SmoothText 1.1.8

[Svenne]

I was almost certain I posted a hyperlink in my previous post. Strange

Anyway, here you go: http://www.mediafire.com/?woy1vejcma2rzdn

Edited July 15, 2010 by Svenne

[WildBill]

Forget everything I said about the taskbar thickness setting. It should reflect the desired visual thickness, not the client thickness. In your case, it should be set to 20. (sheesh...I wrote it and I got it wrong).

The other problems you were seeing were the results of either bugs or aspects that weren't supported (such as thinner-than-normal taskbars). I've posted version 1.1.3 which should give you much better results.

[Svenne]

Thanks a lot!

I've been working on my own theme for a while now, but I still have some problems:

• The start button is oddly deformed, even though it has the same height as the taskbar.
  
  
• 2nd level drop down menu skinning doesn't work.
  
  
• The Quicklaunch icons doesn't resize to fit the taskbar.
  
  
• I want to add a space between the edge of the system tray and the first icon. I tried using ContentRect, but instead got a black square where the space should've been.
  
• Transparent icon captions doesn't work unless font smoothing is turned on.
  
  

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?9ahojub4bzypcrj

Edited July 18, 2010 by Svenne

[WildBill]

2nd-level dropdown menu skinning should work, but the Explorer shell's New... submenu is owner-drawn. That's why it looks different. For example, the Arrange Icons... submenu paints correctly.

I saw the start button issue too with your skin, I think it has to do with the narrowness of the taskbar. I'll have to play with it some more to see what's going on.

For the Quicklaunch icons, try adding these settings to the [METRICS] section to see if they help:

TaskbarIconWidth=16

TaskbarIconHeight=16

To get extra system tray space, you have to assign an image to the tray:

[COMPONENT_SYSTEMTRAY]

Type=Image

Component=SystemTray

Image= <-- Need to assign an image and set the image's ContentRectLeft setting

State=Normal

StartingFrame=0

EndingFrame=0

TextColor=White

Font=Arial_10px_Normal

Transparent icon text works through the font smoothing engine, so yes, it won't work with font smoothing disabled.

Thanks a lot!

I've been working on my own theme for a while now, but I still have some problems:

• The start button is oddly deformed, even though it has the same height as the taskbar.
  
  
• 2nd level drop down menu skinning doesn't work.
  
  
• The Quicklaunch icons doesn't resize to fit the taskbar.
  
  
• I want to add a space between the edge of the system tray and the first icon. I tried using ContentRect, but instead got a black square where the space should've been.
  
• Transparent icon captions doesn't work unless font smoothing is turned on.
  
  

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?9ahojub4bzypcrj

Edited July 19, 2010 by WildBill

[WildBill]

Version 1.1.4 is now up, with a couple of fixes.

[Svenne]

2nd-level dropdown menu skinning should work, but the Explorer shell's New... submenu is owner-drawn. That's why it looks different. For example, the Arrange Icons... submenu paints correctly.

I saw the start button issue too with your skin, I think it has to do with the narrowness of the taskbar. I'll have to play with it some more to see what's going on.

Thank you. I studied the problem a bit more carefully, and it seems like the four top/bottom pixels gets shifted two pixels to the left.

For the Quicklaunch icons, try adding these settings to the [METRICS] section to see if they help:

TaskbarIconWidth=16

TaskbarIconHeight=16

Already have, and it doesn't work. Thanks anyway.

To get extra system tray space, you have to assign an image to the tray:

[COMPONENT_SYSTEMTRAY]

Type=Image

Component=SystemTray

Image= <-- Need to assign an image and set the image's ContentRectLeft setting

State=Normal

StartingFrame=0

EndingFrame=0

TextColor=White

Font=Arial_10px_Normal

I have an image assigned, and I set contentrectleft to 4, and it works! I think your 1.1.4 update fixed it.

Transparent icon text works through the font smoothing engine, so yes, it won't work with font smoothing disabled.

Oh. Any chance you can fix it in the future?

Another flaw I've noticed is the CPU usage. Explorer.exe uses around 30% on it's own. Is there any optimization I can do? Will using RLE-compressed TGA bitmaps decrease performance?

Edited July 31, 2010 by Svenne

[WildBill]

No, the bitmap format won't have any effect since everything is stored in memory uncompressed. I've actually been making a lot of speed optimizations for version 1.1.5, as I've been gradually improving support for alpha-blended window borders on Windows 2000 and performance was suffering. Let me see if it's good enough to release as-is.

[Svenne]

I think there might be something wrong with my theme. After updating to SmoothText 1.1.5, explorer.exe's CPU usage increased by 33-50% (from 20-30% to 30-40%).

[Sweet William]

OK, I downloaded version 1.1.5 and ...

Can't find any mention of installation procedures in the archive or this thread.

Unfortunately I'm neither psychic nor clairvoyant so I'm going to need some help here.

If someone would divulge this little secret, I promise I won't tell a soul.

TIA

[WildBill]

There isn't any special installation procedure, just unzip everything to a folder and run SmoothText.exe.

[Sweet William]

WOW!

Thanks heaps.

[Phenomic]

Neat, I had to try this.

I have ViewSonic VP181b IPS display with BGR screen instead of the usual RGB. With SmoothText 1.1.5 set to BGR all text looks highlighted with a yellow marker. The color looks like the inverse of the system background color.

I haven't rebooted yet, is a reboot necessary? I just started SmoothText.exe

Thanks !

[WildBill]

No, a reboot isn't necessary. Can you post a screenshot?

[Phenomic]

No, a reboot isn't necessary. Can you post a screenshot?

Text color also changes to dark blue from default black. And smoothtext works even if text smoothing is turned off in windows display properties. Your BGR setting definitely works and is much sharper than RGB on my display.

http://bellsouthpwp2.net/z/w/zw42vcqx9a/win2k/smoothtext.bmp

ps: I'm getting error msg "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board."

[WildBill]

I haven't updated this in a while, but if I can ever get my head above water with respect to the Win2k patches I'd like to do some more work on this. Anyway, I thought I'd post a desktop screenshot to show what it can do. I'm curious: has anyone tried building any SmoothText skins?