It was a while after I had last checked that thread, and I hadn't revisited it (yet). Can't wait. Hours and hours of per-pixel labor will finally come to fruition!

Thanks!

YAY!

Perhaps you know what's wrong with the click-and-drag-files popups that say "Copy To", "Move To", "Create Shortcut" that change with modifier keys..?

If I fix that then there are no known bugs.. :3

Please? You can DL the theme here:
http://eyesofaraven.deviantart.com/art/Aero-Classic-WIP10-322614344

I really would like to be able to rely on task manager while my theme is active..

For a while, I was having a problem where after hitting "End Process", nothing would happen. I thought I must have tweaked something that busted it. Eventually I went to another theme for a bit, and it worked fine. Somehow my theme is breaking that popup box... and I have no idea how.

Should have responded a bit back, but thank you! Unfortunately due to the stupid hardcoded black text all over, I had to make some of my highlights a different color.. I'm thinking perhaps that text can be changed in shell32 or explorer/taskmgr? I'll look myself, but if anybody knows if it is, or where, that'd speed things.

I'm not talking about the background of the box, I mean the TEXT itself is transparent. In both cases, regardless of where I'm dropping and dragging what and with what modifiers.

http://vistastylebuilder.com/forum/index.php?topic=1485.0

Referencing that map, the blue and green text on the yellow box.. the text is transparent for me, through the background, to whatever is underneath. I tried making everything non-transparent, including the box it rests on, so I'm really confused as to how it's doing this. I made the text black, so I tried other colors to no avail..

I even tried adding single pixel no-offset and 1-offset shadows to it to see if I could perhaps work around it, and that didn't work either.

Nope, this has been happening over the course of a week or so in several sessions.

For the last two or three sessions in WSB I haven't been able to remove any properties. If I've added them in the current session, Undo does work. Remove Property button isn't disabled, but it doesn't delete it when pressed.

Also, while I'm talking about that button, I find that it VERY often deletes the wrong entry, and the entries are subsequently re-ordered. I've been working around that, though - not a game-breaker.

Anyway I'm finishing up version 1.0 of my theme, and I can't delete a troublesome entry now. xD

..but it does this in WinRAR too, and also when I mouseover unselected items in WinRAR it turns the whole bar black..

*looks around for things that are black when selected*

No no.. you misunderstand - it's the color I want it, I just want it to fill the whole  box, not just be a border.

1. http://imgur.com/7GLph (Note the thin blue border around the one property, that is a selection... -_-)

2. Well f#$% task manager then. D: It's not like we stare at that 24/7, though, so it's OK...

My theme is entirely complete, until I find something broken or forgotten anyway.

Last thing on my list - in WSB, the properties area.. it only outlines the item in my color, and does not fill it. I can't find where/how to sort that out.

Also, if anyone knows how/if you can change the text for selected task manager items let me know.

I literally exported every single image in preparation to import them into the backup. Approximately the third to last image, I noticed a 0x0 picture that I hadn't touched anywhere recently in my editing - clearly a problem. Deleted it, since I was using borderfill there anyway. Fixed.

I guess it's good that I have a full backup in image format, though.. >.>

I saved my theme and brought my laptop home from where I was.. I noticed the breadcrumb bar was messed up, so I went in and noticed a flaw in my image. Fixed it, backed up theme, saved it. Wouldn't apply. Apparently backed it up after it had saved (did it as an afterthought during the process), so that doesn't help. All I did was change like 6 images, and changing them again, removing/adding, etc., makes no difference. What the fook happened? Can anybody help me with this? Everything in the theme is fine, reads fine, shows up, but it won't apply. Something in the headers get corrupted? O_o

I'm gonna poke around in a hex editor, but I'm not a pro at msstyles format, so I'll be goin in blind. If anyone is willing to help I'll upload a copy later (can't now, no Internet on *that* machine).

Edit: Found nothing relevant hexwise, tried transplanting headers and etc. and either did nothing or broke it worse. Realized I forgot to mention I do have working backups, just not as up to date.

