| 1. Adjusting the More Programs Backgrorund Image left hand margin to -120 pushes the single mouseover colour off the screen |
Actually, that''s not true. a negative left content margin of that size will actually pull the text and the MoreProgsArrow.tga (MPA graphic) to the left, and if the MPA graphic is large enough, it will cover the mouseover color (highlight) so that you don''t see it. I set up a delay of the menu opening so I could capture this shot from your skin so you can see what I mean:
The shot above was taken with the cursor over the MPA graphic before the More Programs Menu actually opened. The green arrow is pointing to the highlight which is still partially uncovered by your graphic because the graphic doesn''t fill the whole panel width. I mostly just wanted to show here that the highlight is still there, it''s just covered by the graphic, and shortly after hovering, by the menu as well.
But you can see something else here as well. Note how you can see the whole outline of the MPA graphic due to the pattern mismatch. That is because the whole graphic is not in the window. Only 133 pixels in width is showing, with the left part of the graphic pulled off-screen. More on this later.
| 2. You will now have to create a new image for the arrow. Copy the left hand side of the background image. I have found that if the background is 190 x 28 pixles then copy 150 x 28. |
The size of the graphic really depends on the graphic elements in the background. a graphic that size wouldn''t work for example on Copperdeck 2, which I think you can see if you look at post #29 of this thread: https://www.wincustomize.com/msgboard.asp?id=262666&BID=WCH&page=1#266760
| 5.As previously mentioned set the Background contents Left margin to -120. Set the Right hand margin to 40 as this is the amount subtracted from the background image to create the arrow image. |
Ok, we''ve seen that the content margins of Left neg 120 and Right 40 result in a misaligned graphic in the screenshot above. I maintained in that thread I posted that a left content margin setting of about neg 90 would be right so let''s see what happens:
As you can see with the Left set at neg 90 and the Right at 40, now the graphic is lined up correctly with all 150 pixels in width showing. But it doesn''t make sense, because we shifted the content margin by 30 pixels to the right, but the graphic only shifted 17 pixels. What happened?
Notice the highlight is missing completely in that screenshot. The reason the MPA graphic only moved 17 pixels is that it bumped into the right content margin. We can prove this by setting the Right content margin to 0 as you see below:
As you can see, the highlight is now completely shifted to the right edge of the panel at x:190. But the MPA graphic did not shift as far to the right as the highlight did. It only shifted 14 pixels to the right, pulling the text along with it. Why? The answer is this:
The mouseover color highlight is unaffected by the left content margin and can only be pushed to the left by setting a positive right content margin. The MPA graphic, on the other hand, is influenced mostly by the left content margin, pulling it left when the setting is negative and pushing it right when the setting is positive. The only time the right content margin affects the MPA graphic is to limit movement to the right.
To prove it, here is one last screenshot. In this shot the right content margin remains set at 0, and the left content margin is shifted 14 pixels to the left to neg 104:
As you can see, the MPA graphic is once again properly aligned and the highlight is still all the way over to the right edge of the panel.
PS: By the way, the default image type for the More Programs Arrow is now .tga, not .bmp. Bitmaps will work, and if you plan to cover the whole panel with the MPA graphic, then I don''t think it matters too much, but in most cases, I think I''d prefer to use a targa and take advantage of the alpha blending.
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