Question regarding WB 4 Shellstyle skinning

That's a quirk that bothers me too. I have yet to find a way to stop it from stretching. It's as if there is no correct size to make the image. I have found that making it 21 pixels high looks best. It still stretched about 1 pixel, but if you make it 22 or 20 pixels high, it looks even worse. Good luck.

Could it be something to do with the margin settings on your bitmap? If a small potion of the image is being stretched, that could be why it looks bad. I'm kinda guessing here, I have only just started dabbling in these new features myself

Mikes post wasn't there when I typed mine...... listen to Mike, he's THE MAN!.

Mike: is it kinda like the toolbar background, where you have to make it real big for it to look decent?

ich hab zwar kein WindowBlinds, aber in msstyles gibts genau das selbe problem.

Du kannst mal C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Luna\Shell\NormalColor\shellstyle.dll mit ResHacker auseinandernehmen und Du siehst, dass auch das original gestreckt wird. einzige möglichkeit ist etwas Magic Pink oben hinzuzufügen, aber wegen der internen sizing margins ist es relativ kompliziert mit detailreichen bildern ein ansprechendes resultat zu bekommen. wichtig ist auch, dass in der deutschen version von Windows die shellstyles horizontal mehr gestreckt werden als in der englischen. deutsche wörter sind halt länger.

sorry for not translating this. at least 95% of the members here would not understand it in English either.

That one is really driving me crazy. If I use a bitmap that is 21 pixels high, it is stretched to 25 pixels. If I use a bitmap with 25 pixels height, it is not completely visible (but still the visible portion is stretched) and looks even worse... The problem is, I use round edges in the mid, so it looks all bad. Just for Info : I am doing a private update of the Universe Metal skin adding WB4 features. Everything is fine now except this one thing...

So Moshi - if I interpret that correctly...

That's something Windows does itself - even to the default Luna visual style - and the only way to work around it is the strategic use of magic pink in the graphic?

Danke, Moshi, werde mir das mal ansehen. Ich werd' hier noch bekloppt !

kthxbye: yep, correct. Luna has a lot of images that get stretched. not only in the shellstyle, but also on the window borders. makes msstyles skinning a little more complicated that WB.

BoXXi: I wish it was like the toolbar background. At least then there would be an easy solution.

I'll be anxious to see someone nail this in a skin so I can see how they did it. So far, the best looking ones have been relatively solid colors so the stretching isn't really noticed. Much like the Luna style.

Screenshot of the problem here : http://www.neurobeat.de/temp/UMWB4Prob.jpg

Will try the magic pink trick also...

Not something I would have thought of - but the magic pink solution actually makes sense when you think about it.

Ah well - I keep the task pane turned off anyway - I love the whole idea behind it - but 9 times out of 10 I don't use what Windows puts in there. Too bad we can't customize the -content- of the pane without hacking.

Speaking of hacking - before I reinstalled, I broke down and tried out the hacked uxtheme.dll. Enh. At least Windowblinds has never caused explorer to lock up on me!

two more things:
- think about getting rid of the glass in the bar unless this is for your personal use only. in different languages the horizontal stretching is different and will most probably have an effect on the right end of the glass.
- do the rollup button after you got the bar finished. msstyles supports per-pixel alpha-transparent PNGs for this (no clue about WB here). if WB also supports PNGs i´m pretty sure Renato will help you out with some Photoshop sources.

Yeah, the buttons are not the final ones. But the magic pink trick is not working. Seems that the transparent area plays no role at all. Maybe this is a Window Blinds bug ? Have leave the house for a while now, read You later. Thank You all for Your suggestions/help so far. Will be back in about one hour, I think.

try to use the magic pink with an image that has the same height as the bitmap in the original Luna shellstyle.dll

*bump* (Sorry, got no solution jet, still the same problem...) Maybe some of the people that are just awake now can help ?

jet = yet

For anybody interested : I found a solution. I am not very satisfied with it, but it will shorten the time waiting for the real thing. http://www.neurobeat.de/temp/UMWB4ProbSolved.jpg

This has been a very informative thread. I have no idea what you are talking about though.

suggestion from a 5 rated author: set one tile transparent on the top or bottom and set the margin so only that tile stretches.

The only problem is : There is no margin to set for that matter in Skinstudio. (Yet)

I suspect at the moment all WB does is inject the bitmaps on the fly into the place of the normal shellstyle ones. Windows XP actually displays it in whatever way it desires. Probably no way to set things like that in WB without something that takes control of the drawing too. Whether Stardock will be able to work around that is something we have to wait and see I guess. Of course I may be speaking rubbish. I've been known to in the past.

Why not add a margin in the code. Will that not work?