Transparency in Non-perpixel Borders

Seems flaky recently

from WinCustomize Forums
I'm having a heckuva time getting transparency to work consistently with non-perpixel borders lately. Used to be that magic pink worked fine but I happened to modify one of my skins a month or so ago to use magic pink & the magic pink would display, not the transparent bits. On a hunch, I changed to .tga images for left & right borders & that seemed to work, though sometimes either magic pink or black would display instead of the transparent bits & I'd have to reload the skin a few times to get the transparency to work. Now, using .tga's (imported .png's) for the left & right borders results in correct transparency of the right border but black pixels for the transparent bits in the left border no matter how many times I reload the skin. I tried switching back to .bmp's with magic pink & the magic pink shows, despite the fact that magic pink transparency works for the caption/titlebar (with a peculiar exception - see below.)

In addition, an oddity has surfaced with magic pink transparency in the caption/titlebar. I have magic pink pixels in the active titlebar only, but the corresponding pixels in the inactive titlebar paint as black, even though I haven't touched that part of the image.

Anyway, never seemed to have difficulty using magic pink in borders in 4.x or before (not sure I tried it with 5.x until this). I can't find a transparency switch for the non-perpixel borders and I'm not sure why .tga's display correctly at one time and not another, in one place and not another. I'd prefer to stick with .bmp's & magic pink, but that doesn't work for the left & right borders at all now.

Any advice?

TIA
skinning
3,318 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Forgot to include:

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 5 (5.5 (build 84 x86))

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC

WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC

You have one monitor in total.

(Default Monitor) 1 is attached to RADEON IGP 340M

Wblind.dll 2006/12/12 16:40:20
Wblind64.dll 2006/10/09 11:51:37
Wbsrv.dll 2006/11/18 14:47:19
Wbconfig.exe 2006/12/20 13:35:02
Wbload.exe 2006/03/13 17:54:14
Wbhelp.dll 2004/09/18 16:37:07
Wbui.dll 2005/12/06 21:29:06
Tray.dll 2006/04/28 18:26:49
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Advice?hmmmmmm...
Stay with the 24bit bitmaps,check your pink to see if it really is "magic",check the code and see if its set properly(if I remember correctly,there are no checkboxes for that attribute)
You probably already did all that.

The other issue...Are the active and inactive graphics the same size?Plus I seem to remember a setting somewhere for dynamic frame shapes but I've never used it.

Hope you solve the probs.  
Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Also,I have occasionaly seen margin settings affect transparency. (as in accidently having them overlap) 
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks, I.R.

I indeed verified the bitmaps are 24b, the MP is 255/0/255. I took a look at the margin settings, too, but can't see how they would affect the display.

Finally, one of my lost rogue brain cells decided to give me a hint & I remembered .wb4 files can sometimes play havoc - I deleted the .wb4 files and all the temporary files that have the tilde (~) in the name that are generated by either WB or SKS, reloaded the skin and bingo, the right & left borders are displaying with proper trans now.

I still have the black pixels in the inactive titlebar where the magic pink is in the active titlebar - I still want to fix it, but it's relatively minor.

Thanks, again.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What about the dynamic frame shapes?  
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have no idea how that works or what it is intended to achieve. I should check some of the tutorial stuff again.

For now, I fixed it by making the inactive titlebar "match" the geography of the active title bar with magic pink in the same places in both.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yeah,that works...  
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Couldn't find anything about it in any of the tutorials on this site. You know what it's purpose is? Is it to allow a different shape titlebar in the inactive window?
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think it allows different shapes on all borders.  

Are you doing per pixel borders?Not sure how that would affect it one way or another.  

If you can find one,dl a skin that has different states and see how they did it.  
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Whew...thanks to your rogue brain cell! I was seeing magic pink in the window captions when I loaded the Vector Cell WB, which was created by Ross Harvey with SS 4. I found your post via a Google search, and after I deleted the .WB4 and ~ files, everything now looks good.

You're brilliant.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks, dkjmusic, but Neil Banfield's the brilliant one. I just managed to remember his tip from waaaaay back.