gevansmd

Join Date 12/2008

+50

Windowblinds inability to skin certain apps

Does WB's inability to skin certain apps, such as any of the Office 2010 programs, Windows Live Mail, Chrome, Photoshop Elements 10, etc., mean those apps are violating the interface rules and doing their own thing? I turn off skinning for those apps, but particularly for Office, the result is very flat. Why don't they display the normal aero skin I have selected when WB is unloaded?

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Snowman

Join Date 03/2001

+343

The battle of WB vs Office has been going on for eons it seems. Nothing 'new' in them not playing well together.
Don't quote me on this, but I seem to recall that parts of the UI is hardcoded, thus cannot be altered by a thirdparty application.
I would suspect it's the same deal with WLM and PS.

I have no problems with WB skinning Chrome, though

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Neil Banfield

Join Date 04/2001

+1104

Why are you excluding those apps? They should work just fine without being excluded and in the case of Office, excluding is most unwise.

WindowBlinds can skin the titlebars in Office apps and any controls on native dialogs, but not the controls inside the apps because they are custom controls. The Office team rarely follows the OS look and thats the case with Office 2010.

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gmc2

Join Date 11/2003

+296

Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 2

WindowBlinds can skin the titlebars in Office apps

thought I would mention this just in case I'm missing something.

I'm using a "caption text background" graphic for the blind that I'm creating and the text background doesn't carry over to the office programs.

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Neil Banfield

Join Date 04/2001

+1104

Quoting gmc2,

reply 3

Quoting Neil Banfield, reply 2WindowBlinds can skin the titlebars in Office apps

thought I would mention this just in case I'm missing something.

I'm using a "caption text background" graphic for the blind that I'm creating and the text background doesn't carry over to the office programs.

Thats because Office 2010 is responsible for painting the titlebar text due to the need to position the text in varying places based on the current ribbon state.

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gmc2

Join Date 11/2003

+296

thanks Neil (ribbon state???)

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I exclude the Office Apps because the title bars lose their min/max/close buttons and Excel loses its grid lines.

This snapshot is of Excel, demonstrating both problems. This happens regardless of the WB I use.

Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 2

Why are you excluding those apps? They should work just fine without being excluded and in the case of Office, excluding is most unwise.

WindowBlinds can skin the titlebars in Office apps and any controls on native dialogs, but not the controls inside the apps because they are custom controls. The Office team rarely follows the OS look and thats the case with Office 2010.

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I hope that you find that this comment is relevent to the subject posted here. I have dozens of Windowblinds in my collection over the years but I find that I can only use about a half dozen or so because most of them simply will not work with my ( IcoFX ) software program. The common problem among those that I cannot use, relate to the ability to click and drag the edges of the palette to resize the work space. As I stated, only a few of the skins I have in my collection allow me to do this, which renders the other skins unusable to me, which is very unfortunate because there are so many awsome creations out there. I have made temporary skin changes to allow funtionality when I'm working on a project, but the constant changing of the blinds gets tiring and frustrating after awhile. I use my IconFX software on a daily basis and it makes up about 75% of the work process I use to create my IconPackagers, so you can see how this has a large impact on my productivity. I'm very skeptical that this is just an issue concerning the different artists that create the blinds. Even if that program is not skinned isn't clicking and dragging a normal Windows function ? and why would that funtion become disabled in certain Windowblinds skins ? I've made mention of this in other threads but really haven't received much feedback from anyone concerning this issue. I would love to get it resolved so that I can be care free about using ALL of the different blinds in my collection. And if someone says to contact the different artist to see what they can do, well....that would take forever and I doubt I would get many positive results from my inquiries, it's just not an option I care to persue. Again, the special software I use is called [ IcoFX version 1.6 ] there is a newer version but I prefer this older one because I find it much simpler to use than the newer version. I do really hope this can get resolved.

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Ace, did you post in this thread? LINK Most of the compatibility issues mentioned were addressed. You might want to add your icon program to the list.

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Neil Banfield

Join Date 04/2001

+1104

Quoting gevansmd,

reply 6

I exclude the Office Apps because the title bars lose their min/max/close buttons and Excel loses its grid lines.

This snapshot is of Excel, demonstrating both problems. This happens regardless of the WB I use.

Reduced 75%Original 800 x 500

Quoting Neil Banfield, reply 2Why are you excluding those apps? They should work just fine without being excluded and in the case of Office, excluding is most unwise.

WindowBlinds can skin the titlebars in Office apps and any controls on native dialogs, but not the controls inside the apps because they are custom controls. The Office team rarely follows the OS look and thats the case with Office 2010.

The missing titlebar buttons is curious and my instant reaction is some sort of video driver issue thats causing the painting to be invisible. Do you experience the same problem in other applications? If you switch to say the corporate skin, do they continue to be missing?

Regarding the missing grid lines, that screenshot appears to be showing Excel without any files open which is why you have no grid lines. Notice the lack of file name in the titlebar, the greyed out ribbon controls and the greyed out zoom controls on the statusbar.

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@Neil, I don't have "corporate" but I tried a couple of the other Stardock Aero blinds and they work fine. Then I tried a couple of blinds that don't modify the min/max/close (at least not in an obvious way) such as Glassphire 2 and the problem returned. Funny thing, even choosing "don't skin the titlebar for this application" doesn't fix the issue.

Capturing the empty Excel window was by design since my actual spreadsheets contain financial data. You'll have to take my word for it that the grid lines remain invisible even when data is loaded.

My video card is an ATI Radeon 5570, driver version 8.98-120611a-141402C-ATI and I'm using Catalyst version 12.6, the latest downloaded a couple of days ago, but previous versions displayed the same problem.

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