Info For People Making Black Vs'

Windows suffers the same glitch that Aqua when it comes to Black themes, they just were never designed with them in mind.

It turns out that there is no way to correct the glitch that has so far prevented Stefanka and I from releasing out Black VS'. Stefanka's JetBlack port looked stunning but proved totally unusable because of this glitch, mine is also similar crippled by the glitch but to a lesser extent.

The Glitch:

As you may have heard, JetBlack was not a complete success when it comes to Shapeshifter themes, although stunning in terms of looks, it was crippled with usability issues due to Black on Black text turning up in the most inconvenient of situations.

The same is true for the Windows version. The thing is, we (Stefanka and I, and a few others on this board) knew that the areas that were having the Black on Black issue could be set to use white text, but how?

The Solution:

Windows Classic uses the message box text colour to set the dialog text, which means the high contrast (Black/White) colour scheme works. So it's just a matter of setting the text colour white surely...

Where it all goes horribly wrong:

Unfortunately, Luna (or more precisely UXTheme.dll) does not support the use of the message box text colour as the colour for dialog and therefore, has no variable for the dialog text colour. In other words, Microsoft never intended a Visual Style to be used as an alternative to the High Contrast (Black/White) classic Colour scheme.

This also prevents any Black based theme being usable. If it affected the window text it wouldn't be as bad, but the only thing you can't make the text white on is what basically is the main colour area of a theme.

Unless someone wants to rewrite UXTheme.ddl (without any previous sources obviously), Microsoft do not appear to either a.) Know of this issue or Care, as the SP2 UXTheme.dll doesn't appear to have changed.

Note: Do you think it's worth contacting MS on this issue?

#136094

Note: Do you think it's worth contacting MS on this issue?

As everyone knows (or should know), that XP was not intended to be themed, thus contacting Microsoft for this issue may be ignored or possibly get Microsoft to investigate the themeing solutions as these replace/hack the existing files, thus violate the EULA.

Vector

#136107

Yeah, I doubt MS would be all that quick in helping us to further distance ourselves from the orignal look.

I'm still amazed we're able to get this far.

If you decide to petition them, more power to you. It's a shame that the one thing can hinder so many possiblely good themes from being fully finished.

#136118

Originally posted by Vector@Mar 28 2004, 07:38 AM

... as these replace/hack the existing files, thus violate the EULA...

RING RING! clickie!

#136187

Here is why TGTSoft can get away with it:

UXTheme.dll Patch is technically breaking the EULA hence why they distribute it for free and don't give technical support or anything else for it.

StyleXP however is a valid application that can control the entire theme and essentially replace the display settings section of Control Panel, therefore it is actually not breaking the EULA because it is a full software replacement as opposed to a hack.

You also may want to note that MS were originally going to let Stardock create the alternate official themes for XP but Stardock decided to go their own way with Windowblinds, so MS didn't make any more official themes for XP.

#136257

What about WB, does it get around the problem?

also, does it rmeain a problem for macs? I'd love to have a black style on a mac.

#136258

the areas the problem appears on on Aqua affects the theme less than it does on Windows. JetBlack works fine on a Mac but some programs just use Black text and they are difficult to use with JetBlack.

As for Windowblinds, as it blocks the UXTheme.dll calls to use them itself you can't use it with Visual Styles and so I don't use it, however, assuming that Stardock realised that not every theme in the world is grey or white, they should have replaced the dialog colour call with there own one that works.

#136260