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Hi Sascha,
I like the new office skins :). The tones are very nice. The mouseover effects on all the controls are appreciated! .
I tested all three Office2013 skins with a bundle of common AC controls and the latest DevExpress grids and calendar, and everything looked really nice. The only things I noted that could be improved are illustrated in the attachment, related to using a TsBitBtn with SkinSection TOOLBUTTON.
1. There is an over-draw issue with TsBitBtn on a TsPanel. In the bottom right hand corner you can see where the panel border is interrupted by the buttons. This is common to all three Office 2013 skins.
2. With the blue theme a TsBitBtn has black text on navy when DOWN is set to TRUE, and it is a bit hard to read on some displays. It's fine on my desktop but a little difficult to to read on my notebook. I don't know if you'd want to change anything here, I'm just reporting it; take a look at the attachment see what you think.
I've added all 3 skins to some apps; even with the slight issues described they look great and I'll report back anything else that is discovered as they see wider use. Thank you!
You could probably fix it with something like this:
Code:case GetDateOrder({$IF Defined(DELPHI_XE3) or Defined(DELPHI_XE4)}FormatSettings.{$IFEND}ShortDateFormat) ofHi, the 3rd party.txt file in the AC install folder says:
– Install DevExpress and AlphaControls
– Enable the 'DEVEX6'(if old DevEx version used) or 'DEVEX2011' key in the sDefs.inc file (AlphaControls), must be {$DEFINE DEVEX6} or {$DEFINE DEVEX2011}
– Be sure that latest version of DevExpress is installed if 'DEVEX2011' key used, or check a list of supported DevExpress versions in the beginning of the acLFPainter.pas file (AlphaControls)
– Configure the sSkinManager component and compile the project.
In the run-time will be skinned all DevExpress controls which have LookAndFeel property properly supported. LookAndFeel.NativeStyle property must be False. 'DEVEX' key must be enabled (in the sDefs.inc file) before AlphaControls installing (must be {$DEFINE DEVEX}).
Do not add DevExpress control into SkinManager ThirdParty list.
But the gist is:
1 Install DevExpress with NativeStyles set to FALSE.
2 Enable DEVEX2011 in sDefs.inc
3 Open the AC project group for your delphi version and build both projects, and install if required.
Version 8.50 has a problem that is fixed by installing a new version of the acLFPainter.pas file from this thread [topic='7854']here[/topic].
Version 8.49 worked fine with DevExpress.
I don't think I used version 8.48 so I can't comment on how that built with DevExpress. I will say though it is not typical for an AC build to fail. 8.50 was an exception that perhaps indicates an additional build test that should be performed before release (/nudge!). If all else fails you can perhaps try updating to 8.50 and using the new acLFPainter and see if that fixes things for you, I know it works for me. Alternatively, get 8.49 which is a working stable release, or wait for 8.51 to come out shortly (I suspect).
Good luck!
'Support' wrote:Hello!
Thank you for the message, here is a patched file, you can try it.
Yes that fixes it, thank you.
Your search for the term categorypanel returned 3 results 🙂
Peace,
Hamilton
Thank you both for the suggestions. Apologies that I ended up asking a non-AC question in these forums, I had thought there might be a library I had overlooked. Anyway I really appreciate you both taking the time to reply to an off-topic message as this turned out to be.
Thanks for updating Subway to include the consistent blue effect. I go through phases of what skin I use in development and Subway has been my go-to for some time now, it's really nice!
As well as being happy for the runtime issue being fixed, I need to post to say that I am also very please that my last post here changed my forum status from “The Aged” to “Ace” and I am very grateful for that too. I think it is something that is lost in translation but 'The Aged' just makes one feel old rather than venerable. Someone actually thanked me for a forum post a few weeks ago and called me “The Aged”… Ace is better
.Regards,
Hamilton
Most importantly, the runtime issue has been fixed in 8.31, and many thanks for that.
I won't close this ticket however as the design time issue still exists. In the designer, when you select a ttTab or ttMenu item of a page control the caption of that tab disappears.
To demo, add a TsPageControl to a form. Add 5 tabs to the page control. Make tabs 3, 4 and 5 TabType ttButton tabs but leave tabs 1 and 2 in the default ttTab state. Now, when you click on tab 3, 4 or 5 in the designer then the tab caption disappears. If you click a second tab that is also a ttButton tab then now you have 2 tabs without a caption. If you click on tab that is a regular tab then the caption is redrawn for the button tabs. You can reproduce the same using menu tabs instead of button tabs.
Regards,
Hamilton
Serge can you please mail me the file if you have a fix for this?
Also, if you hadn't noticed, it affects tabsheets set to TabType ttButton also.
Regards,
Hamilton
Hi Foxxer,
The style changes the behaviour of the titlebar items and not the colors specifically; instead the color comes from the active skin. If your users pick a skin that has orange for buttons then you'll get an orange button in the titlebar. For most AC controls there is a SkinData.SkinManager property that you can use to set a skin for a specific control but the title bar items don't have this property so I don't think you'll be able to override the behaviour without some code. I don't have any code handy to do that but it will be something like implementing the OnCustomDraw method to draw the panel – I think there may be something on this in the demo-apps link off the AC main page.
Something else to consider though – you might like orange in the title but the point of giving people skins is that *they* might not like orange – if they pick a purple skin they'll probably expect a purple button and if you force it to be orange it will look bad. Just something to consider.
EDIT: I just looked into the titlebar items and can't see any drawing methods you could intercept. I don't have time to look into that further so hopefully Serge or someone else from the forums jumps in soon to offer some advice. Best of luck.
Regards,
Hamilton
Hi Bobby,
As Serge has said, the entry point and subsequent error in your OP will be caused by your system finding an old file somewhere. You should search your drive for ac*.* and remove any files that are related to AlphaControls. After you've deleted the old files and restart Delphi then it will complain that it can't find the path to the files and offer to remove them. It probably doesn't matter if you do or don't but I'd normally say OK to the IDE removing the AC packages and then I'd just add them (install) after compiling the packages.
The other error with the CRC problem will be caused by your encryption program; again as Serge suggested, you won't get this error if you use the zip program built into Windows or any popular maintained encryption program like 7-zip. Lots of people use AlphaControls and noone else has ever reported this issue so it really is going to be your environment, as are the issues described above.
Best of luck anyway, hope you get AC building soon.
PS Your upgrade process isn't at fault here. I do a similar thing except I don't delete files out of the AC folder, instead I rename the current folder to include the version number as the suffix and then always put the new package in the addon folder using the same name. The advantage of this method is that it is very easy to test old versions if required by renaming or removing the current version then deleting the version suffix to make an old version the active one again. I've been using this method for years and it works well.
Regards,
Hamilton
Hi Serge,
The provided file doesn't fix the compiler error or the warnings. The extra parameter in CheckButtonColor is required to build, as shown in Jacek's post.
Regards,
Hamilton
