Hmmm....I´m lost.

If it´s not selected...it´s NOT selected, of course nothings going to "Show" on it.

The request sounds Overkill to me.

(But as i said I´m lost)

Hello diephoenix,

WindowBlinds can skin that selection, it was always possible, since Vista era, maybe the skins you tried didn't have the right graphics set?

Here is a video of one skin with the selection skinned, notice that the hover state for non elected items is grey and the selected one is blue.

Video: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416294/Stardock/WindowBlinds/January/WB_selection_big.mov

Good boy Dani

Also, something else to consider is that WindowBlinds and the other SD software works as it was meant to.  I would have to imagine it would be an major task to have each work as each user would wish it to work and also be compatible with every other piece of software that a user may have on their computer.  Well at least I don't think that will ever happen on a PC.      

EDIT: Well would you look at that.

I tried not just skins, but SkinStudio itself. It's not supported. But I wasn't entirely clear on my original post, and I forgot to mention an additional state which is selected + keyboard cursor. That state is what is showing in your .mov video, and that's a different state. Ok, I need to go back and explain again, and show some pictures:

First of all, what I mean by selected entries, are the entries in listview to which a command would apply if say Del or Ctr+C was pressed (or any other command shortcut). Those are the selected entries. Anything else is not selected, it's just or highlighted, or under the cursor, or neutral, or hot-tracked, or whatever, but not selected. That's a universal definition of selection, for nearly any UI in existence. Commands apply to what is selected. (same for text in a text field for example). Ok. Now, in addition to selection, in the listview, there are two other state variables:

1) if an entry is under the mouse cursor or not.

2) if an entry is under the keyboard cursor or not. The keyboard cursor is moved when you press the arrow keys in the listview, and normally it affects the selection as well. But, if you press CTRL+<arrow key> the keyboard cursor will move without affecting the selection.

Let's see an example with pictures for the default Windows 8 theme:

Note that in each picture there are 3 different states (other than the neutral, fully white one), each with different image applied to it. The color difference is subtle, but it is a different image. Note also that the entries with "mouseover" name are under the mouse cursor, it's just that the mouse cursor is not captured in the 2 screenshots.

The problem with WindowBlinds, is that while you can skin the selected+keyboard cursor and selected+mouse hover state independently of the other states, the selected (with no cursor) state shares the same image as the non-selected with mouse cursor state, and you cannot customize each seperately. (Give it a try by having more than one selected entry)

The severety of this, is that you cannot quickly glance at the control to see which entries are selected. The mouse hover cursor can hide an entry that is, or is not selected, and you can't tell which it is unless you move the cursor out of the way. This is quite annoying and error prone when you are using keyboard shortcuts (as Del or Ctrl-X). And this problem happens in other applications which use the same listview control.

For clarification, and for a shorter explanation, here is the same scenario, with the WindowBlind Modern skin:

Can you tell for sure which entries are selected?... Nope.

Hello again die phoenix,

You explanation really confuses me, seen to be something very specific that you're wanting to achieve but let me see

if I understand better.

I tried to mix the mouse cursor and the keyboard selection + the mix of the control key sand I got 3 different active selection states (without count the empty mouse away).

Here is the screen:

diephoenix,

I was experimenting with the selection for you, SkinStudio is very versatile dealing with custom and experimental settings,

I made that graphic with 6 states, the default are 3 states, here is a graphic, please put it inside your skin folder (Modern),

open the skin with SkinStudio and select it from the image dropdown, change the "Image count" to 6 and then save and apply

the skin to test it.

This custom graphic I'm sending has each state in a different colour, just to make sure how many states you get and

if it's enough for your needs, here is also a screenshot showing where to change the graphic if you have any doubt.

• the selection graphic: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416294/Stardock/WindowBlinds/January/explorer_selection_2.TGA.zip

•  the guide to change it:

Ok, let me try explaining again, in a simpler way. I'll just say what I'm trying to achieve, it's just this:

A) have a different image for selected entries, and non-selected entries.

have a different image for the entry with the keyboard cursor, and the other ones without the keyboard cursor.

C) Hovering the mouse cursor over any entry should not change its image. So passing the mouse cursor over an entry never has any visual effect.

That's it! This means there are 4 images/states in total (including the empty/blank one). This is not something strange or "very specific". It's exactly how Windows used to work before the (IMHO stupid) Aero interface:

 If you are trying to understand the states I described by looking at the image variations in explorer, better not. The states I describe in my original post are based purely on behavior, and they don't exactly match the visual states. That is actually the problem, this mismatch. If you are trying to understand them by looking at the image states you can get in explorer, either in windowblinds mode, or native Windows mode, you might get confused. Better just think of my example above.

Hehe, I'm still a little lost in what situation the selections do not work as you expected but I totally understand

that you're trying to a specific result that should be possible.

I see that you're showing the selections with the classic UI now, gotta say that the classic and skinned UIs work

in a different way, even the OS default skin.

The thing is, WB will act like the OS skin in that part, not like the OS classic UI (not skinned).

We can get a skin too look like the OS default skin and even with extra states by adding more frames to the graphic,

this would be a custom setting, but we cannot for the skins to work like the classic UI (not skinned).

I have a last suggestion that you could try, go to that section on SkinStudio, switch to the "Code editor" tab, select all

text there and erase it, leaving the code empty, this will remove the selection section entirely, this way, since the skin

does not have the section, it will use the OS default settings for that.

If this last method do not work, I'm afraid I don't know any other way to help

Hum, interestingly, this does make a difference. I didn't know setting 6 images in that graphic would work (I previously tried with 4 and it didn't do much.

I tried it with this graphic now:

And it does get me much closer to what I wanted. But it's still not quite there yet, there are a few things missing:

1) Hovering the mouse over a selected entry (image #3) makes it look like the image of the selected entry with keyboard cursor (image #6).

2) Hovering the mouse over non-selected entry with keyboard cursor (image #1) makes it look like non-selected with no cursor (image #2)

It still fairly better than before though.

But how does this even work? Skinstudio says the default for this setting is 3 images, not 6. It lists the remaining 3 as "animation frames"? Does the green image ever show up anywhere? (the purple one seems to show for selected entries in windows without focus - I'll probably change it to be the same as #3)

diephoenix,

As I said, SkinStudio let's you use custom settings, other than the OS default ones, the is is the beauty of skinning

Anyway, I'm glad that the 6 states graphic is closer from what you wanted.

Here is as PSD foil for this graphic, so you can change the colours of each state to get the right result you're looking for.

• The PSD is very simple, just the fill and stroke colours. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416294/Stardock/WindowBlinds/January/explorer_selection_2.psd.zip

About the states, the OS also add two extra states independent of how many frames you use, these two extras are hover and pressed

that are faded 50% of its opacity, there is no control for that.

Regards,

Dani