WindowBlinds 7.2c BETA (build 303 - Windows 7 Edition) - 64 bit OS

Directory Opus V10

No it's not ...

ok, that is exactly what happens on mine! UIS0 skins paint correctly (try the UIS0 skins - aero coloured etc.)

Maybe the issue is specific to UIS2 skins, which accounts for the majority of the best skins out there...

Still not sure if it's a WB or Opus bug?

Try unloading Windowblinds and using the default skin with Opus. see if the same thing happens. If not could be WB and if it does it may be Opus. Do an uninstall of Opus, use a cleaner app like CCleaner to take out left over files, reboot and re-install Opus. Check it first against the default Windows  theme then against Windowblinds. See what happens. Worth a shot I think.

It doesnt happen with Windowblinds unloaded, this seems to be a windowblinds bug. How/where can I report this to stardock/wb developers?

support@stardock.com

I have been talking with folks over at Directory Opus about this.

It seems that if you rename ANY app to dopus.exe, WindowBlinds suddenly fails to skin the Open dialog properly.

Can anyone explain this? 



garbanz0 - this isn't something new... I've always had that problem which is why I excepted DOpus from WB. DOpus has its own 'skins' and they don't play well with WB. Never have... 

DOpus doesn't skin the open dialog though. It's being actively targeted and messed with by WB!

Grab notepad.exe, make a copy, rename it dopus.exe, then hit CTRL-O. Unacceptable. 

Just out of curiosity how often do you add new certificates? Until today I've looked at that dialog exactly 1 time....now twice.

Are you sure that you're not trying to view encrypted data and therefore getting that stuff on the right? Is that what you're referring to?

....and if you open a cmd and type 'format c:' you'll make an even bigger mess.

Why on earth are you renaming notepad.exe as dopus.exe?

WB skins [components of] the Explorer shell.  Dopus can be set to 'replace' parts of that Explorer shell.

It's a little bit like running Litestep within Explorer.exe .....you WILL get some 'interesting' results.  Trying to run 'just' the file manager 'component' of Explorer whilst within Litestep [or any alternate shell] used to cause so many quirks it was easier to totally AVOID Explorer.exe and run an alternate file manager as well as the alternate shell....those days it was Powerdesk...or Explorerplus...these days I use Dopus [it's local [ish] to me].

But WB will still be skinning Explorer while parts of the latter are being replaced by Dopus.  If/when they conflict...exclude.

It's not an 'unacceptable' failing of WB...it's perhaps exuberance on the part of Dopus to want to be doing 'everything and more' than Explorer does...

Precisely. Which is the reason I excepted DOpus from WB...

To prove a point. WB is intentionally and unnecessarily messing with the open dialog called by any executable named dopus.exe. Dopus doesn't skin this dialog at all, it just calls on Windows to open the default one. But for some reason WB messes with it when it does.

This really has nothing to do with DOpus' ability to "replace" explorer...

No, Opus is NOT a shell replacement like Litestep.

Opus only 'replaces' Windows Explorer, the file manager, not the shell.

And all 'replaces' means in this context is that it takes over the filetype association for folders so that when a folder is double-clicked (or whatever) the folder opens in Opus instead of Explorer.

With Opus installed and in Explorer Replacement mode, Explorer.exe and the Windows shell, desktop, taskbar, etc. are all completely unchanged. You can still run Explorer manually/explicitly.

I'm sorry but saying that Windowblinds has to target dopus.exe and break parts of its UI (it is not just the File Open dialog), while failing to skin other parts, just because Opus can take over the folder association is nonsense.

Also, everything looks fine -- and is fully skinned -- if you copy dopus.exe to test.exe and run that instead. What Windowblinds is doing to Opus is not necessary and is causing problems, not solving them.

There were some compatibility issues in the long-distant past but as far as I can tell they are all gone. They were mainly due to Opus adding icons to the titlebar (which it no longer does as it conflicted with Vista/Aero, and people kept clicking them by mistake so we just got rid of them). But if the titlebar was the reason for this strange 'compatibility mode' that WB uses for WB.exe then that is strange because WB still skins the titlebars; it's just everything else that is either inexplicable unskinned (buttons, tab controls, etc.) or outright botched (the top of the File Open dialogs, and for one user the top of normal windows whenever they are maximized; both having to do with the region of glass at the top of the window frame, so I suspect both the same underlying error within WB).

There were also some issues with the Preferences dialog in Opus and certain themes, but I think they were all* fixed a long time ago as well, and Opus itself used to detect Windowblinds and do things differently then (it no longer does as it should not need to) so even then WB should not have needed to detect Opus. (*Exception: One fairly obscure issue with the Prefs dialog was fixed very recently, where if a theme drew the tab control background without using a bitmap then the Prefs dialog looked wrong. Not many themes did that but it's fixed now, in the latest beta version.)

These days, at least from a quick test with dopus.exe copied to test.exe, Opus picks up the WB skin just fine so long as WB isn't targeting it for some weird mode where it messes up titlebar/glass areas (like the File Open dialog) and causes most button and tab controls to be unthemed.

Opus uses the standard Windows visual styles system to draw its UI so I'm not sure what you mean about Opus having its own skins. Yes, you can override how things look in some places (e.g. replace the background used by toolbars) but that does not cause any problems with WB, and nor should it. All WB is doing is intercepting the visual styles API and/or replacing elements of the theme, and Opus is fine with that.

It's not just that dialog; that dialog is just an easy to see example of it.

It seems to be any File Open dialog opened by any exe called dopus.exe. Here's an example where I took a very simple app/UI I wrote, that uses no custom 'skinning' code whatsoever and is just an MFC UI I threw together in 5 minutes in Visual Studio, and renamed it to dopus.exe to prove that the issue was not being caused by Opus itself:

You can't seriously be looking at that and saying, "there's no problem that needs fixing here".

Also note the ugly Save button in the second example. There's no need to disable button skinning within dopus.exe; Opus uses the visual styles system just fine and buttons etc. look correct under WB if you copy dopus.exe to test.exe (and if there are any problems we haven't found yet, we'll fix them if people report them).