1px border help

I was wondering if any skinners out there might have any tips for making 1px borders.

I am working on a skin in the Style of Windows Live Mail and am having some difficulty trying to get 1px borders. Ultimately I would love to get the rounded status bar as well. Here is a description of what I've tried and what I got:

Transparency (pink) added to all frame components on outside edge. With this, I was actually able to get the left, right and bottom exactly as I wanted including rounded corners but, nothing could make the top line up with the sides, tweaking would get a window like file manager close but desktop properties would be way off.

If I give the borders actual thickness like 3-4 pixels, remove any transparency... everything lines up great.

I tried making 1px frames and no transparency on the top but, I get some kind of weird transparency in the lower part of the frame.

If anyone has any tips (I'm on XP and using Stylebuilder and straight msstyle) or knows of any skins that successfully accomplish what I'm trying to do, I would appreciate it.
1,796 views 2 replies
Reply #1 Top
It would help if you could post an image of a mockup of what you have in mind.

As far as Stylebuilder, I doubt many people here use it ... preferring Skinstudio ... but there are a few ex 'stylers' here that could possibly steer you in the right direction ...  :) 
Reply #2 Top
Take a look at Crisp, a skin I did a couple of years ago with single-px borders.

davidaiwa[at]cox[dot]net if you have questions.