Revolutions Pack 9.7

[CharlesF]

[CharlesF]

You may try to play with different image sizes (height+2+2)*3px and see where it breaks the limit and makes the taskbar grow.

I had tried with a 111 px high button and it was still fine.

That's why I wrote: 'and it can be even slightly bigger'.

I went back to a 108 px sized button, because it was the main big size I had found,

like in the AeroBlue, AeroClassic, Sky98, Ubuntu Human, Velvet98, VistaUltimateBlack skins.

Some more details about this StartButton display bug:

it begins from the height of 114 pixel.

111 px is fine, and even 112 or 113 (which are not divisible by 3).

About the big height StartButtons:

* 108 px: AeroBlue, AeroClassic, Sky98, Ubuntu Human, Velvet98, VistaUltimateBlack, Windows Lupus, & the fixed Windows 7

* 111 px: Windows Azure

* Superbar skins:

Watercolor EB Superbar -> 114 px

Windows 7 Superbar -> 141 px

HTH

Charles.

[Drugwash]

Watercolor at 114 and Windows 7 at 141? Are you sure it's not a typo? Quite a big difference, both being superbar...

Anyway, thank you for testing. I haven't yet reached the checking part - still reading and storing the changes. The API doesn't help much and neither does my lack of knowledge. Reading from an .ini file is tedious, the system opens and closes the file for each and every value being retrieved (as it's implemented in AHK) and that makes the application a bit slow. Also, the language variations in the Start Button section is something I have yet to take care of and still have no idea how to approach it.

[CharlesF]

Watercolor at 114 and Windows 7 at 141?

They are the Superbar Start Buttons as mentioned in the skin_Superbar.ini

Watercolor EB: BLUEC_STARTBUTTON_BMP1.bmp -> 34x114,

instead of 34x78 for the regular skin

Windows 7: startbig.bmp -> 54x141,

instead of 54x108 for the regular skin.

Edited April 25, 2014 by CharlesF

[Drugwash]

Should've checked them myself, sorry.

[CharlesF]

You're welcome Drugwash

By the way, where can I get your Royale color variations set of themes?

I thought you were telling me about the 'RoyalColor' I've got in my RP9_Skin_collection,

but it has been made by kallon.

I can find no trace of it on MSFN.

Edited April 25, 2014 by CharlesF

[Drugwash]

Well, I plan on releasing the series once I fix them properly once and for all. They were released long time ago here somewhere but the link must have died since and they've been buggy anyway. Wanted to make a CE series (Central European fonts) but fonts got mixed and not all elements are present and/or match with each-other. So it will take a while.

In the mean time, would you be so kind as to play a while with this very rough alpha of the editor and tell me whatever you find buggy, incomplete or unintuitive? Any good ideas are welcome. It still got a long way to go before being actually useful for the purpose I started to build it but for now it can edit the values and save the outcome. Most of the menu items are not implemented.

Please be careful what you change and where you save. Try not to overwrite existing files. It will only save an ini, no bitmaps or anything (yet).

Argh, there's something missing in 1.0.0.6, icons won't show up in toolbar. Will upload a new version soon.

Uploaded v1.0.0.7, should be OK.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Drugwash

[farfigs11]

I had to uninstall RP 9.7; it made office xp Excel freeze not long after opening a spreadsheet; seems like a memory conflict; tried all office xp updates to no avail.

[Drugwash]

That may be hardware/driver dependant. I've had some Office installed for years and can't remember having experienced such issues. However, I've extremely rarely used any of its components, to the extent that I actually had to open a blank document right now to check the About box, which says: Microsoft® Excel 2002 (10.6501.6714) SP3.

Maybe you're using a different version, some common system dependencies are different or - as I mentioned in the first place - your drivers or the motherboard itself behave in an incompatible manner.

If anybody else has (had) similar issues and fixed them, maybe they could share the experience (and solution, if any).

[CharlesF]

... would you be so kind as to play a while with this very rough alpha of the editor and tell me whatever you find buggy, incomplete or unintuitive? Any good ideas are welcome.

Uploaded v1.0.0.7, should be OK.

Hi Drugwash,

as you said many functions are lacking for now.

So, what can I tell:

- runs without glitch on my Win 98SE (KernelEx ...)

- I love the skinnable colors!

- There is an irritating warning "There's unsaved work..." each time you close the program, ...even if you don't have done anything.

- Skin color change every time. I appreciate this behavior personally, but it should be possible to keep a choice for those who prefer.

- Similarly, no memorization of the selected size of icons. Should be an ini file to write down all these settings.

