Text background...perpixel frames.

take out any extra png space around it.....i got a feeling that will help. as for content margins....you will have to play with them until they work... (had the same problem with annihilator)

Hmm.. must have missed those settings

Stop wasting your time I.R. It simply does not work with transparent frames. Myself and other skinners have tried without any success. I once got it to work with some experimental coding but other problems aroused. I stupidly spent about 4 hours the other day revisiting the issue cause I thought WB 6 might cooperate better, and you know what I found out? Nothing.... again.   

as in a perfect rectangle?...that would defeat the purpose of doing this.  

So Craig,what your saying is this is yet another example of a Windowblinds half-assed implementation of a great feature.(per pixel frames have been around quite a while now and there are still bugs in its use?Big suprise huh?)  

Is WB doomed to be in perpetual beta forever?I'm getting super sick of fighting with quirks and bugs in stuff that should just work.(this is just one more example,I got a long list of stuff Stardock has ignored for years...screw the skinner,get that next user.)  

This is a stupid thing...per pix frames are not even cut the same,and,they are different sizes.Settings from one section shouldnt be affecting another.  

This is one of those skins that if this method cant work...it ruins the look.

I might as well just quit now.It makes no sense...it works fine on the taskbar.  

  

I.R. Because of the way you designed the skin. I think it can work. Email me the skin please.

P.S. -Going back and forth from SKS 6 and SKS 5 = no no. Bad crashy crashy.

IRB, no one is forcing you to skin . . . or use per-pixel.  
Zubaz turns up the sarcasm    

Thanks for the warning Craig...I dont use that tardware beta SKS6 anyway.  

Thats true...between Vista sucking all the fun out of skinning and fighting with all the bugs and quirks of WB,'I' have to force myself to skin.  

Shouldnt be too much to expect a feature or setting to actually work.I've been waiting for WB to finally mature into something that could do more than a few gradients and rectangles...but with developement focusing on Vista,WB will never be 100% on XP.
Last I checked...dialog backgrounds were still broke...how long ago was that?I forget.  

Craig let me try something tonight,then I'll send her to ya...I'll jump thru a few more hoops and workarounds and eventually settle for something inferior to what I was trying to do.  

Pics plz   

Don't get mad IR WB6 is in beta yet, so you may find problems.
Please zip and e-mail me the skin so I can take a look if you want.

I think the problem is a misunderstanding about how that feature works in WB.

The background image replaces the titlebar area.  It does not blend against it. 

So in this skin you would want to make the bottom part of your image the same as the titlebar.

Titlebar text for per pixel frames is shifted using the content margins of the top per pixel frame.  The per pixel background is positioned using its own content margins.

I am not aware of the UIS2 content margins having any impact on the per pixel frames.

If you want a mode where it blends against it then please let us know.

I don't know whether to buy you a drink or strangle you Neil.   

I think I got it working I.R. thanks to Neil. See below for the settings. It took me awhile so maybe this will save you some time. I'm not sure exactly how you wanted it but it's looking pretty good. If you want the file, come and get it.

Thanks Dani for looking at it...I'm not using any of the beta software yet.  Mad?mad you say?I guess I was...very.Struggling with the many quirks over the years and an angry toothache plus one more design ruining bug was too much.  

In the past Neil that is exactly what I would do...cut the element whole out of the background and blend it into the titlebar.I couldnt do that this time because the

titlebar isnt identical from one end to the other.So yes,it needs to blend(as would just about any graphic in a skin...taskbar buttons do it.

Turns out I was wrong about the left and right content margins...they were not coming from the regular frames...it only appeared that way because they were about 20 freakin pixels off...so a bit of hoop jumping and they did work.  

Text and backing alignment was way crazy too...had to use the vertical content margins for the titlebar for the text first(as usual),then use negative top content margins to move the backing DOWN?!  

I tried a graphic that was the same size as the titlebar but it wouldnt align properly(and cut out a larger chunk)  

So yeah,I was angry...2 days so far on a single skin element...should have been 20 minutes.  

My tooth isnt hurting so much right now so I'm going to say thanks for the help before I go off again.  

My man Craig!That is it!...waddya do different mister?Lemme sign on msn and hunt you down.  

Ok,yep background replacement...well Craig it may be the only way...right side will be the problem side(unless I lose the shadow...grrrrrrr)    

Yes. I can't get it to work on the skin I am making. It has a gradiant that has to blend to look good. Please please please make it blend.

Stands to reason that it should.

    

didna wanna but I cut the shadow off of it and thought it looked ok...til I opened some non explorer windows and a maxxed window...you can see how far off the content margins are...text is shifting over in some windows.  



Plus the font is exactly the same as the taskbar...and it looks bad.(looks fine on the taskbar)  

Sheesh!   

Here is an example of where blending would be really helpful.

It is best to ignore the previews in SKS5.

What they are not showing is a built in offset for the system icon.  I believe there is also a bug in WB relating to large left margins resulting in larger than expected right margins being needed.  Due to the need to maintain backwards compatibility, this cannot be changed.

I will look into why you seem to have a different shift in some windows.  I would guess it is linked to if the window has an icon or not.

Blend is not capable of some of the effects that replace can do (such as making parts more transparent, or changing the colour of a transparent area while keeping the same level of transparency).  Of course blend can do things that replace cannot do too.