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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:10 pm 
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winstep wrote:
seeker wrote:
and how can you change/apply 'universal' dock theme?


You open Preferences, go to the Themes tab and then change 'Winstep Themes' to 'Dock Themes'. You can now select a theme from those available and it will apply to all docks that are not theme locked.


thanks, worked, i finaly got rid of that dreadful tiles that keep popping as dock teeme over and over again :) for 'no reason'

but for some reason, thee dock is transparent for weather subdock


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:33 pm 
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seeker wrote:
but for some reason, thee dock is transparent for weather subdock


Eh? Screenshot please. :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 6:38 pm 
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the doch background/theme is transparent:

http://prntscr.com/i1bz9a
Image

versus

http://prntscr.com/i1bzpz
Image

while when it was set to tiles, it wasnt transparent


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 6:45 pm 
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Ok, thanks, I'll have a look at it...

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 6:11 am 
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Ok guys, check this out:

Image

Image

Nearly there. Unfortunately there is a major glitch, which I haven't been able to figure out yet why it happens and how to fix it or prevent it, that might be a show stopper.

But so far... look at those marvelous matching buttons and comboboxes! :)

I also changed the section titles (the text in yellow) so that when a dark mode is enabled they no longer appear in bold but rather 1 point size bigger. I think it gives it a much cleaner look.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 8:05 am 
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winstep wrote:
... under Windows 10, if the user has enabled Dark Mode in Windows, should the Winstep application automatically enable Dark Mode too when run for the first time?


To me it absolutely should be enabled if dark mode in Windows is enabled. Gives it a more seamless integration.

winstep wrote:
Also, again under Windows 10, if the user has NOT enabled Dark Mode in Windows, should the Winstep application start with the standard UI or with Dark Mode (Gray) when run for the first time?


Conversely, as much as I like the dark mode (and went and figured out how to enable it in Windows), if the rest of windows is running in light mode, so should Winstep by default.

winstep wrote:
seeker wrote:
slide animation is maybe bit to fast regarding what you said about motion sickness?

It's a balance... the slide animation is currently set to complete in 600 ms. Can't be too fast because then it becomes a blur, can't be too slow because you have to wait for it to complete before the tab becomes usable.


I, too, think it could be a tad slower. Maybe 800 instead of 600? But the ADHD part of me that is easily distracted by shiny objects wishes that if I clicked a tab separated by more than one tab from the previous tab, all the tabs between would WOOOSH by. I know, now I'm getting a bit ridiculous.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:31 am 
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winstep wrote:
Nearly there. Unfortunately there is a major glitch, which I haven't been able to figure out yet why it happens and how to fix it or prevent it, that might be a show stopper.


Today was definitely NOT a good day: sometimes it seems like everything is conspiring against you.

I wasted one full day trying to figure out what was causing a glitch with the painting of the new command buttons: this is actually very complex, but, to simplify, I tell Windows that I want to draw my own command buttons.

The problem was that after clicking on a button, the second I clicked on another control my beautiful button would turn into a mess with a white background. If I clicked on the button again, it would be drawn correctly, but it would happen again when I clicked somewhere else. This meant that, as you clicked on the buttons, they would all eventually turn white.

Obviously this was a no go, so I had to figure out exactly what was causing it or I would have to give up on the whole idea - with the deadline for the official release quickly approaching.

In between this, one of my hard disks decided to develop a bad sector, which I only got to know because my automatic daily backup failed with a disk read error. So I dismounted the offending disk and told Windows to perform a CHKDISK /R (scan for bad sectors) on it.

CHKDSK proceeded to gobble up all my available memory (yes, apparently that is normal under Windows 7, although this behavior has been changed from Windows 8 onwards) which slowed things to a crawl. Now, keep in mind that checking a 1 TB hard disk sector by sector is going to take a few hours.

To make matters worse, Acronis Backup is a buggy piece of cr*p that kept restarting my backup even though I told it not to (a backup which it could not even complete because one of the drives being backed up was currently dismounted). Not only did Acronis NOT check on this before starting the backup, as it completely ignored my requests to cancel it. So I had CHKDSK gobbling up all my RAM on one side, and Acronis gobbling up all my CPU on the other.

After having this happen twice, the only solution was to disconnect the external hard drive where the daily backups are stored. That stopped Acronis on its tracks.

In the mean time I was getting nowhere with the button painting glitch. To make matters worse, the cat decided this was a good day to really get on my nerves - and spent the whole day meowing for attention and generally being a complete PITA. It was like it knew, and just wanted to be a bastard lol.

Now, the button glitch had nothing to do with my code. I know because I kept double checking it - it was just that, at some point, instead of my routine being called to draw the button as it should, Windows would try to draw it itself.

I spent hours searching the web for similar cases or clues to what might be causing this, with no success. Eventually it was monitoring the messages sent to the button with SpyXX that provided the answer. I still don't know exactly WHY it happened, but at least I know WHAT was causing it: after clicking on another control, either Windows or VB changed the style of my button from BS_OWNERDRAW to an invalid style, behind my back. So, instead of the window with the button getting a WM_DRAWITEM message so it could properly draw the button itself, Windows or VB would have a go and make a mess of it.