- You should had info-tips hover elements like the black square to choose color, or the home (default) button to clarify the use.

- Similarly, this black square should rather be colorful (rainbow?).

HTH

Charles.

[Drugwash]

Ah, feedback... finally! Thank you very much, Charles!

Now, good news is the issues you presented are known and should definitely be gone in a public working build.

• That naggy warning on exit is there just to remind me to implement an overall switch that would indeed warn the user when closing the application without saving the changes. Hopefully I manage to do it right.

• Skinning is in random mode only now, for testing purposes. In a working build, the user will obviously have the choice to save a particular skin color or keep using the random mode. Contrary to MS' advices, it will use an .ini file to store its settings, for portability.

• Same goes for toolbar icons: their chosen size will be remembered between sessions through that .ini file.

About tooltips: they could probably be implemented, at least for the color picker buttons. As for the Default and Original buttons, I'm still looking for the best choice to hint their usage by column, while also allowing the user to change all the settings at once (such as "All back to default" or "All back to original"). Same tooltip for each button in a column would be annoying since they have the same function, don't you think?

I'm a little worried about the color pickers (black buttons). Did you actually load any theme from the toolbar list or tried to change the color of an element? The respective button's color should change to the selected one immediately and also on loading a theme, all buttons should reflect the colors set by the corresponding values (if the respective options are enabled and they should be when loading existing themes and colors are set). So could you please confirm whether the color picker function works correctly?

Oh and the application should also work in XP, at least; haven't tested it under other OS versions but may also work in 98Gold/ME/2000/2003/Vista/7. So if anyone is preparing RP themes on another system, they can simply use 'Load theme folder' from toolbar or menu and work on them. Have you tried loading a theme folder other than the (auto-detected) installed themes folder? Or saving a modified theme and comparing results with the original?

BTW, the "Save" function is for now in 'safe mode', saving as "mod_" <original filename.ini> to avoid any accidental overwriting of the original file. "Save as..." allows for choosing the output file name.

Thanks again and please let me know how the above goes.

edited a minor typo

Edited May 1, 2014 by Drugwash

[CharlesF]

As for the Default and Original buttons, I'm still looking for the best choice to hint their usage by column, while also allowing the user to change all the settings at once (such as "All back to default" or "All back to original"). Same tooltip for each button in a column would be annoying since they have the same function, don't you think?

Yes, a behaving here by column would be better.

So could you please confirm whether the color picker function works correctly?

Perfectly.

Oh and the application should also work in XP, at least; haven't tested it under other OS versions but may also work in 98Gold/ME/2000/2003/Vista/7. Have you tried loading a theme folder other than the (auto-detected) installed themes folder? Or saving a modified theme and comparing results with the original?

I had an error, launching it in Windows7 Pro.

BTW, the "Save" function is for now in 'safe mode', saving as "mod_" <original filename.ini> to avoid any accidental overwriting of the original file. "Save as..." allows for choosing the output file name.

That is buggy.

'Save' button doesn't create anything here, and 'Save as...' create an empty file (containing only the line: ';Please note - file content is critical').

In all cases, I get a crash after saving when I try to close the program, claiming:

RPTE 1 a causé une défaillance de page dans

le module <inconnu> à 0000:bf9eaa36.

(Google translation: RPTE 1 caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> 0000: bf9eaa36. )

[Drugwash]

Ah, darn, I'll have to turn on a Win7 machine and check it!

On which system does the saving error happen (98SE/XP/7) and what eactly was the location you tried to save the file? If on 7, it may be a privilege restriction. Anyway, I'll see if I can reproduce it. Thanks again! Oh and maybe we should get to PMs or e-mail, to avoid cluttering this thread.

[CharlesF]

On which system does the saving error happen (98SE/XP/7) and what eactly was the location you tried to save the file?

Everything was done on my Win98SE PC, except when I tried to run RPTE once on Win7.

For 'Save' I wasn't asked for a place to save the file, so I thought it would be in the theme folder loaded.

For 'Save as', I was asked to save by default in the program folder, that I accepted.

[Drugwash]

New version is up. Should work in Win7 too, with one minor issue: when saving, file extension must be specified as .ini even though it appears to be selected below the name in the Save dialog - otherwise it'll save an extensionless file. Thank you, MS!

Hopefully it won't crash anymore in 9x although I didn't exactly find the culprit; it must be a bad timing somewhere, trying to use a memory location that has been freed or something. Maybe the workaround will do.

Still lacks stuff so don't get high hopes.