Bear in mind, the ATI Control Panel was made a couple years ago.  You may have noticed that WindowBlinds can do alpha blended skins these days.

After reading some of your replies, I get the feeling this is just for serious programmers and is not that easy to just start creating stuff.

I'm a little confused on how to use this so I've got a coupla questions:

What is the learning curve for this program?

Is a background in programming/coding required to use it?

Which coding languages do I have to learn to use it?

Where do I do all my coding; in Visual Studio? (Which means I have to learn to use Visual Studio?)

Can I make anything without having to use a script?

Does DuroBlend make applications or just skin them?

There are two ways of looking at your questions, each with their own set of answers:

set 1:

The learning curve isnt very steep because you can use Visual Basic Express which is probably the easiest IDE/language ever contrived. Microsoft designed it to literally spoon-feed everything. Its probably easier the vb scripting for desktopx, though I'm sure someone would find ways to disagree.

A pre-existing background isn't required, per say, but you will have to learn a little programming to get it to do anything. Its very easy to be learning how to program, and to use DuroBlend at the same time.

all .NET languages are supported because this is a component for .NET. Therefore Visual Basic .NET, C#, C++ .NET and J# are all equally supported simply because of the multi-language nature of the .NET platform. I programmed the engine in Visual Basic, so most of the tutorials will be in Visual Basic, but other then that there's really no advantage having one over another - they all do the same things. If you are learning to program, Visual Basic is the easiest to learn. If you have a background in Java or PHP, I suggest learning J# or maybe C#. If you have a background in win32 development or if you are familiar with C or C++ syntax, then I suggest using C++ or C#. C# and Visual Basic are basically cousins in the .NET framework, J# is on its own, and C++ is the snooty I-own-all-of-you-so-go-away language.

In theory, you could do your coding in any .NET supported IDE, but you would probably want to use visual studio. There is no need to purchase the professional edition, etc, as I actually developed DuroBlend entirely on Visual Basic Express Edition (when it was still in beta!), which is free. I only recently got the professional edition and have concluded that it is unnecessary.

At this time, it would really be impossible to make anything without touching code. There is a visual form designer, but it is only intended for determining the xy positions you would use in code. I want to emphasize that the code is extremely easy to understand, however. You can create a widget in 2-3 lines of code. See the support forums on durosoft.com.. I have a short tutorial posted there in the mean time as I make more comprehensive tutorials. In the future, I could make a more skinner-friendly version of my engine. If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this other then the dx method with a scripting engine, I'm all ears. I have been toying with the idea of creating a mini program which uses the DuroBlend dll to create .dbpack files which would still use visual studio for any scripting. It would be like the ultimate hybrid between dx and DuroBlend, conceptually speaking. Let me know if this sounds like a good idea.

DuroBlend is a framework of ui controls and functions which one could use to create superior UI's for an existing software solution, or a new software solution. If you are vaguely familiar with how to code visual basic (a two year old could do it... if then.. end if.. etc), you could make gadgets/widgets



Now some more programming-ish answers

Well its really designed for software developers who want to take existing programs and give them an alternate UI by reprogramming their UI code, or for software developers who want to develop an entirely new application which uses DuroBlend for its GUI. In that respect, DuroBlend is comparable to windows forms... the caveat to this is that windows forms get skinned all the time these days. DuroBlend does have several ui controls of its own, which do support skins, however there is as of yet no skinning format, mostly because there aren't enough controls for that to matter at this point. If DuroBlend is heavily adopted, and becomes a standard among software-side UI developers, adding full-fledged code-free skinning suppport for the engine and the apps that run on it via a universal skin format would be quite doable. The "InterfaceSkin" property which controls the graphics for the MsgBox function is a precursor to this.

If you ever get a chance to look at Designer.exe, you will find that you can lay things out quite easily. This base program could be modified in the future to be a development environment for .dbpack files (note: .dbpack files don't exist yet.. I'm just speculating, which is feasible when I control the source code...). A skinner-friendly future is very possible, I'm just testing the waters first.

frogboy: yes, I'm aware. Wb6 looks pretty awesome. I heard somewhere that you got alphatranslucent window elements to resize/maximize without lagging. Seeing how I tried to accomplish this for two years within my own engine, I am baffled by how you were able to accomplish this on xp. Then again as long as they are thin in at least one dimension, they don't really lag that much, so I guess you could do it that way. Actually, ya now I'm pretty sure I know how its done. lol (just window borders are alphatranslucent, but not content... this is doable under DuroBlend, as well as any other senario you could think up with translucent +/- non translucent forms/windows/objects/controls/etc

Id be curious to see if anyone had any feedback on the "make-it-work-on-top-of-game-windows" idea.

If its target is professional developers than it must not get compared with Dx, not at all. Its cool that you are trying to make gadgets world nicer. Will be looking for it if it gets added to WC gallery.