WSB Beginners Guide

[3am]

I've been thinking about doing some posts about how to use WSB for beginners who might find it intimidating and overwhelming, like I did, when they first start using it.

Stuff like how to use Edit & Shift-Edit, Add & Remove Properties, Import & Export, Drop Down Menus, changing & adding Fonts, changing Values, the Preview Pane, Searching, Testing, StyleHacks, the Right Click Options etc.

I could do just posts. Or I could do short videos with or without a mic ( something new for me to learn!)

Do you think this is a good or bad idea? Should I do it or forget about it?

How should I do it? What do you think I should include?

I could really use some feedback and some help.

Thanks

[Vzdorjii]

It's a good idea. Some options are still unknown for me. For example defaultpanerectsize, altarectblablabla...

[3am]

This would be just a basic how-to guide. That's all.

[Vzdorjii]

ok ok
So i'm on it with you if you need !

[3am]

Thanks. I don't know whether I'm going to do it or not.

Btw...DefaultPaneSize:Rect is just in the Start Menu. Like a bunch of rectangles lying on sides or ends. If you got values like (0, 0, 36, 81) just means that part (like maybe Places List) is 36 pixels wide and 81 pixels high. Change these to change size of Start Menu parts.

AtlasRect:Rect is just in DWM Window and the values are the measurements of stuff like the sizes and positions of Frames, Caption Buttons, Shadows, Reflections etc. Not sure what values like (336, 421, 561, 657) mean exactly. Are the first 2 just position offsets or are they right and left? Maybe Panda could tell us.

Anyway you can find out about a lot of these Properties in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb773213%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

But a lot are left blank like AtlasRect..like they're supposed to be obvious or something

[AndreasV]

A beginnersguide written by a non-programmer sounds really great. I usually describe stuff way too technical, but, I'm a software engineer ;-)

AtlasRect:Rect is a rectangle (top, left, width, height) which describes where a DWM image is located in the big STREAM image. The stream image - actually called "atlas" - is a big image composed of many smaller DWM images. Since DWM window frames are rendered in DirectX by your videocard, it's much more efficient and faster to only load one big image and tell the videocard to draw only (2,3,10,10) of the big image, than, instead, loading 100 small images.

Since VSB allows full customization of the stream/atlas image, it must and will re-layout the whole atlas image when a change is made. In that case ,the AtlasRect:Rect properties will also change (because images are located at a different position in VSBs created atlas), so VSB will update those.

In short: AtlasRect:Rect properties are actually DWM images and are fully handled by VSB :-)

[Vzdorjii]

You should explain more things like this. This is truly interesting. I really hope to discover more stuff using WSB.