBlinds XP category which are for WB 5.0+. Hope that helps.

Reply to Photoshop Window Resizing Problem (WB 5.01l beta) in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

I have 9.01 and I could not reproduce the problem. I have different issue. The first time I click on the menu, the window renders like Window Classic. Deactivating, then activating the window makes it translucent.

how to replace sysicon on translucent windows? in WindowBlinds WinCustomize Forums

I've been very frustrated with Window Blinds for several weeks. Things have changed with the 5.01L update. Much improved, more stable, thanks! I have not seen the dreaded "unabled to load bitmap" error. I still get an occasional hiccup but very seldom. I sometimes forget this is a beta version. I'm trying to achieve an ultra clean look for my pico tea WIP skin, http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39138517

free-form buttons on per-pixel windows? blur support on per pixel? in SkinStudio WinCustomize Forums

Is it possible to put free-form buttons on translucent windows? SkinStudio always seems to put it in the non-translucent window section. Is blur and other effects planned for translucent window frames? Per pixel alpha blending isn't enough to create nice translucent skins.

Any magnifier utilities work with WindowBlinds? in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

First my video capture doesn't work, now my zoom utility. Even SkinStudio doesn't zoom in on WB borders, go figure. Does anyone know of a utility? I end up doing a screen capture and zooming in with my graphics program. What a wastre of time. Even screen capture is limited. You can only do region or full screen capture which I rarely use. Most of the time I do Window captures which is painless with regular styles; no cropping, cleaning up required. Each WB border is a window separate f

Reply to SkinStudio stopped working in SkinStudio Stardock Forums

From Help About Version: 5.0.1, Build 1112

Reply to SkinStudio stopped working in SkinStudio Stardock Forums

This app used to work fine. I haven't opened up SkinStudio until after the last update of WindowBlinds a couple of days ago.

SkinStudio stopped working in SkinStudio Stardock Forums

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

Reply to window blinds 5.01i[b].013 in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to title bar text not rendering cleanly in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to title bar text not rendering cleanly in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to title bar text not rendering cleanly in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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

Slicer utitlity config in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to .NET utility to slice and merge files in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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

Reply to .NET utility to slice and merge files in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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

Reply to .NET utility to slice and merge files in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

Try this again: </merg

.NET utility to slice and merge files in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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=

Reply to MDI inactive close title button mouse over issue in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

MDI inactive close title button mouse over issue in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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

title bar text not rendering cleanly in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to I bought WindowBlinds because.... in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.

Reply to How To Prevent WB from Loading at Startup in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

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.