Wrong links on frontpage

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 02, 12:06

Yes, yes I'm being impatient. But the two links on the download page both link to the same file.

A couple of small things:

- The lite beta ROCKS!
- Why aren't toolbar buttons atialiased yet? Buttons look a bit '95ish with plain transparency.
The lite beta told me it would expire in 30 days, a bug right?

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Jun 02, 13:30

we are stll looking for the graphics expert... and it looks like we aren't going to get one for this release

this beta indeed has a sell-by date but the final lite version will be out well before 30 days from now

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 03, 08:31

I think the button images themselves look great, it's just they should be in a format which supports alpha-blending with the background (like png).

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Jun 03, 08:38

i would have replied to that, if i understood what all these techniques are

but anyway...

you are a graphics man, no?
if i want to create snapshots for the website and add effects like shadows and non-rectangular cuts, which program do i use?
(as small/light as possible)

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 03, 11:51

nikos wrote:i would have replied to that, if i understood what all these techniques are but anyway...

Compare, for instance, the "up" and "back" button images in reglar windows explorer with the corresponding ones in x2. The win explorer button images look smoother, because the edge pixels are partially transparent, blending with the background.

With gif, a pixel can only be fully transparent or opaque (RGB filled), creating a jagged edge on soft shapes. Png or .ico files allow a "per pixel" transparency using the alpha channel.

P.S. I'm not saying this is a big deal, it's just eyecandy. But it looks better.

nikos wrote:you are a graphics man, no?
if i want to create snapshots for the website and add effects like shadows and non-rectangular cuts, which program do i use?
(as small/light as possible)

I'm not really a graphics man, but I need some basic knowledge of the stuff for things I do at work. I use Photoshop which isn't excactly light. Gimp for Windows is starting to look pretty impressive, I would recommend that for the things you mention. http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/stable.html

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 11, 14:34

Another fine piece of graphics software: Sodipodi. It's an Adobe Illustrator-like application.

http://www.sodipodi.com

mimeryme · Post by **mimeryme** » 2004 Jun 12, 05:03

rulle, do you know what format explorer's toolbar uses to have partial transparency? I thought explorer uses bitmaps as well. Having looked into the shell32.dll where the toolbar is stored, I can extract it as a bitmap. It may be the limitation of the reshacker software. However, AFAIK bitmaps can't have varying levels of transparency.

nikos, if you could implement a toolbar using PNG buttons, that would make it easier for users to customize the toolbar buttons (sets are easier to make from existing icons without much pixel tweaking needed). You can have the PNG strips holding the toolbar buttons be in a themes folder. There's a toolbar replacement program by the name of YzToolbar that does this for explorer and IE.

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 12, 07:49

I think the icons are probably .ico files, which is a separate image format supporting alpha transparency.

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Jun 12, 09:16

the resource editor and loader won't understand any other format than bitmaps, so png or gif or what have you are out!

rulle · Post by **rulle** » 2004 Jun 12, 16:30

Without understanding anything about programming, I think this is linked to using GDI+ rather than GDI:

From msdn:

About GDI+

Microsoft® Windows® GDI+ is the portion of the Windows XP operating system or Windows Server 2003 operating system that provides two-dimensional vector graphics, imaging, and typography. GDI+ improves on Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) (the graphics device interface included with earlier versions of Windows) by adding new features and by optimizing existing features.

Comment in source code of an open-source app using button icons with alpha transparency (emule)

// If GDI+ is available, use that API because it supports more file formats and images with alpha channels.
// That DLL is installed with WinXP is available as redistributable from Microsoft for Win98+. As this DLL
// may not be available on some OS but we have to link statically to it, we have to take some special care.