[Hamilton]

Delphi 2010 has a TTrayIcon which I think was introduced in 2009. If you have an older version of Delphi then you'll find that Jedi and many other vendors provide free tray icon controls. The only part of a TTrayIcon that is visible is the icon in the tray, which will not be skinned anyway, so there is little advantage to having an ac version of that. The popup menu associated with the tray is another matter – TPopupMenu could be skinned but isn't currently.

[Hamilton]

Cheers Serge that fixes the problem. The changes to the “DefaultContentOddColor” method do make the bands more distinct with the WEB skin as well as several others I had noticed had faint bands before. I also had a quick look through all the skins and I can't see that the change has 'broken' anything so this seems good to include in the next release. Thanks again.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

DevExpress 6.57, Delphi 2010 with all updates. I plan to update to the latest version of DevExpress when they have fixed the compatibility problems with XE2.

Unless you recompiled the code I provided for the test app we should be able to exclude these versions as variables? And if you did recompile would you consider running the .exe I supplied and let me know if the colors are the same?

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

I tried the test app here on 3 PC's using the latest skins from AC 7.53 and the banding is not as pronounced on any of them as it is on your screen shots. The attached images show

1. How the Office2010 Blue and WEB skins look on my PC.

2. How the WEB skin looks on my PC with your screen shot in the background.

The second image is the interesting one – it really highlights how different what I'm seeing is based on what you've produced, and it rules out the vagaries of monitor colors I think because on my monitor I can see the bands in your screen shot quite clearly. It's as if the skin in the distributable is different to what you're using internally but I'm sure you would have checked that so I'm not sure what else it could be.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Confirmed fixed.

[Hamilton]

Hi CheshireCat thanks for trying but the problem remains. I can see that the borders have become more narrow in the modified skin but the buttons still block cover the border, as shown in the screen shot attached.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Thanks Serge I can't ask for more than that 🙂 TCategoryPanelGroup is a cool new component that I can see myself using in a number of different applications and so far it is the only control that I've had to 'skin' manually. Cheers for considering this for future development.

EDIT: In answer to your question, I'm not using any skin section, the only colors I'm using are those described in the OP. I see what you mean about using a skin section, I could do that its just that I feared that if I used that kind of approach I would end up with a color scheme that was difficult to maintain in an application that allowed the user to select the skin. In other words, if I made the control look nice for one skin then it may not work with others. TBH I didn't spend a lot of time looking into that however so it is somethign to keeep in mind if I have more time. However, at the end of the day it is not good to be setting the colors manually anyway and I'm hesitant to spend a lot of time on something that seems to me like it is developing the 'wrong' thing. I'd be better off writing a skinned component but that is something that would take more time than I have right now.

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

As you say the buttons are not truly resized but that is the way it *appears*. You can perhaps see from the screen shots in my earlier post that a TsBitBtn drawn with the WEB skin does not block the border unless the button is in the down state whereas for DeepPurple all of the buttons cover the border. I won't be using this skin in my apps so I am happy to let this lie..

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

I've investigated this further and learned that if I deactivate the Alpha Control skin manager then TestComplete starts recognizing the control properties. I've implemented a feature to turn off the skin manager in the app and now I can record tests the same as if I were using standard VCL controls. If I get more time later I'll investigate how the skin manager is affecting the control properties and see if I can come up with a better solution but this is sufficient for now. The app looks pretty average without a skin but the test scripts don't mind that too much 😛

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

My initial impression was that the banding is subtle but distinct; however after using the grid for longer I think if there is a lot of data then the banding is too subtle. The attached image compares the same grid with Office2010Blue and WEB themes. To my eye, in the column with the “Test2” values you can see the banding fairly well for both skins but if you have a grid that contains more data like the final column then you cannot see the rows at all. IMO the banding should be a few shades darker. What do you think?

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

The update doesn't affect the button size; the selection color seems to be a bit darker but I can't see any other change on the buttons.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

Please find the test program attached. After extracting the contents from the zip you'll just need to enter your skin path then you should be good to go. I've put the current BlueGlass and WEB skins in the default folder as placeholders.

Cheers,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

The updated theme fixes the grid selection.

The attached image shows the button issue. Definitions for the panel and button are included below. I suspect the issue is caused by the skin sections I'm using but this same configuration works for the other 11 skins in the project.

EDIT: I've attached a second screen shot that shows the same buttons with the WEB skin.

object pnlSetup: TsPanel

Left = 0

Top = 325

Width = 1008

Height = 76

Align = alTop

BevelOuter = bvNone

TabOrder = 2

Visible = False

SkinData.SkinSection = 'TOOLBAR'

object btnDatabase: TsBitBtn

Left = 360

Top = 0

Width = 60

Height = 76

Action = ActionSetupDatabase

Align = alLeft

Caption = 'Database'

DoubleBuffered = True

Layout = blGlyphTop

ParentDoubleBuffered = False

TabOrder = 4

TabStop = False

AnimatEvents = [aeMouseEnter, aeGlobalDef]

SkinData.SkinSection = 'TOOLBUTTON'

ImageIndex = 21

Images = sAlphaImageListLarge

end

end

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

I've worked this out now. The code to set the banding may have been introduced before the component supported this or may have just been an oversight. What complicated the investigation is that the default theme for the app is WEB and for that skin the banding doesn't show as the two colours are too close. If you look *very* closely at the screen shot on my previous post the grid that doesn't look like it has a band is using the WEB skin; it actually does have a band it is just extremely faint. Perhaps an update to the WEB skin could improve this.

Thanks for the help.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Thx Serge I should have recognized the file name and realized that was the problem; removing the DCU's left me with the same sDefs I always use.. DevExpress haven't released for XE2 yet so I'll hold off using the new product for now, wish they were as fast as you 🙂 Closing this issue and hoping sinks to the end of the forum quickly 😉

[Hamilton]

EDIT: Thx Serge looking at this now.

[Hamilton]

I cannot reproduce the issue you describe using Delphi 2010 with AC 7.51. The screen shot shows a number sequence 0..9 repeated; you can see from the position of the grip in the scroll bar that I've scrolled horizontally to show the text being displayed. OP asked whether it was worth upgrading; seems to me the answer is yes.

I did find a different issue while testing; if you drag the scroll bar to the right and then back to the left it doesn't take you all the way back to the left. You can click the buttons to scroll further left but no amount of fiddling with the scroll bar will get you back to the leftmost text. Repeatedly scrolling to the right then to the left, you find a different leftmost point each time. Hard to explain easy to demonstrate, just scroll left and right and you'll see what I mean.

peace,

hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Serge,

Version 7.50 has fixed the problem so tick this one off the list.

PS Thx for XE2 support will be testing that shortly.

Cheers,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Jamie,

Well that's a new feature I've never noticed. I tested the scroll width under Delphi 2010 with AC v7.49 and it seemed to work fine with various skins. I compared its behaviour against TListBox and seemed OK.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Hamilton]

Hi Jamie,

Delphi doesn't have a horizontal scroll bar on TListBox by default and nor does TsListBox. I'm not positive but I doubt C++ adds this functionality so I'd guess you have some custom code to add this? If you are doing this with custom code and that's broken perhaps you could look at something like http://delphi.about.com/cs/adptips2000/a/bltip0500_3.htm to get it working.

Regards,

Hamilton

[Author]

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