I've reskinned the menus across the OS, and it works brilliantly - except in the "Include in Library" dropdown of explorer where a folder is selected. Upon dropping that menu, it's mostly transparent because it fails to draw the background. As well, the entry image that I have set up with flat "normal" etc. states does not work, because it draws the highlighted version and then it remains highlighted when mousing off of that item. I tried various properties, including explicitly disabling transparency, etc.. Nothing works!

Other menus - even other explorer dropdowns like Organize - work fine. I've tried adding copies of my menu skin to various places in the theme, and can't seem to figure out why it draws so screwed up.

Help plz.

Edit: It also happens in breadcrumb dropdown menus.

Edit: I found it! O_O It's PopupBackground in Menu - dunno how I missed testing that.

HOWEVER - upon fixing that, the Organize/etc. dropdowns are now invisible entirely. O_o

Edit: Fixed! Turns out Organize/Breadcrumbs/etc. use the  border, so you MUST enable the border. Library button and it's friends use the image, so it can't be blank/transparent.

Thank you, Mr. Panda.

If I disable "Shadows under Windows" in the effects menu of the OS, the theme partially reverts to Aero. I presume there's some second copy of the window frames that needs to be changed to mine - where?

Thank you I was unaware of that section. That did do the preview pane. For an example of what I mean of property sheet, just open up the "Control Preview" window of VSB - everything below the menu bar, possibly discluding the large "Commandlinks", though changing those would be nice too.

The filename part of the preview pane conforms to the fonts & metrics section settings, and the remainder has font color settings throughout the preview pane section of VSB. I cannot, however, figure out how to assign fonts to these other parts. I am assigning everything in my theme to Corbel, 8, Bold and it sticks out at the default settings.

I tried adding a Font:Font entry to one of these and it made no difference. How do I change these?

There are other areas as well, that do not have settings that I can locate - property sheets, for example, are littered with a font that I cannot change. If you could inform me of the correct way to add a font setting TO them then perhaps this answer would blanket answer every related question.

A long time ago you released a little app to provide glass toast notifications like those in the earlier Longhorn demo videos and such. I used this app a lot, but in the past year or so migrated to 64-bit and to my chagrin the app does not function (likely due to trayhook.dll). I forgot about the app, but today have been working on my Slate theme for Win7 and would like to introduce some custom toast notifications and remembered that applet. I downloaded it and remembered that it was dysfunctional on 64-bit.

Would you consider updating it, or releasing the source so that the community could? It's a nice little customization utility with no equivalent..

The only remaining source for the app (all spread download links are dead) is an obscure little page on your site:
http://www.aveapps.com/glasstoasts.html

Thanks! Matches the theme a lot better now.

Where do you change this? I am unable to locate it.

Finish this, please - there is still much interest.

That path doesn't exist.. PlacesList exists, but not PlacesList->Panel->PlacesList - at least not in my version of the program, which is freshly downloaded..?

I'm confused - are you saying I should be editing PlacesList and not PlacesListExtended? I don't see why.. PlacesList doesn't even have a SizingMode by default.

I presume when you speak of a "third value" you mean under DEFAULTPANESIZE:RECT, where it has 0,0,150,332, and thus you refer to 150. So you suggest I use a non-stretching PlacesList graphic of a width of 151..? How will that help when it invokes the PlacesListExtended graphic, which is the only time that the unmatching piece appears? It would make sense if the PlacesList graphic was still being shown and leaking through there, but the PlacesList graphic has the proper gradient and if that were the case there would be no problem...

*CONFUSED*  

Edit: Tried my best to wrap my head around what you were saying, and I made a version of PlacesList that is 151px, extended to the left from where it was with a horizontal bar along the top. It made it so that the right side of the start menu was broken (huge click-through hole) until you moused over something, in which case PlacesListExtended took over and still had the same problem. This clearly did not help. I am going to try such a large graphic in Extended..

Edit 2: While I attempted to do this to the Extended sprite, I discovered that apparently the original gradient had snuck itself back into this graphic. I suppose I didn't save changes at some point, or just forgot to do it. Either way this was user error it seems and is now fixed by fixing PlacesListExtended's leftmost gradient bits and nothing else (which I thought I had already done).

