Button & Group Box Skinning Issues
Please Help
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 by EvanBalcaen | Discussion: Skinning
Hi, if you take a look at the pictures below, you can see that even though I have transparicy enabled on the button that it still does not become transparent, although it is hard to tell against the white background, it easily shows in the confirmation windows/dialog boxes.
Next, the group box that i have created simply does not show up, even whith the original one from the default template. im thinking this is because i cannot upgrade to the newest version of windows blinds, but i seem to remeber having this problem in SKS 6.0.
Thanks in advance for and suggestions or comments,
Evan
Windows Vista Home Premuim, Skin Studio 6.3, Windows Blinds 6.01
" width="1680" height="1050" />
Reply #2 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:06 PM
well, im actually not sure how to exactly, lol, unless i download the trial...
Edit: Oh, i'm smart, i didnt realise u just had to type in ur email at support to get the new one 
Anyways, i installed 6.3 and still have the same problem
Reply #3 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:36 PM
Check off "this image has an alpha channel" for all tga /png images and select "this image has transparent parts" option. Select "this image has transparent parts" only when you have a bmp (magic pink).
For this to work you have to manually add some code via the code editor tab. Check out my Mama's boy skin as I got it working on that one. The header bar must be a .bmp and as soon as you add content margings manually it should work.
something like this but change the image name... I don't remember the defualt SKS settings on the image right now.
NormalColour=0
Image=MamasboyVista\shinsteelGroupBoxImage.bmp
LeftWidth=7
RightWidth=7
TopHeight=8
BottomHeight=5
NormalFont=0
TileTop=0
TileBottom=0
TileLeft=0
TileRight=0
Tile=0
Reply #4 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:45 PM
Well, i tried that, as well as a number of different combinations that deal with those settings but no dice, although that is good to know, because before i didnt have a clue as to what they refered. so, whats with the pre-multiplied alpha option?
I will try your second suggestion in a few, but what wonders me is why it doesnt show up by default with an option to remove it...
One other thing that i just remembered is the divider line on the menus, it also does not show up at all... but im not too concerned about that.
Thanks,
Evan
Reply #5 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:49 PM
Any way to manually change the code as i do not have the pro version of SKS? 
Edit: Mouth before brain syndrome, sorry. notepad 
Reply #6 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 10:16 PM
I think it is a problem in a base template at one point and the bad code got carried on.
Reply #7 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 10:52 PM
Humm, it seems to only be appearing if i turn off Msstyles, which in my opinion does not look as good.
As for the button situation, i cannot get it to become transparent, but i did notice that on web pages, the transparency worked, which leads me to beleive that it might have to be a bitmap image to work on those dialog boxes.
Maybe you want to take a look at it?
Reply #8 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 11:59 PM
Well, i have figured out the answer to my question; the problem i have been facing is not because the transparency is not working, but that the Button Face/Dialog background was set to the wrong colour; white... However when i changed it, a slew of other aspects also changed colour and just about destroyed my skin. im not about to change my whole skin for this one very small problem, but it would be nice if Stardock could somehow seperate them into two seperate changeable colours.
Reply #9 Thursday, January 1, 2009 5:21 AM
post only to find this thread again...
cause I also wanna know if the problem of button face/dialog background color filling up transparent parts of buttons can be solved or will be fixed somehow...
Reply #10 Sunday, January 4, 2009 9:24 PM
Well, one thing that helped me, was to cut off the excess transparency, so that only the very cornors were left, and it only showed small dots in the cornors where the transparency was.
Reply #1 Tuesday, December 23, 2008 8:36 PM
Why can't you upgrade to the latest release of WB?