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Marco
15-Dec-2010, 01:01 AM
Hi Guys,

We've been in production now for several years with the cSigCJRibbonBar class. All works really nice. We are now being asked to introduce the skinning onto this project, which we do already have on another project in production that is 'just' using the data access classes.

Now, it seems that the SIG classes are not playing ball very nice with the change of skin.

Is this one for the too hard basket, or is there a relatively simple solution?

3958

Cheers,
Marco

Peter Bragg
15-Dec-2010, 03:12 AM
Hi Marco,

Just a quick thought before I get a chance to look at this more closely - I remember when I very first starting looking at the ribbon bar that there were problems with skinning when my window style on my machine (Vista) was set to "Windows Aero". For some reason it didn't seem to like the transparency of the caption bars. When I changed my PC setting to be "Windows Vista Basic" (to get rid of the transparency effect) then the skinning worked much better. Is this something that could be biting you too? Just a thought.

Peter

Marco
16-Dec-2010, 01:18 AM
Thanks Peter,

That solved some of the weird transparency issues. It did not solve that the Application heading and the Ribbon do not change their style...

See below;
3959

Cheers,
Marco

Peter Bragg
16-Dec-2010, 05:16 AM
Hi Marco,

Looking for a solution for you but there mightn't be an easy one. I found this in one of the codejock forums:

http://forum.codejock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=16543&title=how-to-apply-skins-to-ribbon-bar

Sadly it doesn't provide an answer but it shows that someone else (non vdf) is hitting the same issue:


Now we have ribbon bar with the replacement of toolbar in that case we are not able to set the skin to the Ribon bar.

It makes me wonder if it is possible - it could that it isn't because the Ribbon Bar is almost by definition tied into the Office2007 appearance (because that is where you would expect to see it) - but this is just a complete guess. I will keep looking but I would have thought that if it was easy I would have stumbled upon the solution by now (or rather google would have!)

Marco
16-Dec-2010, 05:59 PM
Thanks Peter for looking into this.

The part that surprises me most, is that the actual Panel title bar (is that what its called?), does change the fontsize with the skin change but not the colors (when using cSigCJRibbonBar).
When a 'normal' cCJCommandBarSystem is used, the Panel Title Bar changes happily with skin changes like the MDI client views.

Cheers,
Marco

Russell McDougall
16-Dec-2010, 06:54 PM
Marco Hi - don't know if this helps but:

I have been running ribbon bars for ages with no problems on different skins.

1. It is important to understand what skins affect and what the ribbon styles in the dll files affect. Experiment by changing style dll's. Shins do not affect parts controlled by ribbon styles. These styles are unique to ribbons and don't affect other command bars so don't try and compare the two.
2. It is equally important not to mix style dll files with the wrong codejock version.
3. There were problems with the tile bar going black in earlier code jock versions but this was fixed at some point and does not seem to affect the latest version. I use vdf 16.0 on win7 ultimate, latest betaIE. I have not had any aero problems for two or three years. The aero fix date/version is listed on Codejocks website in their update history.
4. There can be problems with certain tab manager settings. Cannot remember which ones sorry. If this was an issue i would comment out enhancements and see how skin affect basic ribbon implementation.
5. If your skin is not proprietary. May I suggest you consider sending it to me and i could see if it upsets my ribbon bar setting. I suggest this is the easiest thing to do.

I believe your understanding lies in point 1 above.

Marco
17-Dec-2010, 01:43 AM
Hi Russel

Thanks for your response.
Attached skin (although not very nice), does show the problem nicely.

eg gr2 - LargeFontsBlue.ini
3961

Cheers,
Marco

Nils G. Svedmyr
17-Dec-2010, 12:38 PM
Hi Russel

Thanks for your response.
Attached skin (although not very nice), does show the problem nicely.

eg gr2 - LargeFontsBlue.ini
3961

Cheers,
Marco

Marco,

I had a quick look at this with your skin together with the QuizMaster Manager. I think Russell is right on the money - in that there are other settings that needs to be right as well to get it to look OK. Using your skin with QMM I also needed (as with any other skin), to also set the codejock Visual Theme property to use the "current skin theme" - else certain parts of the "top of screen" (read menu/toolbar area) does not look nice.

That was actually one (of many) reasons behind the development of QMM's property panel - to be able to test all the combinations available with CodeJock settings. So maybe it would help you to just drop your skin into the program folder of QMM (it will just pick the skin up when starting the program) and try different settings via the property panel and then apply those to your ribbon settings?

I did test without the ribbon class though - so maybe I'm way off here...

Anyway, hope you get it sorted out.

Marco
19-Dec-2010, 06:55 PM
Thanks Nils

I re-downloaded your Quizmaster software and had a look, but as your Ribbon 'Style' does not look similar to the cjSIG code, I found it hard to find the answer.
I'm still hoping that it's a fairly simple setting in the cjSig code to get this to work.

Cheers,
Marco

DaveR
9-Feb-2011, 03:42 PM
Thanks Peter,

That solved some of the weird transparency issues. It did not solve that the Application heading and the Ribbon do not change their style...

See below;
3959

Cheers,
Marco


I want tooltips like that! :)

Marco
9-Feb-2011, 07:49 PM
Hi Dave

I want tooltips like that! :)

Snag-it, the best program there is... (Besides VDF Studio ofcourse ;))