Once I understood what was happening it was easy to solve: I sub-classed the button, which allowed me to catch the deadly WM_STYLECHANGING message and thus prevent the style from becoming corrupted.

As for the hard disk, the scan revealed a single bad sector. Right in the middle of one of my Windows 10 Virtual Machines. Sigh.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 7:19 am 
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winstep wrote:
In the mean time I was getting nowhere with the button painting glitch. To make matters worse, the cat decided this was a good day to really get on my nerves - and spent the whole day meowing for attention and generally being a complete PITA. It was like it knew, and just wanted to be a bastard lol.


Jorge, you're being redundant. Either that, or you're insulting bastards. ;-)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:56 pm 
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vectornut wrote:
Jorge, you're being redundant. Either that, or you're insulting bastards. ;-)


LOL. I swear they do it on purpose. :wink:

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 4:34 pm 
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vectornut wrote:
Conversely, as much as I like the dark mode (and went and figured out how to enable it in Windows), if the rest of windows is running in light mode, so should Winstep by default.


Yes, but I don't think of Dark Mode (Gray) as an equivalent to Dark Mode (Black). In fact, many applications today already use a flat gray UI, *even on Windows 7*. An example of this is Acrobat Reader.

So, I need others to chime in on this ASAP too, please: given the latest look with the owner-drawn buttons and combo boxes, should the UI be set to Dark Mode (Gray) by default on Windows 10 (and Dark Mode Black if dark mode is enabled)? On Windows 7 it would remain 'Standard User Interface', of course.

Please, I really need more opinions ASAP. Pluuuuease.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 11:14 pm 
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seeker wrote:
the doch background/theme is transparent


Ok, I think the problem is that some of the sub-dock settings were not being properly initialized. *Should* be fixed now.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 12:19 pm 
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winstep wrote:
vectornut wrote:
Conversely, as much as I like the dark mode (and went and figured out how to enable it in Windows), if the rest of windows is running in light mode, so should Winstep by default.


Yes, but I don't think of Dark Mode (Gray) as an equivalent to Dark Mode (Black). In fact, many applications today already use a flat gray UI, *even on Windows 7*. An example of this is Acrobat Reader.

So, I need others to chime in on this ASAP too, please: given the latest look with the owner-drawn buttons and combo boxes, should the UI be set to Dark Mode (Gray) by default on Windows 10 (and Dark Mode Black if dark mode is enabled)? On Windows 7 it would remain 'Standard User Interface', of course.

Please, I really need more opinions ASAP. Pluuuuease.


personally id stick with the old mode, but not sure if its just my resistance to change


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:57 pm 
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seeker wrote:
personally id stick with the old mode, but not sure if its just my resistance to change


Thank you, sir, I decided to follow the advice of both of you. Under Windows 10 the UI only automatically starts with Dark Mode (Black) if Dark Mode is enabled in Windows, otherwise it's the Standard UI all around.

In the mean time, those owner drawn combo boxes and buttons may look good, but they have been a never ending source of headaches to me.

Besides that problem with the buttons I described earlier, it turned out that the combo boxes did NOT automatically resize vertically on high DPI systems - but they did horizontally, go figure.

In my book this is a bug in Windows, but Microsoft's official response is that it is 'by design'. Ahahah. By design... lol. It's a bug, but one they can't fix because then it would break all the implementations others already did to work around it.

Anyway, eventually solved that one too, of course, although, again, it wasn't easy.

This apparently simple change to the look of buttons and combo boxes was only easy on the surface. In practice it meant I had to change a lot of things: for instance, the Ok, Cancel, etc, buttons in the main Preferences window: since controls can only have the owner drawn style applied when they are created (i.e.; cannot be changed at run time), every time the user changes the UI mode the central tab in Preferences is unloaded and reloaded to refresh the look - but I can't do the same with the main Preferences window itself. So I ended up having to create a button control array which I create and destroy at run time.

Fun, fun, fun... not.

Also, fixed an issue with the calendar-based (set days) Monthly alarms. And the fact that you couldn't see the calendar in the Alarm Edit dialog if Dark Mode was enabled (it hard coded the text color, so it was drawing black on black) lol. Same for the day-of-the-week checkboxes. Sigh.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:01 am 
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Wow! The dark theme sure is giving you a hard time! Windows needs to get their act together. Unfortunately, since I’m using Windows 7 and a third-party dark theme, I cannot see your handy work.

From what I see from your post, it looks good!


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v17.12?
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:50 am 
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winstep wrote:
vectornut wrote:
Please, I really need more opinions ASAP. Pluuuuease.


Having played with the gray and dark modes a bit, I find both simply too distracting and hard to read compared to the original mode. Regardless of how you proceed, I will stick with the original mode.

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