WindowBlinds question
Tuesday, October 29, 2002 by Aqua. | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
I recently tried to reduce the filesize of my RedRew-Cru skin by reducing the colors to the minimum bit depth necessary to display all the colors in the images.
When I was finished I had shaved 4mb off of the file size and in the image editor everything looked exactly the same. However, when I reloaded the skin with the new images the entire desktop environment went dead black.
Fortunately, I've memorized how to access every relevant part of Windows and was able to restore the display without being able to see anything. I'm curious as to what actually happened though.
When I was finished I had shaved 4mb off of the file size and in the image editor everything looked exactly the same. However, when I reloaded the skin with the new images the entire desktop environment went dead black.
Fortunately, I've memorized how to access every relevant part of Windows and was able to restore the display without being able to see anything. I'm curious as to what actually happened though.
Aqua.
Reply #2 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:23 PM
Reply #2 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:23 PM
I had started out with 24bit color, however many of my images used 40 or fewer colors and thus I was able to reduce by quite a bit.
DavidK
Reply #3 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:08 AM
Reply #3 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:08 AM
Are you saving it as an RLE BMP? I think that would cause WB to not recognize the images.
DavidK
Reply #4 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:13 AM
Reply #4 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:13 AM
I just noticed you lost the colors for the desktop color settings too. (pays to read more carefully) It sounds like WB enforced a limited color pallet, just using the colors in your images and not allowing the Windows pallet to work. A reboot should have cured it...
MikeB314
Reply #5 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 7:01 AM
Reply #5 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 7:01 AM
Jobeleca, I wouldn't worry about color depth so much as the physical dimensions of images.
Your MDI and dialog backgrounds and your start panel places list image, for example, are pretty large (maybe 200x200 pixels) and they are just a solid color. They really only need to be a pixel or two to get that solid color to tile.
The start panel user pane (top panel) is also much wider than is necessary to tile it.
Finally, make sure you delete Windows XP's thumbs.db file from your zip. It is generated by XP when you view a folder in thumbnail view, and it is a pretty large file.
I hope that's helpful. Keep on skinning!
Your MDI and dialog backgrounds and your start panel places list image, for example, are pretty large (maybe 200x200 pixels) and they are just a solid color. They really only need to be a pixel or two to get that solid color to tile.
The start panel user pane (top panel) is also much wider than is necessary to tile it.
Finally, make sure you delete Windows XP's thumbs.db file from your zip. It is generated by XP when you view a folder in thumbnail view, and it is a pretty large file.
I hope that's helpful. Keep on skinning!
, 5.something MB
c242
Reply #9 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 10:00 AM
Reply #9 Wednesday, October 30, 2002 10:00 AM
I have switched off the 'store thumbnail data' option in XP to avoid such problems. You often see the 'thumbs.db' in uploaded themes and graphic-zips expanding them unnecessary...
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Reply #1 Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:21 PM