Uh uh uh!  And people wonder why I'm still on XP!

Hey cp, this may not be the super-short menu style you like, but you can reduce it some, anyway.

Brian, If you add a tiny bit of noise to the gradient on your startpanel, it will mask some of the banding that you are getting there. Just a suggestion

That's a plus.

That single logoff button setup kind of throws the look of the start menu off a bit though.

I wish I had His talent!

...........I actually never read Dilbert until M1 commented, just read a few......yep, that's ME!!!!

I hate it. perhaps the worst thing about 7 so far, really bad design choice by MS.

How does it look up top Brian? You can bet all the top taskbar users are going to come out of the woodwork and complain about gaps.

Another damned if you do..scenario, as if there weren't enough to deal with already for wb skinners.

Yay.. another reason for substyles.

I don't like it as much with the larger gap, but it doesn't really bother me.

Thanks for that; I'll look into it! It's actually not banding, it's how it was designed. But you know how it goes. If people think it's banding, then it is banding.

yeah, doesn't so much look bad as it does.. wrong.. i guess. Anyway, If enough people complain then it's a choice of s substyle or leaving the gap in the lower menu....I suppose... not much else we can do about it.

Neil, is there going to be a fix for this issue?

tI think by banding Tim means the stutter stepping in the horizontal gradient in the gloss layer in the start menu, I can't imagine that was by design was it ? Perhaps a misunderstanding there?

Edit - you know.. honestly my monitor is so bad, it could just be a problem with it, I cant actually say it looks bad at this point, I'm getting ghosting \ shadowing in most areas. It all looks pretty good to me actually if I take my monitor issues out of the mix.

One thing i do notice tho brian is the inner square inside your search box, thats usually a result of trasparency being used in the search \ url image.

Good news is im a day or so away from a new Samsung 26' LCD\ HDTV combo

that's it.

I don't actually see it in the screeny from reply #32, but I do see it on #27.

haha, u know your right, I thought i was losing my mind in my last post...  , cos i looked at 27 then went back and had looked at 32, so yes, its definitely there. Was doubting myself due to monitor problems.. and looking at the wrong image! 

Basically the flatter, the less contrasted the wallpaper being used the more its going to be noticable, especially over grey or flat black. It's just less noticable, if at all over the wall in 32 and the stuff behind the start menu was helping hide it too. and yes a 'tad' of noise \ gaussian blur, perhaps .02% would go a long way to fixing that.

you'd think in the least they would have centered it between the edge of the search box and the right side of the menu to help it not look quite so lopsided.

Just tell the people that don't like the gap to start using the taskbar in the right place

Don't get me wrong BB.  Guys like you, Tim, vStyles and our skinners, I totally trust.

I just feel in my heart that Mickeysoft went 4 steps backwards with their last two OS's.  And to me a major part of this failure is the design and operating function of the "new" start menu.

I can understand the WMP, I have 15,000 songs.  I can understand the Windows Explorer needing a file search.

But having to search my Start Menu as an aesthetic means of navigation is just plain rubbish.

I've had a Vista system for 3 years now, fully loaded with Stardock and I don't use it.

I've professionally supported every Windows platform made since 1990.  This is the first time I've ever personally passed on a chance to migrate my OS, because I really don't like the direction.

So it's you guys that keep me interested and in tuned, not the public bandwagon, opinions or commercials.

Thanks for all you do bro!  I mean it!

That's ur motto, isn't it? I'll look at that tonight. Thanks guys!

Oh, and DanilloOC was able to get back to me. I had done the taskbar button mask correctly, I just had saved the .tga incorrectly. Didn't know that PS cs4 couldn't do it correctly.

I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked the new glow or not, so I just made a substyle for it.

Mirsguy: the issue #1: Windows 7 reserve a are on top right of your start menu for the user picture so you must make the top margim for the right side of your start menu @ 40 pixels

issue # 2: I believe I e-mailed you a fix for that today.

Issue # 3: right now the setting for thta part on SkinStudio is not working, follow the Win7-WB7 doc Imade and add the code by hand, get the dock here: https://forums.wincustomize.com/359820

thanks for sharing, much appreciated

Dani, you've been a big help. Thank you!

none of the CS series can\could. lousy decision on Adobe's part...along with continually awful UI design.

Glad u got it sorted.

If only Microsoft, Adobe, and the other big software makers would allow us to design their UI's...

Thanks!

I have the .tga plugin from PS7 perhaps one the last versions that worked properly.

Yep, it was, been a loooong time since i used png's in sks

im also having problems with skinning win7 sp ,,vista was mutch easyer my alien se works fine for me but not for some others ..its very strange ,,i think ill start skinning somthing elss,it would be easyer..

Gimme?