deleted by Win98SEonSteroids

Uberskin 8.3.1 kills eMule 0.49b (the official version) - crashes in kernel32.dll, at startup. Never happened with any previous version of Uberskin.

UberSkin 8.3.2 released
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin.exe
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin_u.exe
(without stock skins, 150K)

- Restricted MSLU helper to tree view class (to fix Emule issue);
- Fixed some menu drawing bugs;
- New debug flags.

Debug flags: (\windows\uberskin.ini)

Thank you so much, eMule issue is fixed!

Got some other problem though; it's been there for a while but since I'm rarely using that application, I haven't noticed it until recently and delayed reporting the issue until now.

Registry Medic 3.0 build 807 (an old version, since a newer one didn't support Win9x at the time and this one was enough for me anyway) has its own (fancy) skinning. However, at times, while hovering the buttons labeled 'more' (to the right), the Windows native buttons skinned by Uberskin that were supposed to be hidden, show up shifted to the right of the application's buttons.

I just reported this in case it might help you squash some hidden bugs.

Click to view attachment

deleted by Win98SEonSteroids

i have installed new uberskin. for me works good. i will test the farcry if it will crash. also the localizations bugs which reported philco does not appear here. all works good. strange.

Hi folks ,

A few weeks ago I found this great forum and here is my very first post and my very first contribution to the community: I've added french translation to Tihiy's KTM8.DLL. You can download the modified file here:

KTM8.zip french

I've installed uberskin and so far here are the problems I found (Win98SE french, grx card is SiS 530):

+ FreeCommander v2008.06a Search window is truncated when I run it. So far, the solution I found is to minimize FreeCommander and restore it, the window is restored completely (but I need to do that each time I run the search panel).

Here are 2 screenshots:

screenshot 1

screenshot 2


+ Even if the taskbar is locked, I can put manually program's windows a/o some applications start under it (not each time).


my apologize if I don't answer quickly but I can't be online every days.

Nice work, I really like the basic WinXP look. Thanks!

Now if I can figure out out to get the Bliss background to work right, it's just a rectangle in the middle of the screen.

what do you mean, "it is just a rectangle on your screen"?

try to set it 'stretch' mode, maybe I got you wrong

Windows Apps that aren't skinned by Uberskin!

I apologize if I'm overstating the obvious but I've not seen these listed before, so here it goes:

(Win98 FE + Uberskin 8.3.2)

System Configuration Editor
Scandisk
Disk Defragmenter
Clipboard View
Character Map
Solitaire
MineSweeper
Hearts
Freecell

I'll add more apps if/when I find them.

Those are 16-bit apps; you must use 32-bit ones. I have no interest to see there apps here.

deleted by Win98SEonSteroids

Sorry Tihiy, I wasn't aware of the 16bit app limitation.

This may be a dumb question (I'm not a developer), but why would Defrag be 16bit (un-skinnable) and Disk Cleanup be 32bit (skinnable)?

Because Microsoft was lazy and just copied the windows 3.1 defrag

Not quite...
Windows 3.x did not have it's own GUI based defrag tool. MS-DOS 6.x (and other DOSes) had a text based defrag tool to use outside of Windows.
The Windows 9x defrag is based on a Windows 3.x defragmenter from Symantec. Probably an early version of Speed Disk.

There's plenty of 16-bit applets and code lying around in Windows 9x...

UberSkin 8.3.5 released!
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin.exe
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin_u.exe
(without stock skins, 150K)

- Fixed various skinning and other minor/usability bugs;
- Implemented trackbar hot-tracking.

Thank you for continuously improving this wonderful tool!

Recently I've been working on a tiny tool that uses classic progress bars with custom colors. As opposed to XP where one can programmatically select themed or classic progress bars, in Uberskin there's no such ability - all progress bars will be skinned, regardless of the selected style.

I was wondering: could you implement such switches so that each skinned element could be displayed in classic mode if so selected by an application? Apologies if I'm asking too much, it's just an idea, based on the fact that I actually had to develop/test part of my application on XP, to get it work correctly in this regard.

Thanks again for your efforts!

Simply spectacular… I would not know what other to add!

MaxFrax

Oh well, in XP you can add manifest or use UXTheme functions to control skinning. But so far i'm unable to implement UXTheme routines - they're just very inconvenient to use; it can't be implemented partially, and requires a lot of dubious work.
I can, however, add ability to disable skinning for non-default-colored progressbars (they're rare anyway). Well?

Thanks, I really appreciate the offer but thinking deeper, it would be a bit inconvenient for Uberskin users to go to some options panel or worse - edit a configuration file - to get the desired behavior.

In my app I have a simple checkbox that switches from themed mode to custom mode and works fine in XP (I can compile and send it to you if you want to test). The app is written in AutoHotkey and the standard manifest can be seen in the Autohotkey\Compiler\AutoHotkeySC.bin file (I wanted to post the manifest here but I got an authorization error
IMHO it would be best if you could fully implement the UXTheme functions, no matter how long it would take. Time allowing, that is. I'd do my best to help testing, if so.

