New WB and SKS betas on OD (Impulse & SDC)
Saturday, June 21, 2008 by Neil Banfield | Discussion: Skinning
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
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Reply #42 Monday, June 23, 2008 3:50 AM
Reply #43 Monday, June 23, 2008 5:58 AM
When renaming a file using SK5, the coding for the animated please wait screen does not get copied.
Using SKS6 Old uis files are not deleted from the file. I can delete them manually to avoid conflicting uis files when installing to WB.
Clean skin feature does not delete the back png images stored in the skin file. This seems important as alot of people will release skins with alot of extra junk in the file.
When renaming a file, some text settings go back to default settings and I have to redo all the settings. Normally everything resets to the 1st font in my list ( I am assuming this as Clock text is the first one in my list and the text settings change back to clock.
Been a frustrating night and then 4 hours making some buttons that suck.
Reply #44 Monday, June 23, 2008 7:09 AM
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.
There should be no temp png files stored in the WB skin folder. Any made by SKS6 are put in the temppng folder off the skin folder and the make WBA option in SKS6 will not include files in that folder.
Reply #45 Monday, June 23, 2008 8:21 AM
I've had to move several WB's to new files started with SKS6 to fix a lot of problems with just about everything from fonts to just the way an image is presented.[which where started with SKS5]
So I've got to totally agree with you. SKS5 only does so much and SKS6 does it better in a different way. Thanks for the new stuff and glad to see you working on a weekend! You never give up. Question? Is there a reason behind you working weekends? Maybe a target you are looking into?
Reply #46 Monday, June 23, 2008 9:12 AM
Just installed SKS6.10a[b].032 It says there is a older version that must be uninstalled before you can install the update. It then uninstalls SKS5. My Impulse has been doing this all the time there is a update for SKS6. I have always gone back to SDC and reinstalled SKS5. But today for some reason SDC kept timing out and would not reinstall SKS5. Had to reinstall from a backup.
Reply #47 Monday, June 23, 2008 2:45 PM
It doesn't work very well for me Neil. As previously mentioned... older overwritten uis files remain in the folder (renaming skin and creating wba package) and confuse WB when installing. The temp png folder remains with images inside also.
I got my SKS5 back now. I am pleased.
Reply #48 Monday, June 23, 2008 3:13 PM
Reply #49 Monday, June 23, 2008 6:42 PM
Hey Neil, just uninstalled SKS6, rebooted, ran CCleaner, rebooted, reinstall latest beta, created new skin, whipped up some quick pp images for start menu, enabled hide menu shadow, saved then applied skin, shadow is there, when check code tab there is nothing there for hide shadow. Even when add HideShadows=1 to code for top bottom places progs and more prog back, still have shadow. Installed SKS5, opened skin, it did show hide shadow enabled had to toggle to disabled and back to enabled to save skin, shadow now gone. After everything in SKS6 I had applied the skin several times, applied other skins then back to test skin, only SKS5 would get rid of shadow.
Reply #50 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:21 AM
nt sounds like he went to hell and back.....
Reply #51 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 3:05 PM
Tis OK, I booked lifetime passage to and fro about 10 years ago.
Reply #52 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 3:58 PM
Reply #53 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:42 PM
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 Friday, June 27, 2008 10:38 AM
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 #56 Thursday, July 3, 2008 10:29 PM
reinstall it through stardock central and you will be fine.
Reply #57 Friday, July 4, 2008 12:54 AM
Reply #58 Friday, July 4, 2008 3:30 PM
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.
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Reply #41 Sunday, June 22, 2008 10:41 PM
EDIT.. I went back to the original file and the animation is present and working fine. The newly saved file was not saved properly. My head hurts. SKS5 isn't saving files properly now. grrrr