Ebutton (Version 1)
EButton is a 'Start' button plugin.
Download : Zip file
.
Download Skins : EButton skins.
A screen shot showing two instances of EButton ( start and tools ) each with a different skin and label.
The skins consists of normal, mouse over (animation) and mouse press. These are simple bitmaps that can be edited in any old paint program.
In this shot you can see how the EButton plugin has been added next to the geOTasks. This mimics the explorer shell quite well. The blue skin is available via deviantart.com
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Stuff you can customize with this button are:
- The skins, including mouse over animations.
- Animation speed.
- The pop up menu position (aligned with the button or for quicker access under the mouse)
- Add text labels to the button - use the same button background skin for many different buttons.
- Turn off those tool tips!
EButton ReadMe.txt
Add an EButton to a geOBar, it will complain that it don't have a skin yet. Don't worry, it will display 'no text'.
Open regedit, browse to the plugin settings and set a button skin.
Shift + Right-mouse-button-double-click to refresh the EButton (it will pick up the new settings from the reg)
Registry Settings
Align :
left or right text alignment
Font :
example -> "Courier New, 15"
frameSpeed :
low numer is faster
Menu :
Normal geoshell menu name.
menuAtMouse :
true or false. True displays the menu at the mouse co-ordinates, false aligns it with the button (like the 'start' menu)
runToEndOfAnimation :
true or false
If the skin can animate on mouseOver it will start at the top frame, then after 'frameSpeed' pause it will display the next frame. If the user moves the mouse off the button then what should happen to the animation?
Set this to true to finish the animation, it keeps rolling till it gets to the first frame. Then it displays the normal bitmap. This may result in buttons animating some time after the users has removed the mouse.
If it is false then the animation stops and the normal bitmap is shown. This may result in jerky animation.
Skin :
Path to skin directory. Must contain :
- button.bmp
- buttonClick.bmp
- buttonOver.bmp
String :
The string to be displayed on the button, can be left or right aligned (see Align) Font is set in Font.
textOffset :
Number of pixels to offset the text from the edge of the button.
toolTip :
false to get rid of the most anoying thing in the world.
true to enable the most anoying thing in the world.
bounce :
This was introduced to help reduce the size of the .bmp files. Most of the MouseOver animations I created were symetrical, for example:
So the .bmp files would have (in this example) 9 frames, with these levels of fade:
- frame 0 : transparent
- frame 1 : 75%
- frame 2 : 50%
- frame 3 : 25%
- frame 4 : opaque
- frame 5 : 25%
- frame 6 : 50%
- frame 7 : 75%
- frame 8 : transparent
And this gave me a nice animated button.
The frames are displayed: 0 to 9, 0 to 9, 0 to 9 etc...
Half of the frames are duplicated, so setting bounce to true forces EButton to count up, then down.
Here is our new buttonOver.bmp:
- frame 0 : transparent
- frame 1 : 75%
- frame 2 : 50%
- frame 3 : 25%
- frame 4 : opaque
And now EButton displays: 0,1,2,3,4,3,2,1,0 [ repeat ]
You get the same animation, with only ( half + 1 ) frames...
Another example, this time with pictures:
Without bounce set:
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With bounce set the animation runs to the end, then back again:
.png)
Skin Format
The button.bmp must be 24 pixels high. It can be any width.
buttonClick.bmp must be the same size as button.bmp
buttonOver.bmp must be the same width as button.bmp, but it can be any multiple of 24 in height.
If it was 48 pixels high then the top 24 are used as the first frame, then 25 to 48 are used as the second frame.
This can be mulitplied up, so you can have as many frames as you want.
To turn off animation set the buttonOver.bmp to have one frame of animation (height = 24 pixels) this will turn off the animation timer.
skin directory
This is relative to the geOShell directory (where the geoshell.exe lives)
So an EButton skin in the 'skins/my button' directory actually lives in
E:\geoshell\skins\my button
or your equivilant.
To have many EButtons with different skins, each set of skins needs to be in its own directory, e.g.:
- skins/mySkin/startButton
- skins/mySkin/workButton
- skins/mySkin/prawnButton
This will keep the button skins that match the geOShell skins all together (easy to zip up and share)
Ebutton (Version 2)
With .png support, see the sexy alpha blending over the geoBar skin. Oh. Sir. You are spoiling us.
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Download EButton 2.0 alpha 0.6
EButton 2 has been open sourced and improved by the community. The location of the latest source is currently unknown... if you want it, feel free to ask on the geoshell forum located on geoshell's site.
 | This text copied from eden – slight reformating has been done, but this has not been checked to make sure it is up to date! |
