Docking Pane and WindowBlinds

First, I'd like to compliment the CodeJock team on the Docking Panes toolset... due to the nature of the app, the toolkit has helped make the product a practical development project.

I have StarDock WindowBlinds on my PC, and when testing our App, our app using Command Bar and Docking Panes controls adopts the WindowBlinds skins pretty well for the most part, with one notable exception: the Docking Panes titlebars "pin" and "close" icons are physically present (clicking in the area where they should be will work) but they are not visible... there is no bmp in the skin, and I'm not sure how or if I can add one.

So: Can our developers hardwire "pin" and "close" icons into our app, so that computers running WindowBlinds skins will have visible icons, or is there any way to modify a WindowBlinds skin to include the "pin" and "close" icons in the skin?

I'm sure it's a matter of telling WindowBlinds the exact control name to paint over, and which graphic file to use for the task... but I don't know where to start looking, and I don't want the development team trying to reverse engineer WB or XTP to figure it out.

I posted this on the WindowBlinds forum, and the general response is "CodeJock does their own skinning, so you're out of luck".

Well, the other CodeJock controls accept the skin components really nicely, except for these two important icons.

Searches on "+codejock +windowblinds" on google, and on the WindowBlinds and CodeJock developer forums don't turn up any results.

Can anyone either provide info on what we'd have to add to our app to make sure the "pin" and "close" icons are either taken from our App, or how to make WindowBlinds skins that show the icons?

Of course, I don't want to release the App with a "WindowBlinds users click here" note telling why the "pin" and "close" icons aren't visible on the panes' title bars.

Thanks in advance.

Hi... most themes exhibit the problem: One is Vector-Cell, available at:

http://www.wincustomize.com/download.aspx?LibID=1&SkinID =4350

here is an image showing the top-right corners of an active pane and a disabled pane, with the WindowBlinds Vector Cell skin, and again (STILL with WindowBlinds Active!) using the "Windows XP Style" chosen, and appliied.



It looks like most skins that use custom graphics on the titlebars exhibit this problem. I would like our app to adopt whatever skin the user has applied to their system (rather than skin the app to have a unique look, different from the users OS) so any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry I will have to ask the developers the answer to this question:
--what theme of docking panes do you use (guess xtpPaneThemeNativeWinXP)

but if the above info doesn't help, I will ask the developer to get involved. Thanks

oleg wrote: What version do you use? I don't see the problem with 9.81 release:

Hi Oleg; thanks for that update; we have 9.70 in the app, and we're going to be starting closed beta soon, and I don't know if we want to introduce into the development cycle a change to 9.81... perhaps you can reassure me that the upgrade from 9.7 to 9.81 will very likely go smoothly, so it's better to do now, prior to FCS, rather than trying to make it part of a point release upgrade later? What's your advice?

Thanks