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 #62 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:45 PM
OK.
Bottom section (I don't know why it's listed next on sks.....to me it would be more logical to do the all prog section next)
Extras tab....you know the drill.......background effect to semi trans, zero out the first H and W settings and set the next 2 to the dimensions of the image (W 412 and H 68) Note: the width isn't very important because the width of the top part section defines the total width of your panel.....but the Height here is important.
Reply #65 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:50 PM
See here where I set the margins on the darkest part of the image. It's also where the searchbox will be so it's a good place to hide the tile.
Reply #66 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:52 PM
Extras tab....you know the drill.......background effect to semi trans, zero out the first H and W settings and set the next 2 to the dimensions of the image (W 412 and H 68) Note: the width isn't very important because the width of the top part section defines the total width of your panel.....but the Height here is important.
Done. Yeah. I see what you're doing now with the tiling.
Captain Hadley: What the Christ is this happy horseshit?
Zubaz: Hey, he took the Lord's name in vain! I'm tellin' the warden and everyone on messenger!
Captain Hadley: You'll be tellin' the warden about my baton up your ass!
Reply #67 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:00 PM
Moving on.
Right hand side.
In the extra settings tab, the only thing you need to do is to set the background effect to semi trans. The height and width settings do nothing. The width is defined by the combination of the top part and left hand side settings (think: the left hand side width "pushes" the right hand side over)
Reply #68 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:06 PM
okay.
Reply #69 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:06 PM
Painting margins for the right side:
This was by far the hardest section to get right. This panel expands to the right on expanded mode as well as up depending on how many items are listed. I tested these settings with 1 item all the way up to 10 items (takes up most of the height of your screen).
I tweaked it for literally hours and came up with these settings.
Reply #70 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:09 PM
Tip: You can maximize the popup window for the section in sks...it will give you a larger preview and help you see where exactly your margins fall.
Reply #71 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:13 PM
Temporary text margins for this section:
top 12
bottom -40 (yes, use a neg. value for this part.....it's a Vista/Win7 OS quirk)
left 0 (I used 0 here because you don't have a middle divider separating the 2 sides)
right 14
Reply #72 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:13 PM
Reply #74 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:18 PM
You can also click on this icon to get a better view:
Reply #77 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:21 PM
Didn't know about that last trick. Cool.
Ready for last part.
Reply #78 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:25 PM
All Programs section.
Same as the right side, you can ignore the width and height settings in the extra settings tab. Just change the background effect to......ya know.
Painting Margins:
Reply #79 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:29 PM
Let's compare
My version looks like this:
Normal
Expanded
Reply #80 Friday, February 3, 2012 3:30 PM
Don't worry about the text colors for now.....we'll get to that
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Reply #61 Friday, February 3, 2012 2:34 PM
Yes. (I updated my version)
And don't be sorry. Unless you're Zubaz. Then, you really wouldn't be sorry, you'd be pathetic.
Glad to have you on board, Dave.
**I'm on Messenger (PoSmedley63) and FB Messenger as well. (Noah Hansell)