Added manifest as attachment: Click to view attachment

A little curious thing. The uberskin.ini file is missing in my computer but it still works.

How i restore it(or create another)?

If you want uberskin.ini for debug options, go and create one with Notepad. It should be in \windows directory.

Hi Tihiy...

I wanted to let you know that, HxD, a multi-paned Hex Editor, crashes (for me) when UberSkin is active.

Using UberSkin.ini, I was able to trackdown the setting that causes the crash:

NoSalvation4U=0



What's weird is that HxD doesn't always crash (it crashes about 80% of the time)...
When it doesn't crash, HxD's options are blank when accessed.

When I use NoSalvation4U=1, there are no problems.

Thanks for any help with this.

UberSkin 8.3.6 released!
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin.exe
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin_u.exe
(without stock skins, 150K)

- Fixed fix for tab controls, introduced in 0.3.5.

Thank you for reporting this very serious issue.

Tihiy, there's something not so clear to me; if you could please offer some insight...

Haven't yet installed 8.3.6 to confirm but last time I installed/updated UberSkin (and probably other times too but I just forgot), upon reboot it changed my display resolution on primary monitor only from 1024x768 to something lower (800x600 or 640x480, couldn't pinpoint it). Since I hate having all my desktop icons mixed up (used to have no icons on desktop but I'm getting old and reckless), I had to push the Reset button before anything got displayed, so Windows probably recovered from a registry backup (I have scanreg running at startup) and everything came up properly this time.

My questions are:
1. Does UberSkin installation do something to Windows' startup routine, so that it forces it to switch to lower resolution on reboot?
2. If so, could anything be done to avoid this in newer UberSkin versions?
3. Did my forced reset break anything in UberSkin's update so that it could possibly be improperly installed?

Thank you in advance.

1. No.
2. ???
3. PROFIT!

WooHoo!
Works great here...
Thanks Tihiy!

No problem... glad I could help .

i just installed it works like a charm

GREAT as ALWAYS RP8........."Just can't await

< same results as Drugwash -- Post #425 >

After trying to install Uberskin 8.3.6 ( uberskin_u.exe )

I had to push the Reset button ( also )
before anything got displayed,

Upon reboot it changed my display resolution
on primary monitor from 1024x768 to 640x480 ( 8-bit color ).

It doesn't necessarily have to be directly related to UberSkin. I installed 8.3.6 yesterday and did not face that issue.

Related to lower resolution modes being forced into, I've found (after banging my head on the wall and multiple reboots and other recovery attempts) that for some reason, monitors may send a wrong reply to drivers' requests. Simply turning off and back on the power on monitors (followed by a reboot) fixed the problem.

Thanks for Your <quick> response , Drugwash .
I may try again , as I continue to re-install everything .

Nice work Tihiy! Using Uberskin, Bliss and Iconoid makes for an almost perfect XP like desktop. Thanks!

.

Hello

I'm still experiencing some minor problems with UberSkin. Some application has caption written over the icon in the taskbar buttons as shown in the picture.

You can reproduce with the Total Commander. Just start copying a large file and click Background button. When this window is inactive (or may be it should be active, I don't remember exactly), and when the percentage in caption is changed, the caption is drawn over the icon. When you move mouse over the taskbar button, caption returns to correct position till the next percentage (caption) change. I've experienced this bug from 8.2 versions or may be even earlier.

After installing UberSkin 8.2.6 a new problem appeared (though this time I'm not sure that it is because of UberSkin, but it appeared right after its installation). After I played DOS fullscreen graphic game and exited it, opened window was black until its redraw (after resize, collapsing and restoring, etc.). In UberSkin 8.2.4 I did not experienced it. Now I cannot test the issues because my Win98 PC is in countryside, I'm not going there in next week or two.

In any case, Tihiy, great thanks for exellent work. Now I cannot imagine my Windows 98 without UberSkin.

And one more question: are LameSkin themes compatible with UberSkin?
I already asked this question before, but got no answer.

They should be. There might be a few things missing from the theme (new features), but that depends on the theme itself. Either way, There's no reason for them to not work.

Hi Tihiy....

I've been looking for ages for something that would let me skin Win98SE the way that I wanted and something that was still in shall we say, in production... with support for 95/98/98SE/ME??.. This program is the Bomb! Totally amazing.

I do have a couple of questions though...

1/ Would it be possible to add a command line to the skin.ini file that would allow you to set the background graphic that you wish to use for your style/theme??

2/ If it is possible in 1 above, could it have say 4 different values for different window sizes? ie: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024??

So you would have something like:
background640="wallpapername"
background800="anotherpapername"
and so on??

