What's new in 2.5 over 2.1?
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- maps creation tool got mask brightness gamma correction trackbar.
- recoloring tool got new brightness gamma correction trackbar.
- recoloring can be saved as presets on third tab.
- recolouring settings can be exported/imported to/from file for reuse
on another computer.
- SkinStudio is themeaware now - thanks for your help Dru!
- the "Visibility Options" tab on the "Buttons" tab have been moved to a
separate form launched from an additional button or its dropdown menu.
- Also the "Show/hide all buutons" tool buttons have been moved to a new
dropdown menu.
- Now you can customize buttons visibility with the dropdown menu. This
have been done to cleanup the gui.
- Reload buttons have been moved to the dropdown menu as it in most
cases have been hidden anyway.
- the control editor is hidden on selection of "More" in the Section
view
- contents of some of the tabs when change or undock occured refused to
resize the contents any longer. VCL bug - worked around.
- the colorizing added gray to 32 bit tgas because of the the loading
code combining image with the alpha channel. Loading routine for
colorizing of 32-bit images changed.
- "Apply" button in Preferences started working. Problem reported by
Neophil.
- "Apply" this skin as current was rendering the system unusable if no
skin was opened but WB was running.
- Adding to WB exclusion list works again. Problem reported by Neophil.
- "Properties" toolbutton in Skin Browser works again.
- more fixes to docking routines as the previous one did not work well
for undocked components making tham take the whole screen when trying to
dock back.
- The Restore Windows Position works everywhere now (even on main
window). Problem reported by Neophil.
- Posibility of creation and usage of additional language packs
restored. Problem reported by Neophil.
- Skin Navigator shows up instantly now. The skins population have been
deferred and it populates only those skins user wants to view because it
populates them when user expands the tree node. This really matters when
you have many skins + ObjectBar installed + WebBlinds + full version of
skinstudio so you have the widgets.
- Skin Navigator shows Koala skins player skins in its tree if Koala
player is installed.
- Many fixes, improvements and speed-ups to Skin Navigator.
- File Open dialog have been replaced with Skin Navigator.
- preview in Skins navigator should be as accurate as the one build it
Skinstudio now.
- opening from Skins Navigator seems faster than the one from old Open
dialog if the skin have been analyzed or previewed as as the skin
definition files are already pre-parsed in Navigator and Bitmaps cache
is already created.
- turning border adjusters off is beeing remembered again.
- Preview selector vertical scrollbar removed on computer with high icon
spacing.
- definition files are cached in a global dynamic pre-parsed pool on
first opening of the specific file format, resulting in much shorter
time of opening following files of the same format.
- Skins browser tool buttons work perfectly now.
- skins browser skins tree is ordered alphabetically by the name of the
skin, not folder, now.
- the first click on the preview did not show the proper image editor on
the bottom pane. Fixed.
- System buttons Test is themeaware
- Tweak your feel is themeaware
- Explorer Synchronizer is themeaware
- Widget Preview Creator is themeaware
- Few touchups to Tweak your feel to ake it a little less obsolete.
- fixes for colorizing dialog causing exceptions on occasions.
- coloring preview had a few controls not needed to be exhibited in this
build.
- some more strings added to translations.
- Supported skin files are forced to be assiciated with SkinStudio on
every launch.
- SkinBrowser preview caused exceptions after moving the mouse pointer
over a preview after an analyze tab have been selected once and no skin
have been opened.
- SkinStudio tended to add fake attributes representing groups to the
skin. This have been fixed now.
- analyze detects when the skin contains grouping attributes added there
because of skin errors.
- skin correction code detects such skin as having erroneous or obsolete
code and allows to easilly remove the problem.
- Correct skin errors button allows to easilly remove the abovementioned
problem with deleting such items.
- when creating masks for whole skin. SkinStudio saved the mask as
bitmap with .tga extension but the reference was saved with .bmp
resulting in missing coloring on parts.
