How to develop transparent interface? - netbeans

This is not completely a programming question. Today when I load LiLi USB creator software I saw the interfaces are transparent. Is that because they are Photoshopped or is transparency a technique of IDE? I'm using both NetbBeans and Eclipse. To be clear, I'm adding a photo too.

For transparency of the entire GUI, including controls (which doesn't seem to be the case in your screenshot), .NET includes the Form.Opacity property.
Additionally, it may be possible to use LayeredWindows to change only the opacity of the top-level component to produce the desired effect.
For Java specifically, there's an official Java tutorial for that, although it seems to set the opacity of the entire window, including all child components.

Related

How to set anti-aliasing mode for specific gtk+ application

I trying to write simple gtk+ application with pygobject that using gtk.TextView. In stock demo code I see that font sets up with Pango, but I can't find corresponding method for set up antialiasing-mode. By default font looks little ugly for me.
Does anybody know how to set anti-aliasing in gtk+ app (with python or pure C, Pango or other way)?
Well, it's not easy. Many factors interact to get the final font glyphs on your screen.
Maybe one of the easiest ways to change antialiasing globally would be to reprogram fontconfig. This article describes how to disable anti-aliasing, but it indicates where the config item is located.
Then, on a per-application basis, the actual work of drawing the characters is in the hands of Pango, but Pango may be programmed to use Xft (fontconfig) or Cairo to do the actual drawing. In case of Cairo (which seems to gather popularity), the anti-aliasing is done there. There's an article on that here on stackoverflow. Basically there's a function in the Cairo library, called 'cairo_set_aliasing'
Edit: Have a look at the XFCE window manager. In ths Settings | Appearance tool, you can change the anti aliasing 'globally', from 'none', 'slight', 'more' to 'full', and select subpixel in color or gray, horizontal/vertical and details. The code is contained in the xfce4-appearance-settings module of XFCE.
The aliasing setup is in xfce4-settings-4.12.0.tar.bz2, in dialogs/appearance-settings/main.c. I'm not sure if it actually activated there. I've quite a lot of work at the moment, but, if necessary can lend you a hand later.

Can't manipulate lines by dragging in JavaFX scene builder

I am using Windows and I can't change the points of lines by dragging them in the editor with the mouse. The problem seems to only be happening on the Windows version of Scene Builder 2.0. On a MacBook this is not a problem.
What gives? Thanks.
Manipulating lines by dragging and dropping the endpoint doesn't work for me on either Windows or OS X.
Editing and shapes by dragging points is largely unsupported in SceneBuilder 2.0.
There is an existing tweak request in the JavaFX issue tracker:
Content panel should provide editing gestures for CubicCurve, QuadCurve, Polygon...
I commented on the request to note that even basic lines cannot be manipulated.
Quote from the developer (Eric Le Ponner) for the feature request:
Yes, there are no gestures for editing Shape currently. The only way to edit
shapes is by changing properties in the Inspector panel, which I agree
is far from being user friendly.
On the other hand, vector editing is a vast subject (some software are
specialized into that :). And Scene Builder will never become a vector
drawing tool. So the key point is to define what would be interesting
in the context of a tool like Scene Builder. Any specific request is
welcome.
Requests can be filed against the design tool project at:
https://javafx-jira.kenai.com

SmartGWT skinning

Some SmartGWT components are composed by a lot of small images. This is the case of IButton for example that gets rendered using images.
I want to adapt the original SmartGWT CSS to fit my needs, that are basically color changes.
This answer is not quite accurate..
If you have staff with experience with image-based skinning and appropriate tools (eg Adobe Fireworks), start from whatever skin you like.
If you don't, and you need to change the colors but don't care about niceties like rounded corners in older IE (which are impossible without images), start from Simplicity, or start from the CSS3 rendering mode provided for the 3 most popular skins (from 3.1 on):
http://blog.isomorphic.com/css3-mode/
The latter approach (CSS3 mode) is more visually rich than Simplicity.
It seems, that the best way of skinning an SmartGWT application is starting from the Simplicity theme.
Isomorphic team suggest starting from this theme, as it uses less images that the others themes.
As far as I've read, everything should be done by hand (editing images, and CSS).

Changing the GTK Scrollbar image

I would like to change the image of GTK Scrollbar,
i.e) I want to remove the standard looking scrollbar, and add my resources to it.
I dont mind touching gtk code.
I am sure that GTK will maintain all the images as a resources,
Can any one please locate me, where to change the images?
Thanks in advance
Dinesh P
The scrollbars aren't drawn in GTK; the theme engine is responsible for drawing them. In all themes that I know of, they are not drawn using image resources, but instead using GDK or Cairo.
See for example this code from the Clearlooks theme: http://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk-engines/tree/engines/clearlooks/src/clearlooks_draw_glossy.c (line 915, function clearlooks_glossy_draw_scrollbar_stepper())
If you want to use images, you will have to change a theme engine or write your own.
<standard-lecture>
It's generally frowned upon to do this sort of thing in GTK; the toolkit is all about usability. Users with particular needs may have configured their themes in a particular way, for example to be compatible with a screen reader, and drawing your own customized stuff may interfere with that. At the very least, you will piss people off by breaking their desktop themes. As an application developer, you should build your application out of the widgets that GTK and other libraries provide, and the user should be free to decide how it looks on their own desktop. </standard-lecture>

gwt rounded panel (standards based widget akin to DecoratorPanel)

I'm trying to write an app that uses rounded corners for framing the app. I've found a package on google code that has a RoundedLinePanel and it seems to work... kind of.
I'm wondering a few things. Is this what people are using for creating divs with round corners in GWT? The release notes say it hasn't changed in almost a year.
Also, I can't seem to set a fixed height of this div (setHeight sets it on the wrapper div, not the inner one). so it's not useful to me as I have a fixed height app.
Finally, if anyone can suggest a better mechanism for creating rounded corner divs in GWT I'm all ears.
There is a beautiful way to rounded corners using CSS 3 (which thus doesn't work in IE<=8 , but will in IE9 developer preview). Take a look at http://css3please.com/ to see the styles involved. It's fairly simple using a border-radius (or -moz-border-radius or -webkit-border-radius property). In GWT just add a Style Class Name you want to the elements you want to have a rounded border and you are go. Of course supporting rounded corners in legacy browsers is harder, but do you need to do it?
For legacy browsers it is quite harder, depending on the actual context. It always involves images for the borders. You have to create images that mask the border of the box. What works is the trick described in this answer. To use this in GWT you can use either uibinder, htmlelement or you create your own widget. A broader explanation of the technique can also be found here.
The solution most commonly found, the decoratorPanel, is deprecated in the current version of GWT (if you use it with GWT 2.1.1, for example, you'll wind up with a mess of incompatilbility between the GWT-required doctype, the decoratorPanel, and IE, especially IE8).
The required GWT 2.1.1 doctype (!doctype html) also disables the popular rounded-corners.htc for IE8.
You can use the CSS3 series of rounded corner properties to add classes, but they will not work in IE versions prior to 9.
JQuery and other javascript rounded corners have a high probability of conflicting with the native GWT js, so we abandoned those as a possible solution, though I personally did no testing for these.
We wound up having to use rounded corner images in order to be truly cross-browser compliant and create a consistent look.