Also, I have installed a program that adds 2 buttons to the upper right buttons for min/max/exit and the two new buttons do a "Pinned" and "Rollup". It's a very small program and uses very little resources as well, but I find them just so helpful. Any chance that defines could be added to catch and hook the program as it draws those buttons?? The first one I tried was Winroll (on the virtualplastic site) and it worked great for just rolling up the windows (like the MAC does), and i can't think of the other versions name that does both... pinning to stay on top and roll up.... ??

Also.... I've been playing with LiteStep as well... and I wondered if it would be possible to say drop the rainmeter, and rainlendar DLL files in and get them to link/work with the Explorer shell??

Anyhow... before it sounds like I've got my nose toooo brown... I just have to say thanks again for such a great program.... In the words of New winamp installs... it really kicks the lamas a**!!! and windowblinds and so on and so on and so on... lol....

Greg
BrotherTank

PS: Will you ever take the project to open source once you've got it to a point where it's as complete as you think it should be???

Hi Tihiy...

I wanted to let you know that, Cool Edit 2000, an audio editing app, will not always open correctly when UberSkin is active.

What happens is... the splash screen is briefly shown, then Cool Edit 2000 aborts opening.

There is no error message...

Sometimes, Cool Edit 2000 will open correctly, as many as 5 or 6 times in a row... then, it will fail to open may times in a row.

With UberSkin disabled, Cool Edit 2000 always opens correctly.

I tried using UberSkin.ini to deduce the setting that causes this problem, but was unable to find an answer.


Thanks for any help you can provide with this problem.

ROTFLMAO....

All Heil the Undepants Gnomes.....

BrotherTank

Hi there Tihiy...

I really love this program.... but I have found a few more little problems.... sorry....

mprexe.exe crashes - 2 times when I was browsing the themes. Was clicking apply button when moving from theme to theme - first error is the mprexe.exe - then Rundll32 crashes - and you can't run anything to get control of the machine back. Each time you try, Rundll32 error. Only way out was to Reboot the machine.


Machine is a PIII - 1G - 288M RAM Memory - SiS 630 Graphics card with 32M shared RAM - Win98SE with 98Plus pack installed. No other tweaks or updates other than those directly installed from the MickySoft Update site. Only software running at the time of the crash was Explorer/My Computer and Display Properties.

Program doesn't like ColorMe PC (virtual plastic site) - It destroys the display after a few colour changes and program becomes unusable.

Switch to Vertical Taskbar and traybar drawn is the horizontal one. Start button is also drawn horizontal in vertical taskbar placement.

Greg
BrotherTank

Deducing from that, your system has abnormally high GDI resource usage. ColourMe is extremely leaky program, insanely bad. It's leaking about 5% of GDI at one scheme change.

All your symptoms can be explained by GDI resources leaked. It has nothing to do with UberSkin.

HI,

does Überskin adjust FPU precision? Because Max Payne won't run when Uberskin is installed complaining that it needs at least 53 bits fpu precision...

Strange issue.

Uninstalling Uberskin fixes the problem. I'm using version 8.3.6

Ok... but that doesn't explain the crashes.... I hadn't used the ColorMe program. I was using the windows Display Properties screen when the crashes occured. If it happens again, I'll get those numbers for you and pass them along.

And knowing that the colorme program is leaking and reducing the GDI is good to know. I will remove it. I've only used it a few times when I wanted to tweak a colour slightly.

Greg
BrotherTank

Tihiy, do you think you could apply the ideas (and code, maybe) in this article to a future version of Uberskin? If feasible, that is.

UberSkin 8.3.8 released
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin.exe
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/uberskin_u.exe
(without stock skins)

- Fixed (i really hope) FPU and performance problems;
- Some minor fixes;
- Enhanced USalvation technology to prevent incorrectly written programs from leaking shared icon handles.

Kernel Task Manager updated!
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/KTM8.zip
- Does not use icon resources anymore;
- Added Global Memory (16-bit) monitor.

Now what:
Unfortunately, this year delivers pain and fail.
The goal for RP8 was to be compatible with 99,9% of anything and anybody, and it seems to fail that task, due to PB compiler and lack of time.
Delicious 32-bit icons and other stuff does not seem to work stable enough. It may be much better than RP7, but i'm not accepting compromises.
So there are 3 possible RP ways:
- Miracle;
- Rewrite;
- Death.

We'll know 2009. And i must promise some Christmas presento for you.

If there's anyone that can perform a miracle, that's Tihiy. I don't believe in Santa but I do believe in you.

Tihiy, thank you for the new version of UberSkin (for that Kernel Task Manager too).

Do I need to uninstall the previous version or can I install it over?

About ktm8.
I can't activate OtherOptions .How can I do?
Thank you!

new icon an setup uberskin.... thx, i test new version ....

XPRaider icons works with Uberskin;Maybe RP8?*thanks for all thee hard work on 98SE!!! Cheers!!! 2009 will be very "Promising-"it's just an intuition i have

Cool new version. I'm sorry to report that Max Payne still complains with the same error message (about FPU precision).

No other problems though. Great work.