Bad shadow of help tooltip in the Simple UI

Another question for Alwil… why is this happening (I repeat, it’s a case with all skins and not one particular) ? I’m talking about that annoying blue shadow (see screenshot). When you press HELP (qauestionmark) and place it somewhere over some button, and when you click to find out what’s the purpose of the button, it shows you that small pop-up window. I remember before it looked ok. I don’t believe you changed something in latest beta build, but I remember I saw that before as well… Sure no one of us (skin makers) made those shadows in blue color. This screenshot shows Martin’s skin, and same story is with all skins made by me, RejZoR or any one else…

See here:

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1458/untitled95or.jpg

Yea, i think there are more better things in mind. Also S.Z.Craftec im glad im not the only one having that problem. I hate that blue shadow. Hope they fix this. Also i also notice sometimes it goes and sometimes it come back.

I don’t have it… maybe my video card and monitor are poor ones, without the definition you have in yours.
I just have a grayed shadow as seems it should be.
Maybe this help the troubleshooting.

I don’t have it either.
See the screenshot.

It’s not always there, just as AvastForever mentioned in here:

...Also i also notice sometimes it goes and sometimes it come back...

Maybe it’s the period of time when everything works fine on your side, but again… it keeps changing its appearance. It’s not always blue on my system either. Sometimes it looks fine, and sometimes it just appears in blue color.

I remember in one of those old threads, Igor mentioned something (or was it someone else?) that they tried to find out what’s causing this, but they were never able to find the cause. I also remember they were able to reproduce this behaviour.

And this is a proof that sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not… right now everything works fine. It’s just you guys never played with it so often to be able to notice that behaviour. Here is a screenshot:

And another one… no problems at all… btw I think I found out what’s causing it… when USE TRANSLUCENT EFFEECTS option is enabled (under APPEARANCE, avast! settings) and you try to change skin to some other… not always, but usually pop-up tips changes its shadow color to blue. When USE TRANSLUCENT EFFEECTS option is disabled, everything works fine. Remember, you have to close avast! window when you change those settings and reopen avast! to apply changes. :wink:

Can Alwil say something about this please ? Those pop-up windows are not part of the skin, actually we (designers) can control the color of the background and text, but we can not control shadow attributes, nor its appearance in any way. It’s deep inside the code I believe.

Thanks in advance !

Edit: Yes definitelly, when TRANSLUCENT EFFECTS are on, problems are starting to act.

I am certainly not sure, but if I remember correctly, the whole tip window is painted by HtmlHelp (i.e. Windows component) - so we cannot do much about it (except for recoding the whole thing ourselves, instead of relying on HtmlHelp). The wrong color of the window border may have something to do with the color below it (i.e. on desktop, for example).

You are right Igor, something is related to the background picture… I just changed my wallpaper to something stupid red, and it shows right away…

But again, why is it happening when translucent effects are on ?

When it will be added to this new window of acknowledgment and the new icons that the S.Z.Craftec created?
These that are here.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12640.210

Well mine reacts in the same way and I can see the background image of my desktop wallpaper, that is what I thought is meant to happen on Translucent effects, this however doesn’t work on the rest of the skin. So it would appear that the translucent effect is trying to work on the pop-ups but the translucent effect only works the drop shadow effect (effectively and effect on an effect ;D).

So depending on what the background under the avast skin is it is seen instead of a drop shadow effect.

@Joooo
When there are less important things than cosmetic issues to be resolved I would have thought. Then perhaps it will get done because it will be at the top of the list.

Well, starting my shortest ever - one day - BETA testing. ;D

Avast has detection of spywares or adwares ?

Some of them, yes?
For a full protection on spywares and adwares you should run SpyBot and Ad-aware and use SpywareBlaster, for instance.
Not a single application does everything… you should use layered defense.

Yup. It works now alright. I just turn it off and now i dont see it. Through got to say that one time i saw it again, only this time is not blue, it was gray. But that just happend to me one time. I try working with it for 20 more times and only 4 times I saw it. Which is quite better than when it was on. Though it strike me odd that when that effect is on it shows more…

Yes I remember we had that problem with translucent effect turned on before… strange that you see that shadow problem even when translucent effects are turned off. Never ever happens on my end. And btw, it has to be gray, it’s a shadow. On my system it was always gray… actually it’s a net (grid) made of pixels… one pixel and then one empty spot, one pixel and then one empty spot and so on and so on… it’s not a real “shadow” shadow where transparent channel is being used (as it should be in my opinion). That could be solved by using 32-bit PNG file formats with Alpha channel, but ActiveSkin doesn’t support PNGs so we are doomed I guess…

See examples… first one shows how it’s solved on those pop-up windows (IE. when help required) in avast!

http://img499.imageshack.us/img499/9129/untitleda4ni.jpg

I know that Windows by default do not present those shadows that way… in Windows pop-ups shadows nice and smooth. See here:

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/4488/untitledc5mn.jpg

Also, this is how it should be in avast! and then I’m sure we wouldn’t have those problems with translucency turned on in avast!. Spot the difference between the form of shadows in my first screenshot and this one:

http://img492.imageshack.us/img492/7913/untitledb1kt.jpg