- [ColoursMask] are now also scaled to saturation level.
- Optimizations in def language parsing introduced errors in Object Bar
support. Sorry Jeff, thanks jebland. Fixed.

- "It's gonna be a big one, Hilda!"
- new approach to def interfaces - trying to make def files easier to
maintain and getting ready for WB 4.0.
- SkinStudio can now use GIMP as the external Image editor launched from
within it.
- Fix to the "Preview window came undocked, refuses to re-dock" issue.
Preview can now be docked to any tab set in the explorer.
- Widgets export triggered "Memory access violation at address
00000000". Fixed.
- "Save As" taking far too long has now been shortened to minimum
- Fixed "Save As" not saving xpstuff file reference correctly.
- The detachment blocking have been added upon Alexandrie's request
(toolbars will have detachment blocked first time user will open
SkinStudio). You can still enable toolbar detaching ability by
unchecking the "Block toolbars detachment" item in any toolbar popup
menu.
- in the image margin editor the right and bottom margin markers are
following image extents (were binded to the bottom and right edge
before).
- images combo is not longer flat to avoid flickering when skinned by
WB.
- getting ready to make SkinStudio themeaware
- Control to select "Number of recently opened skins to show in file
menu" in Preferences changed from combobox to spinbox.
- SkinStudio can now recover a skin from a crash. If it has crashed
while editing a skin it will try to recover the skin next time it is
launched.
- SkinStudio can recover a "work in progress" skin edited and lost by
another copy installed in another folder. Every time SkinStudio opens a
skin it looks for the temporary file with recovery info and gives user
the ability to resume the work from the moment the other copy of
SkinStudio have left it.
- the "Set this skin as current" dropdown menu item have been enabled
even if no skin was loaded.
- more intelligence to WB remote control menu items enabling. You cannot
reload a skin if WB is not running, so why enable a menu item for it?
"Launch WB" is enabled only if WB is installed and not running, "WB
Shutdown" only if WB is installed and running and so on...
- "File -> Save As" deletes the temporary file from the original skin
folder to prevent detecting of the skin as "edited during a crash".
- new button "Test" added to toolbar right next to the "Apply" button.
This button will launch the app skinned with currently edited skin by
WindowBlinds live (with a per-app skin). Currently it launches the
"System Button Test Visibility" tool. But launches it with the latest
changes and does not need the skin to be saved!
- the recovered skin have not been marked as modified when opened thus
SkinStudio didn't ask to save it before quitting if nothing more have
been changed.
- the WB Preview has now a button to customize previews.
- WB Preview colorization fixed (the blue channel was not grayed out
correctly.
- The image mask creation tool have been added. It's another icon on the
Previews tab.
- The image colorization tool have been added. It's on the same icon as
the mask creation tool but different subtab.
- Targa files are now in the default filter.
- More intelligence to what folder is chosen as the file open dialogs
initial folder.
- added colorization and creation of image masks for whole skins
- skins utilizing Targa format did not converted well, so I added my own
routine for reading TGA files and manipulation on 32-bit bitmaps + such
files are saved back to Targa files.
- optimizations to skin colorization
- Skinstudio checks on run whether the key for WB to detect Skinstudio
exists in the registry and adds it automatically if it does not (just
for a case the installer did not add it, to avoid WB refer to SKS
pages).
- For colorization if user selects to recolor whole skin - Skinstudio
also applies the settings to all the colors defined in the skin to avoid
creation of inconsistent skins where eg. recolored images are red while
font colors remained blue.
- the skin coloring preview have been corrected in a way that if the
mask has a black pixel the corresponding pixel in the original bitmap
will not become gray (the previous implementation in SKS code was
erroneous and different from how WB handles masks).
- the masks creation now features selectivity trackbar to be able to
create masks that recolor only colors selectively similar to the one
selected from the hue trackbar.
- corrected previews for better support for per-pixel settings.
- "File -> Save as" for Koala player fixed.
