One Piece At A Time : Windowblind Tutorial Part IV
Putting It Together : Start Menu
Friday, February 3, 2012 by PoSmedley | Discussion: WindowBlinds Tutorials
We're going to take a break from One Piece At A Time : Windowblind Tutorial Part III for just a moment and get into the assembling of the windowblind in SKS. There are a few reasons for this that you may have picked up on if you have been following along.
- We've been making sections of the blind without putting them into SkinStudio as we go along. A majority of skinners will go back and forth between their graphics program (Photoshop, Paint, etc.) and SKS as they go along. That method hasn't worked for me in the past and I wanted to go through the actual design of several areas without the added confusion of SKS.
- There comes a point, once you get past the Start Menu and Window Frames and start getting into the Edit Controls, buttons, etc., that you need to see what they are going to look like and if they will work they way they should. I tried to just keep making the graphics without going into SKS but it's just too much detail and in this particular case, with a lot of the areas we'll be getting into, 'size does matter'.
One of the main reasons that I may have not mentioned for doing the Start Menu and Task Bar areas first is also to assist visually in determining how the overall windowblind will look (per Tim's suggestion). This will actually help a great deal when you get into the buttons, header bars, and other details and you're trying to determine the best colors and other design details.
The way in which I am approaching this is something I came up with some help from 2of3(aka Tim). As I said, not all skinners do it this way and the opinions I offer are just that (my opinions) and by no means written in stone (or sand, Lucite, chalk, crayola, etc.) It if it helps anyone, let me know.
We'll be going back and forth between this thread and Part III. There will also, more than likely, be another thread where we can go over testing the skin and putting on the finishing touches. In this thread we'll be going over the assembling of the Start Menu.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS as to why something is done this way and not that or anything pertaining to the Start Menu ask them here. We will try to explain as we go along and may miss some things that you consider important or problematic.
If you're looking for Part I, II, III you can find them here:
One Piece At A Time : Windowblind Tutorial Part I
Design : Start Menu and Taskbar
One Piece At A Time : Windowblind Tutorial Part II
Design: Title Bars & Window Frames
One Piece At A Time : Windowblind Tutorial Part II
Design: Edit Controls
PLEASE :
- I am open to suggestions but may not use any of them. Please, don't be offended if I don't use yours.
- Keep the image posting to the skin(s)
- If you want to make a skin to go with this, PM me for the files. My PSD's tend to be a mess, but I save everything and will be happy to share. I am uploading the actual files to the Graphics Gallery here on Wincustomize.
- We'll be skinning for Windows7, maybe Vista. If someone wants to do XP, PM me and I will get you what you need.
- Any files you request will come as I complete them. I won't be jumping ahead. Please be patient.
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The PSD files for the previous threads are in the Graphics Gallery.
Roan WB Title Bars and Window Frames
Roan WB Taskbar Buttons
ROAN WB Start Panel UPDATED
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Reply #43 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:36 PM
Let's adjust the top part.
First go to the extra settings tab. set the Recent documents expansion value to 40 and the search mode expansion to 0. I think the default is 70 which in my opinion is excessive. 40 is good for this skin.
Still in the extra settings tab, scroll down to the width settings. The first 2 are for xp, so set them to 0. then set the vista/win7 width to 412 and the height to 27.
scroll down more and set the background effect to semi transparent and enable hide the user pic.
Reply #47 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:43 PM
Those numbers are the exact dimensions of the image used.....in my experience it is a good idea to draw you sp in true size.
Reply #48 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:46 PM
use blur only for transparent images where you want the blur effect on the startpanel......using it here you risk getting a crappy looking blurring on the outer glow and drop shadows. This will show up against certain backgrounds.
Reply #49 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:48 PM
Notice my painting margins in reply 45. when tiling it's very tricky to get it right. I "hid" the tile in a place it won't show.
Reply #51 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:57 PM
because if you look closely at the startpanel image as a whole, you'll see a lighting difference on the upper left and lower right hand corners. I needed to set the tiling in an area where the pattern can repeat itself (tile) without a color difference.
It looks like you had some kind of lighting effect on the base layers of the image.
Reply #52 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:58 PM
No biggie.....It just made it a teeny bit more difficult to find a good place to set the margins. 
Reply #54 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:07 PM
Ready for the left hand side.
Again in the extra settings tab:
Background effect to semi trans. Zero out the first 2 height and width settings and set width to 251 (same as the image). The height setting does NOTHING, so ignore it.......the height of your panel is defined by how much content you have on your SP.
Reply #56 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:21 PM
Both done.
QUESTION: Normally, when I have attempted this in the past, I bring the paint margins in just over the edge and stretch or tile everything else. Are we bringing the paint margins in on this more than normal (whatever normal is) because of the texture?
Reply #57 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:27 PM
Yes...the texture and the tricky lighting. Remember this section has to expand up for users that have a lot of content on their SP. If the margins fall in the area on the top left (where the lighter "spot" is), you will get a funky looking lighter section in the middle of your SP as the pattern repeats itself when it expands upwards.
Reply #58 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:31 PM
Sorry to interrupt. Is the latest version of SS 7.3
Reply #59 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:31 PM
Normally I would also adjust the text margins on this section at this point, but we will probably have to redo that anyway when we add the stitching layer.
I have it temporarily set to:
top 6
bottom 2
left 12
right 2
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Reply #41 Friday, February 3, 2012 1:24 PM
Got it.
Why are we deleting all of this code?