SKS6 Layers and 64bit Vista

What not to do...

https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6828&libid=1&p=1
from WinCustomize Forums

As most of you know, I've made a windowblind called Copper Carbon Fibre, and I've used the layer feature extensively throughout it. Once I published it, I got a couple comments that the top part of the start menu would not show up in 64bit Vista. I was really suprised by that, because it worked fine in 32bit Vista.

Well, I figured out what was causing the issue and thought I'd post it here for others to see.

The base layer cannot be completely transparent. You must have something in the image. Pretty simple, huh? It took me a week to figure that out. ;P

Thank you, lgspence and ddraney for pointing out the bug to me! I'd have never know otherwise!

skinning
2,143 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I'll add this to my Vista skinning thread, if you don't mind?

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I dont mind at all, the more people that know it, the better! :grin:

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Xiandi, I am in the process of changing over from XP to vista 64bit and have a wip blind that I hope to finish for xp and then migrate over to my vista system to finish off. I understand what you are saying but unsure of how our terminology fits. My use of "base layer" is two fold, one is the outlines and the other is solid black. and even if I have a completely transparent layer it would convert to white when saved as a png.

please take a minute and provide a more detailed discription of what the issue was and what you did to correct this.

as always, thanks for your help.

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

These are the layers I used. As you can see, the top part of the start panel for the Base Layer is completely transparent. This works fine for everything except 64bit Vista. All I had to do to fix it, was put something in the Base Layer top part, so it was not totally transparent. I just added a strip of solid pixels into that image and positioned them so they would be behind the Layer 1 image, and not be seen.

It seems like 64bit Vista would not display the Layer 1 image while the Base Layer was completely transparent.

I hope that makes it a little more clear.

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

that is very wierd, I can't really wrap my head around this. the merged file size is what it is, how vista can tell what the size of a particular layer is within a merged file boggles my mind. I guess the graphic has an alpha channel which is where this occurred? I'm working on a blind that has an oval in the top panel that extends over the edge. XP portions first then finish up in vista 64bit. hope I remember this. Thanks Xiandi, and OBTW, nice blind.:grin: