Need a tutorial to skin window captions, etc accurately

[Duck]

On the left is my stock image. On the right is how windows has chosen to display it. Basic themes work fine I can get it to work properly. I've set the margins correctly but it seems it is not enough with aero themes.

There's got to be a way to make it work properly. Has anyone been able to do it?


(dont know why this is all underlined, this forum is difficult to use i can't un-underline it)


(http://i.imgur.com/JA0aB.png)http://i.imgur.com/JA0aB.png (http://i.imgur.com/JA0aB.png)

[Mr GRiM]

Caption buttons are the buttons for close min max, I think you mean the explorer frame looking at your image, aero is a bit funny, you need to ad another 1px gab on the top, left and right sides for each image for the top part of the frame, on the bottom image it's the same but a 1px gap on the bottom instead of the top, the sides just need the gap on the left or right depending on what side you are doing.

[Duck]

Ya the explorer frame. I thought it was called the caption.

There is no top image and bottom image. It is just left and right image. That green line through the middle was to show how it changes the size and color when applied to windows on the right.

I even tried setting margins to 0, 0, 0, 0 and starting of with a larger image, I reduced it's hight by 1px at a time until it would display correctly with no vertical stretching/shrinking. It wouldn't do it!

[Duck]

Finally, I'm about 95% there. It's not 100% correct like you can get when making a basic theme, but you need a microscope to be able to spot that's it's not quite pixel perfect.


I deleted all the glossy/glass shines:
Windows and Caption Buttons > Aero > Dwm Window > Reflections

Set the margins on the left part of the frame (e.g. 3, 0, 0, 0)...
Windows and Caption Buttons > Aero > Dwm Window > Frames > Normal > Left
Changing the margins for 'Left', changes the appearance of 'Top'!


Also, you have to oversize the images to more than might be necessary like 12x60px for top, even though it should work as 5px wide. CONTENTMARGINS:MARGINS has something to do with it. I set it to 6, 0, 0, 0 and seems to work fine with the 12px wide image.



Am I the first to spot that left and right are very much the wrong way round?!? (Left is right, right is left)...
Windows and Caption Buttons > Aero > Dwm Window > Frames > ToolWindow > Left
Windows and Caption Buttons > Aero > Dwm Window > Frames > ToolWindow > Right