so I guess I stumped the techs with this one, do I win a t-shirt or something.

it could be alot of things, i know for a fact that until my pp frames are done, i cant work in photoshop properly and have to revert to another blind so i can save, rasterize ect......... get further in your blind and see where it takes you.

but dosent office have issues with wb skins anyway? or is that just a myth?

U/C skin??, not sure what that is.

here's another hint though: I created another blind a copied over the per pixel frames and buttons. when applied the same thing happens (dead buttons in office, other progs work fine still) but now I have this rectangle across the buttons when I mouse over, which I didn't have before.

 top is normal, bottom is mouseover

changed painting margins on the frames and button positions only, no other changes? oh, except I removed the button glow graphics.

this is the first time I encountered any skin problems with skinning of the frames all my other blinds work fine???

*nods and agrees** ..do brains count??

good that the problem is solved. when you say feather do you mean outerglow?