Button transparency issues with Vista
Monday, April 13, 2009 by Ansel_ | Discussion: Beginners
So I've recently been getting into program skinning/GUI modification, and I've been doing some modifications to MANNiEmedic's Antar theme, both for my personal aesthetic taste and to match AlbinoAsian's Myriad suite of skins. However, a continuing problem for me is that when I edit the system image files and replace them in the system32 .dll files and in the .msstyles file, they seem to have trouble with transparency, and have very ugly white boxes around them. As an example, here's the start button. Here's what I'm trying to replace my current button with:
It's not perfect yet, but I'm still working on it. I created this image by just drawing over the original in Photoshop and resaving it, without altering the dimensions or anything else. As you can see, it's a transparent png, just like the original. However, when I replace the system file, this is the result:
and here, when I press the button, the white border completes itself.
I'm rather new to this whole thing and think I'm getting along all right, but this transparency thing baffles me. Is this a common problem? How can it be fixed?
Reply #2 Monday, April 13, 2009 9:41 PM
as I stated in my post, it's a PNG. Also, I'd rather not use Windowblinds because it doesn't change my system files--it wastes resources maintaining the visual appearance. I'd rather do things the hard way, learn from it, and probably achieve just as nice results.
Reply #3 Monday, April 13, 2009 9:44 PM
okie doke... almost everyone here uses WB, not sure you'll find much help from anyone regarding patching sys. files.. but good luck 
Reply #4 Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:53 AM
It seems wasting resources should be a thing of the past...sheesh, how low can memory prices go?? Anyone with a resource shortage deserves it. 
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Reply #1 Monday, April 13, 2009 9:10 PM
are you using png or tga? I would advise you to stop using shell patches and install windowblinds.. there are several thousand skins to choose from and much easier to edit.