I have a problem with RabidVWM.
I would like to use a transparent background (magic pink) for fancy borders and a backround color so that theme can be changed without modifying the bitmaps / by changing the bakColor. But if I use the vwmBackBmp vwm is black and has redraw issues ( windows and the vwmSelBmp are not drawn/cleared properly).
Can it be done?

Ok, I resolved the draw/clear issue by using VWMUseTransBlt. Oops.
But I still cannot use VWMBackColor :-/

You want what? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do, but it won't draw both a background bitmap and a background color.

That's exactly what I want.
I use a partly transparent image to define the borders.
Because I want my theme to be easy adapted to ones own prefered colors without making new graphics.
Isn't it your module (hint, hint ;-) ?

I have seen something that could be a bug.
If I use transparency the wallpaper shines through despite the shortcut which is between the wallpaper and RabidVWM.

That's how fake transparency works. RabidVWM doesn't do the "punch out" transparency because then you couldn't click on the transparent bits. (and I was too lazy to make it work :)

In some cases it fills the background with pink before drawing everything, I could have an option to use a different color. It might be a while before it's released tho, I have a few other changes that are half done right now.

OTOH, depending on the exact effect you're going for, monochrome bitmaps should use the back and border colors instead of black and white. I don't remember if I've actually tested that, but it might do what you want.

Basically I try to make my own borders so that colors can be personalized without much work.
I imagine the background color as the first layer and above it the partly tranparent image. This get's really cool if one can not only use bitmaps, but png with alpha channel support.

The themer makes only one set of graphics and the background can be customized in a different file by the user.

But maybe this all does not work and I am dreamer ;-)

Ok, the next version will fill the background with the back color if you specify VWMUseTransBlt but not VWMUseFakeTrans/VWMTransparent, even if you're using a backbmp. As I said, it might be a little bit before I can release it since there's some half-finished stuff right now.

Per-pixel alpha with png won't happen for a while, I have to figure out how much I actually have to change first, and it could be a lot.

Gladly I will wait for your next release and give you a lot of feedback ;-)

Thanks a lot.

RabidCow, I definatly look forward to the posibility of per-pixel transparency in rabidvwm.. I've just started playin with your module and like it so far. Alpha Transparency would be iceing on the cake. :D

Now if lsbox would do the same we could all have really cool looking free floating VWMs. :p

It will do per-layer alpha (both fake and true), just not per-pixel. What I mean is that you can have a different alpha for background, selection, and windows (and theoretically for each window), but per-pixel alpha requires changes in a lot of places (I think...), and I'm not even sure how everything should behave. Each of those places also require backwards compatibility hacks, to make sure it still works on 95, 98 and ME.

So yeah... it doesn't really matter how many people want it, it will be a while before I'll have per-pixel alpha in RabidVWM. :/ (hm, unless someone else wants to code it ;)

Talk to xnowfall, he/she might be interested. He/she took over layercut.dll from Syl so he has experience from that module. Then agian, I guess I should not be speeking for him/her. :p