- colorization can now also be applied for skins other than
WindowBlinds.
- colorization moved from the preview icon to the tab in the central
area.
- mdi buttons no longer asks for section creation when you click on
their preview on UIS1 skin as UIS1 does not support them.
- opening properties and changing the preview settings did not cause
skin previews to reload, so the changes did not show until the preview
have been reloaded.
- validation shows an icon in the list view informing that the
validation is in progress.
- validation in the Skin Browser have actually been validating the skin
opened for editing and crashing if no skin opened. Fided.
- Skin Browser - skin preview painted wrongly have been fixed.
- fixed some inconsistencies in the GUI - Thanks GreenReaper!
- items to import in Skinbrowser are now selected/unselected on a single
click (not only on checkbox).
- Changes in definition files for some erroneously defined attributes.
Toolbar background, color masks.
- Pocket Blinds new additions to format (Toolbar buttons).
- Uis1+ titlebar text format alignment fixed
- new "Animate" button on the toolbar on preview
- masks creation tool have new entry in the combo allowing author to
create masks for colors defined in the [Colours] section.
- masks creation tool have a new button allowing user to select any
pixel from the screen as the hue origin.
- ability to recolorize just images and not skin colors in the
colorization tool
- fixed error where files used multiple times in the skin were coloured
multiple times also resulting in attribs shifted with unexpectedly big
values.
- Color editor can now adjust the color not only by RGB chanels but also
with HLS channels.
- support for section [StartMenu.ButtonBackground]
- support for section [StartMenu.LogonBackground]
- support for section [MenuItem.Top]
- support for section [MenuItem.Botttom]
- updated section [Tabs.Background] moved in the section tree.
- fix for def files breaking XP taskbars in edited skins
- Updates to internal Skinstudio preview management engine.
(Some Explorer tabs no longer need to be hidden while SkinBrowser is
launched).
- Updates that should fix the crashes appearing after Skin parts
have been imported to edited skins.
- Updates to UisConverter for more accurate skin conversion with side
borders wider than 4 pixels (4th option for left and right window
borders in
the "Other settings" tab).
- fixed error with "Code" view impossibility to show once hidden.
- support for displaying skins with multiple DPI sections (no way to add
such sections automatically yet) with new dpi defining way with DPI
after
an @ sign at the end of the skin. So it supports sections like
[Buttons@96].
- support for skins with "Per App" sections (no way to add such sections
automatically yet). With per app defined as [ExeName::SectioName] like
[Explorer::Buttons].
- support for new "subsections at small sizes" postfixing model.
- optimized some low level string parsing routines to compensate for the
performance hit caused with additional parsing concerning perapp
sections
and multidpi skins.
- splash time duration for registered users shortened from 4 to 1.5 sec.
- support for new Checkboxes, RadioButtons and Spinboxes
- small reorganization in Buttons subbranch
- support for new radio and checkbox on preview - if no new widgets -
SKS will paint the old style ones
- in "Section add" dialog the attribute icons are more accurate (not
only types, but also subtypes).
- support for new type of attributes - Font files
- support for dynamically installed fonts in WB skins added
- Tree View expanders skinning added
- New QuickLaunch XP format support added
- (Mike Bryant's) grouped task background shows 6 states in SKS but only
has 1.
- (Mike Bryant's) grouped task menu item shows 6 states in SKS but only
has 3 in current build, 4 in internal build.
- (Mike Bryant's) Font and Color settings don't work on grouped task
menu item (WB doesn't support them).
- (Mike Bryant's) Quicklaunch buttons don't show in XP taskbar preview.
- (Mike Bryant's) When titlebar text background has more than 2 frames,
inactive preview doesn't work properly (see my skin).
- Tray arrow was painted wrong over the System tray image
- [TaskBar.FlashingButton] support added
- Added checking for filename length constraint of 50 characters (for WB
only) to skin validator
- Synced with WB 3.4 release