Well it's a Basic theme, so it would be Basic->etc.. but I've looked at every single sprite in that section, and already have edited any that are relevant. This one seems to just pull itself out of it's ass..

I trust you see where the borders are between the segment in question and the areas left and right of it? The area to the left is the ProgramsListExtended, and the area to the right is the PlacesListExtended. I expected that when I edited PlacesListExtended it would stretch the tiny bit of horizontal bar leftward and complete the line, but it seems to source it from some unknown location.

I've never been able to find it. And I'm pretty sure that they're translucent which would make it near impossible to actually find the real color.

I strongly disagree about the relevance of transparency - just make a theme with a pure white clock and then the transparency is moot and it displays the exact color.

I've been tweaking a port of 4074 Slate to Windows 7, because I love this theme and was too lazy to port the whole thing myself. Some guy did most of the work, so I thought I'd fix up the glaring incongruities and use it.

Anywho I was replacing all of the "top bars" on the start menu so that they matched and lined up with the left and right bars. All's well and good, but when I hover over an item and bring up a start menu jump list there's a segment of the top bar that I cannot figure out where to change to the new, matching, graphic.

Here's a picture to illustrate what I mean:


Oh and while I'm in here asking things, there's a single pixel in the top right off by itself - do you see? That isn't in the theme image, it's somehow introduced somewhere between applying the theme and using the start menu. Any idea wtf that's about? There's also some on the top left corner, but not as irritatingly placed.

But it dips down into the stuff below the caption bar entirely...

Ok.. I've pretty much mastered Aero theming, but now I'm moving my theme to basic out of frustration of it's limitations. I instantly found that all of the random extra pixels I had to add in Aero were unnecessary in basic, and modified my stuff accordingly... But my titlebar won't stop being smooshed, too short. Also, I can't seem to position the text vertically centered in the titlebar.

Aero is starting to piss me off.

When in a normal window, my titlebar looks great. When it's maximized, it cuts off the top, left, and right a bit making it appear wrong, specifically the icon overlaps the bottom bar, but it just looks wrong without the borders it should have.



Anybody know where to fix this?

And does anybody have any ideas about how to work around this:


Top left corner - works fine when there's a caption icon, but when there isn't you get this...

I've had this problem too, since I went mucking around in the colors. I hadn't gotten around to even checking if I could fix it yet, but this saves me the effort, so thanks.

To make sure

You can't sign up for the forum without a valid key, duh.

Well, as I said, that's not the only solution - is it possible to push the text to the right just 24px using a margin of some kind, ala ContentMargin? I tried but it didn't work out, as I mentioned.

That will only work in basic - this theme is designed for Aero (to keep the desktop acceleration and features - normal classic doesn't, this is one of the reasons for my theme).

I tried it anyway, and tried applying it to aero anyway, neither worked.

So there's no way to align the text center on Aero. Perhaps there's a way to make the text never start before 24px into the titlebar from the left? I tried changing "ContentMargins" left from 9 to 24 and all it did was make the left bit of my titlebar get smooshed a bit, didn't even move the text.

I'm creating a theme that's an homage to win3x/9x, and things are going well now that I've conquered SizingMargins.

Anywho, I created a gray square around the top left of the window, ala Win3x menu button. This works great.

However, when a window genuinely has no caption icon (not like Explorer, it has one but it's hidden), the text is pushed to the left and into the gray box.

Ideally I would be able to center the text in the windows - this would avoid all problems, as the bug would only be seen in windows with super long captions and no caption icon, which is an unlikely combination (browsers usually have the long captions).

Alternatively, is there a way I can get around this? A text margin of some kind?

I created a custom start orb to match my theme but the top bit (that goes past the top of the taskbar) is missing in the "normal" state and only shows up when hover or pressed is the state.

I would be fine with this, except if I make orbs that are all that short, they stretch to pass the taskbar top on their own.

How can I fix the disappearing top part of my button? Is there a color for transparency in these? Magic pink perhaps?

If I can test anything or give more information, please let me know. I'd like to get this fixed.

Fair enough.