At this point, your Search Mode panel will still be 'off' but you should be able to see your windowbitmap at work instead of the white background.

What we need to do now is edit the text margins to fix this.

In SKS -  Edit Start Menu and Taskbar > Search Mode Top > Text Margins tab

Set your margins as follows : 

This will  center and blend your bitmap in with the Search Mode layers you just added.

NOW, (I hope) we are done with the Start Menu. The mouseovers for search mode will be skinned in another section.

That is beautiful, Po!

I have to give credit to Tim for the whole search mode section. Not that I would have known how to skin it, but I missed it completely when I was pre-making all the parts for the menu.

Getting more awesomness.

Back to lurking.

Looks great!

You forgot to mention adjusting the painting margins for the searchmode top. You don't have to fix the middle (all prog) searchmode because that will never expand in any way, but the top will expand up for users that have a lot of content to their SP.

Search mode top > painting tab. I chose these settings:

I have a question. The colors next to the text. Are they the colors used or do they just denote the margins?

They represent the margins, yes. To the right of that section, you'll see a preview of the image you are adjusting. There is a checkbox above that that if checked off will show the diff margins in those colors.

You'll see this shown in reply #241

Good morning!

Excuse me for interrupting. It's great to see that you are determined to finish this one, Po'. What would Skinhit think? I hope that you'll consider finishing up some of your other great skins as well. Thanks to Tim and Vampothika and that Neone guy as well.

• Interrupt anytime.
• Thank you.
• WHO?
• I'm looking them over as I go through this one to see what's do-able and stuff.
• All three should get medals. 

FYI - We are working in the background. Next up is the taskbar but we hit a bit of a snag with the texture. It may possibly have be fixed but needs some tweaking. I'm trying textures for the first time and kind of learning as I go.

I have the taskbar texture issue worked out. What I have to do is tweak the images in PS to get the colors to match the original taskbar. (See image in #251)

The stitching...geesh.

This is the base layer for the taskbar.

I've tried several different approaches in applying the stitching.

• One single stitch tiled across ~ It runs right up to the edge no matter how I change the margin or add spacing to the png file in PS
• Two Images of single stitch stacked at 50 px, 100 px, 200 px apart. Same as above.
• Like a noob idiot I thought, why not make thew stitching like the base layer? Which is the base layer with stitching then hide the base layer in PS and save. This ALMOST works.

The issue (as was with ALL of the above) is that the stitching will not apply to the TB if you put it at the top of the screen. I can understand that with the first two attempts, but my noob thinking says if it works with the base layer (the images mirror correctly when applied at top or bottom) it should work with the stitching. Bu no. NO. No. No.

And I forgot one other thing. My Taskbar height isn't showing when applied. It should be 50 px and it is stuck at 35 or 40.

Po, just popped by to offer encouragement and to say fantastic looking graphics and the whole thread is an interesting read.........especially for someone like me who is more an 'admirer' than an artist. 

Are you making the taskbar one frame or two? If you make it two, you can get the stitching on the top of the bottom one (first frame) and the bottom of the top one (second frame). Of course, then all your layers will have to be 2 frames.

Your taskbar height is going to change according to what your text margins are set to on the taskbar buttons. The bigger your text margins on the buttons, the taller the taskbar gets. The whole setup is going to take tweaking as you go as far as the painting margins and text margins go.

What I would do in this situation is just get the taskbar in there, and then get the buttons in there. Once the buttons look right, then mess with the painting margins on the taskbar.

2

Right. You would think. I did the stitching in two frames just like the task bar, same size, etc. Inverted the frames, just like the taskbar etc. I tried it with the stitching as it is overlayed on the taskbar in the psd then hid the base and saved the png showing just the stitching. I tried it with just one stitch in each frame (frames inverted like the task bar). No matter what I try, the stitching never comes out right on the top task bar.

These are all the different methods I tried. The gray is just so you can see the actual size of the png file and how I had the stitch layed out (for the attempts at tiling just a single stitch.)

I'm not sure if I'm reading that image right.

What I'm thinking is this:

I think this may be what you have posted in the 4th one, but not sure.

Yeah.  The image with the gray in it is the same as the transparent image. The gray is for this thread only, so you can see the dimensions and layout.

I didn't use the gray, just the png with the stitches on a transparent background.

Going across, those are the 5 attempts, the 6th being the stitching image at the bottom, which is two frames, just like the base layer below it.

*** If I go with tiling the stitches across the top, I solved the issue of them running to the edge. I found the settings in Extra Settings to tell it how far from the left and right to begin and it looks much better.

Looking very awesome Po. Going to be a challenge with the graphics though.

Yeah. I'm tweaking stuff that I don't really know how to or where to start with. It's interesting. I have to walk away from it alot to clear my head.

I did get the buttons in which I really had to tweak and as you can see, am not quite done with.

OOPS.

fixed it. 

Forgot to set the first two texture layers to '2 frames'.