Neil Banfield

New WB and SKS betas on OD (Impulse & SDC)

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New WB and SKS betas on OD (Impulse & SDC)

from WinCustomize Forums

I just thought I would let everyone know about the new betas and mention some of the new features.

You can now create animated please wait screens - see please wait section under Edit Explorer/IE shell parts.  You need to create animations in NWA format which can be done from the Tools->Animation compression menu item.  This only accepts images stacked vertically so you will need to create your animation as a vertical frame sequence first.

The NWA files can also be used for startmenu animation though old style TGA files will also continue to work but NWA files are much smaller.

Another new feature to SKS is the layers tab on most controls.  This allows you to use multiple layers for a given section.  These layers have their own tiling and margin settings and can be used to achieve effects which were very hard or simply not possible before.  You cannot use layers on window frames yet.  Layers do not require the user to have the WB beta as they will also work on WB 6.02 and higher.

We have a document about layers here : https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/SKSLayers.pdf

skinning
55,808 views 79 replies
Reply #51 from WinCustomize Forums Top
nt sounds like he went to hell and back


Tis OK, I booked lifetime passage to and fro about 10 years ago.  ;) 
Reply #52 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've had the same issues with trying to hide start menu shadows. Nothing I do seems to have any effect.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #53 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Nothing I do seems to have any effect.


You can disable them in SKS5; works for me  ;) 

I haven't been able to get them disabled in SKS6 either. And there is no support for Fonts for Classic Widgets.

Personally, I'm looking forward to a SKS6 that does everything SKS5 can do and much more.

Until then, I'll do the majority of work in SKS6 and I'll keep SKS5 for those bits SKS6 won't yet do.

Yes, I know SKS5 can 'break' a skin made in SKS6 ... already had that happen ... if you haven't seen the UIS1 error when trying to open a skin in SKS5 that was made in SKS6, keep using both and you most likely will.

But not anyway around it that I can see, for now ...
Reply #54 from WinCustomize Forums Top
...is going to be psd integration with layers,layerstyles...


would be perfect, yes!

and talking about feature suggestions:

what would be really nice is, if one could add glyphs also to the window frames. You could add nice ornaments to the middle (or wherever) of e.g. a bottom bar, without being stretched/shrinked. I bet this would allow for lots of new creative elements for UI design...

(Actually I always wondered why you can add a glyph almost EVERYWHERE but NOT for window frames...)

Reply #55 from WinCustomize Forums Top
mine is uninstalling SKS5 when I update SKS6
Reply #56 from WinCustomize Forums Top
mine is uninstalling SKS5 when I update SKS6


reinstall it through stardock central and you will be fine.
Reply #57 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yup, Thanks Train, that's what I'll do. I appreciate your help! RAD
Reply #58 from WinCustomize Forums Top
reinstall it through stardock central and you will be fine.


Other than the update icon showing for SKS6 in Impulse, as it seems to be reading SKS5 even though it does not display it. Would be nice if SKS5 was moved to Impulse so both can be installed from it and remove the update icon from SKS6.
Reply #59 from WinCustomize Forums Top
commenting here so I can find this thread later ;)
Reply #60 from WinCustomize Forums Top
very VERY cool Neil

Reply #61 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've had the same issues with trying to hide start menu shadows. Nothing I do seems to have any effect


Start ur XP substyle first and in SKS5. from then on if you don't want to, wont have to open it again.
Reply #62 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Going to try an animated please wait on my latest skin, wish me luck..

/Me backs up SKS5 skin first  :) 
Reply #63 from WinCustomize Forums Top
 :NOTSURE: 


Well.. the process is easy enough :D , I have to say im a bit shocked at the level of compression being added when converted to .nwa. :NOTSURE: 

Ive attached an image of the difference, Neil can this be lessened at all? Honestly I think I would rather use a static please wait than a severely low qual. animated one.

The other thing I noticed was the difference between 0 and 30 on the compression slider resulted in a file only 3k different in size after compression.

Otherwise.. worked great and implementation was simple.

Reply #64 from WinCustomize Forums Top

It seems it isn't handling single dots of colour correctly.

Could you mail me the source png/tga so I can debug it please.

Reply #65 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It seems it isn't handling single dots of colour correctly.
Could you mail me the source png/tga so I can debug it please.


yup! :CONGRAT:
Reply #67 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Going to try an animated please wait on my latest skin, wish me luck..


 :CONGRAT:  :CONGRAT:  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #68 from WinCustomize Forums Top

StephanA: When did you install SKS6?

I thought it had been resolved now.

Reply #69 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Neil, I should have been more specific. SKS5 was uninstalled by the update of SKS6 on Impulse. The update popped up a request to uninstall previous version (SKS5).
Reply #70 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Will send shortly Neil.
Reply #71 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As previously mentioned, using SKS5 can seriously damage a WB6 skin. If you want to rename a skin you should use the features built into SKS6 rather than SKS5 as it should do it without damaging anything.


Normalizeing filenames isn't possible in 6 as far as I can see so although renaming is easy.. it leave's a folder full of filenames from the previous skin when using SKS6.
Reply #72 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Neil has sent me a perfectly unflawed version of my please wait, not sure if he updated his compression method but I sure appreciate it.

Neil is truly a man dedicated to his work and has always been very help[ful to me.

I look forward to the future as the WB format evolves.

 :CONGRAT: 
Reply #73 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Is it just me or is that section 38 gone in the latest sks version?

Anyway..... I can't seem to make sks import the .nwa file. Maybe I'm just a dummy :NOTSURE:



Edit:

Figured it out...... :p

Now just some minor tweaking!
Reply #74 from WinCustomize Forums Top
what would be really nice is, if one could add glyphs also to the window frames. You could add nice ornaments to the middle (or wherever) of e.g. a bottom bar, without being stretched/shrinked. I bet this would allow for lots of new creative elements for UI design...


couldn´t update my skinstudio so far cause the laptop was broken, did that today and what did I see?

You can now add glyphs to per pixel borders !!!!!!!!!!

That´s GREAT!!!!!!

:CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT: :CONGRAT:

Thanks for that!!!!
Reply #75 from WinCustomize Forums Top

As an update to this there should be WB 6.3 and SKS 6.3 betas going up later today.

There are improvements to the tree view but the layers tab is also worth checking out.