Hello, all; I've been reading this forum for a while, and have been studying the excellent tutorial found here. I'm on p. 5 at the part where the author talks about slicing the start menu for reassembly in SS. My start menu isn't exactly square like the illustrated one is, so I'm not very sure about how to go about slicing it. Is it safe to publish an image here of a work in progress, or is that not recommended for security reasons?peace,
Mally
Edited to correct link
In my illustration, the upper row shows in red all the margins between the buttons, as well as the edges of the png. They are all precisely 5px. Any other possibilities?
peace,
Dave
That's the only thing I could think of sorry.
Thanks just the same, Uvah. That's what originally thought also.
Cyndi, when you described the trick, it was in relation to the user name at the top of the Start Menu, but you said it was also useful in some other places, too. Maybe this isn't one of those?
Well, the pressed buttons have a stroke 2 pixels, I believe, which uses a wood grain pattern, rather than a color.
As for the "organic" look, it is done with the combination of an inner shadow, and an outer glow on the layer.
Uvah was very close. You need the same space around each frame. so if you have 2px around each frame, that would mean that there are 4px between each button, and 2px on each end.
Correct (you can use it on these buttons in Windows 7 though)
It's a really nice effect, and it couldn't be more perfectly crafted. I can sure see spending 7 months on your first skin. You learn new things, go back and rework something you already did, and the cycle would go on. It would be hard to know when it was finished. It's a really beautiful skin, and when one considers it's your first, one can't wait to see what might be coming next. Any ideas yet?
Ah, well. That's ok. Thanks for your time again, Cyndi!
Thanks for the kudos. I know of several things wrong with it. As far as what's next.....
Kicking it around....
I would guess that your spacing is off. You want 5 px of blank canvas on each side of the buttons. Remember that that equals 10 px between buttons, while there should be only 5 px on both ends of the strip.
I was thinking its the same as smx and rainlendar, equal spacing on all sides. For rainies I use one pixel all around and on smx two all around. What would the difference be between them?
This over sized start button presented some new issues when I moved into the horizontal position. This image is a screen shot of the vertical bar as displayed in SKS.
It's centered nicely, without my assistance, at the top of the vertical task bar, but the top piece is missing. In this image from my own desktop
the button is no longer centered, and the missing top piece is still missing. In this 3rd image, also from my own desktop, the button is displayed, but wouldn't hurt to be moved to the left to accommodate the space between the edge and the button inside the red circle of the first image. I think the missing sliver from the bottom might be due to my monitor; it has few adjustments, and can't vert/horiz align it.
Are these little bugs fixable, or do I just live with them if I want to keep the over sized start button?
Not meaning to be a smart ass or anything, Dave, but skinning isn't an exact science and a little experimentation and trial and error is the best learning tool there is. Move stuff around, change settings, push it to the limit (s), MAKE it do what you want, poke around in every section or sub-section you can find and if you break it...start all over again! THAT'S skinning.....
That start button issue on the vertical taskbar cannot be fixed. The top part of the 'glow' is offscreen. When you resize the vertical taskbar, the startbutton moves with it, that's why it's off center. It would be lovely to have different buttons for each taskbar, but right now it uses the same button for both, so we are stuck with an imperfect button for the vertical bar.
Adding more space to the left side of the button is easy. Just add more space to the left side of each frame in the image itself.
Thanks, I'll remember that. I'm sure I'll be looking for testers some day.
She sure is.
Edited to add, I'm always happy for constructive criticism. I'll try to be a little less of a spoon-feeder.
Drat. Well, maybe on a later version of the software, they'll make it so we can put different start buttons on both styles of taskbar, but I appreciate the definitive answer.
I wonder if I ever would have thought of that. Thanks!
lol xiandi's too quick for me
Hello, all;
I have a problem I can't find an answer to. This image is of the upper left corner of my per pixel frame in use. Neither the caption border nor the bottom border do this, but both left and right borders turn translucent occasionally no matter the size of the window.
When this is resolved, I have my per pixel frames completed. Any help would be appreciated.
Hey mally ! Hmmm that looks real strange... Have you been messing with The alphablending or semi transparency for those images in Sks ? -I´m not at all sure that´s the case here just guessing wildly... And it´s the perpixels you say...hmmm...
Do you have the box checked that says: the alpha channel in this image is premultiplied?
Or...
If your frames have more than 1 layer, check the blend mode.
Thanks for your replies everyone! Yes, it's the per pixels section of the blind I'm stuck on with those borders. I don't think I've messed with either alphablending or semi-transparancy, but if I did, and they didn't do anything, I'd have set them back to where they were. Right now, I can't find where the settings are located. Here is the code for the left button:
Image=PROFMCGINNISSTEAMLAB\Left Border.tgaTrans=1PerPixel=1LeftWidth=0RightWidth=0TileLeft=0TileBottom=0TileTop=0TileRight=0BottomHeight=19TopHeight=0
The tile boxes for all 4 borders remain unchecked.
That box on all 4 borders is also unchecked.
Just 1 layer on these 4 borders, so the blend mode is greyed out. That did bring to my attention, though, that on the 2 side vertical borders which are going transparent part of the time, "paint using margins" are all set to 0.
Thanks again!
This let me to the answer, I think. It's hard to "paint using margins" when there are no margins set. What might have made that easier for me to catch is if there was some kind of consistency, that is, if they were always transparent. That they were solid more of the time than not made it harder for me to resolve. I appreciate your help, and everyone else, too.
So they´re transparent randomly, sometimes they are and some times they´re not for no apparent reason.... sounds more like a problem with the system than an Sks issue....Although it could be some problem with the Maximized caption... If those parameters arent set correctly the whole skin can go haywire ! ... Yeah check the Maximized caption parameters Under Captions extra settings tab... SIZE of Max. caption, must be accordingly to the image set.
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