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bbxstudio · 06:16 PM

Do any of you geniuses know how one would go about shifting the positioning of Menu item text up by a single pixel?

(( I'd love to shift the sortlist text up by one as well, but that's nowhere near as important...))

BTW - Adobe, Microsoft, Macromedia, etc. need to get together and standardize an 8-bit transparency-equipped graphic format for the web... makes sense in this age of high-bandwidth, etc (although it would definitely be abused).

mrtew · May 23, 2003, 11:39 PM

No, but I can give you a clue how hopeless it is. LucidaGrande does ride a little low, but if you get into switching fonts with the Silk alpha or beta you will find that a lot of other fonts ride a little too high on the menubar and titlebar, and some of them WAY too high or low, and some of them are just right in the center. It's all a property of the fonts I think and not the theme or the operating system etc.

bbxstudio · May 24, 2003, 12:21 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
No, but I can give you a clue how hopeless it is. LucidaGrande does ride a little low, but if you get into switching fonts with the Silk alpha or beta you will find that a lot of other fonts ride a little too high on the menubar and titlebar, and some of them WAY too high or low, and some of them are just right in the center. It's all a property of the fonts I think and not the theme or the operating system etc.

I just really wish that there was a standard large size for LucidaGrande throughout - the font in the menu bar is larger than the one in the document titlebars... what a mess. You would think that with both the Menubar and Titlebar resources being the same height that they would've used the same sized font and positioned it the same from top to bottom.

As for the Silk Aplha - how does one go about getting a copy - do you think if I wrote to Unsanity they'd let me poke around with it? I can't seem to find a link to it on their website.

Dace · May 24, 2003, 12:38 AM

For silk alpha you need to visit http://www.unsanity.org

Mediaman_12 · May 24, 2003, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
BTW - Adobe, Microsoft, Macromedia, etc. need to get together and standardize an 8-bit transparency-equipped graphic format for the web... makes sense in this age of high-bandwidth, etc (although it would definitely be abused).

I don't get this rant? There is a Perfectly acceptable graphic format with full colour & full Transparency support, that has been around for about 5 years. It's called Portable Network Graphic (or PNG) for short, it's also a fully 'open' standard whare (unlike Gif) you dont have to pay anybody anything to use it. Just because MS's implementation of it sucks (like so much else of theres) there is no need for a mad rant.

bbxstudio · 12:29 AM

Originally posted by Mediaman_12:
I don't get this rant?Just because MS's implementation of it sucks (like so much else of theres) there is no need for a mad rant.

Who's ranting?

actually, I have to thank you - you sir just blew my mind by showing me what a PNG is (believe it or not). Until now I had no idea - having (until recently with Safari) been stuck using IE5 for OSX (which on my system at least would not display PNGs), I'd never knowingly seen one nor had any idea that there was a web graphic standard that supported full transparency. Wow is all I can say =) I'm ever so grateful and honestly truly indebted. Don't think I'm being sarcastic because I sound too enthusiastic - I'm 100% serious. Very cool ... thanks again! Now my sig looks good on both the white and gray MacNN backgrounds.

bbxstudio · May 25, 2003, 12:32 AM

Hmmm - still waiting for a solid answer... is there actually a way to shift the menu text up by a single pixel (or better yet shrink the font size by a point or 2) within a theme, or am I pretty much screwed?

mrtew · May 25, 2003, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Hmmm - still waiting for a solid answer... is there actually a way to shift the menu text up by a single pixel (or better yet shrink the font size by a point or 2) within a theme, or am I pretty much screwed?

I've never heard of a theme being able to do ANYTHING about text with themeing at all, except for changing the colors in carbon apps. I start giving up (and release the theme :-] )

NetworkShadow · May 25, 2003, 01:29 AM

I wouldn't know, but silk does ok at it, though it doesn't always look good with any font other than LucidaGrande because Aqua seems to be setup just for LucidaGrande. I wish the fonts weren't so hardwired into Aqua...

fireside · May 25, 2003, 03:57 AM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Who's ranting? actually, I have to thank you - you sir just blew my mind by showing me what a PNG is (believe it or not). Until now I had no idea - having (until recently with Safari) been stuck using IE5 for OSX (which on my system at least would not display PNGs), I'd never knowingly seen one nor had any idea that there was a web graphic standard that supported full transparency. Wow is all I can say =) I'm ever so grateful and honestly truly indebted. Don't think I'm being sarcastic because I sound too enthusiastic - I'm 100% serious. Very cool ... thanks again! Now my sig looks good on both the white and gray MacNN backgrounds.

wait so bbx, the supreme digital imaging guy, didnt know what a .png was? :O!!

bOOzo · May 25, 2003, 05:33 AM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Hmmm - still waiting for a solid answer... is there actually a way to shift the menu text up by a single pixel (or better yet shrink the font size by a point or 2) within a theme, or am I pretty much screwed?

I'd say that you are screwed, at least for now. Hopefully theming abilities will be greater in the future...

bbxstudio · May 25, 2003, 11:29 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
I've never heard of a theme being able to do ANYTHING about text with themeing at all, except for changing the colors in carbon apps

Well, seeing as menus are Carbon only, I was hoping a shift would take elsewhere... with 99% of my designs, a single element plays out across the entire interface - keeps things tight and consistent. With Aqua there's little or no consistency throughout... the menu and titlebar are the same height, so why is menubar text placed differently and at a larger point size? It's infuriating.

Hey Mr.. Tew, you seem to be familiar with the new Silk - in the screenshots you posted a while back your 'application' menu item (finder beside the Apple) is switched, yet I myself am stuck with LucidaGrande for that particular menu item in every application. Any idea what gives? Is this due to a recent system update that may have broken switching of that particular font instance? If you still have silk installed, do you think you could do a font switch and tell me if that application menu item switches or not?

bbxstudio · May 25, 2003, 11:43 AM

Originally posted by fireside:
wait so bbx, the supreme digital imaging guy, didnt know what a .png was? :O!!

Hey, who said I was the supreme digital imaging guy? I know some things, sure, but not everything... never touched Flash, Fireworks or DreamWeaver in my life. To be honest, any websites I've designed for clients have been coded by somebody else from my layered Photoshop files - I'm mostly a print guy, so I've never had any need to explore new web-specific file formats - I always thought .png was some kind of proprietary Windows format because I couldn't view it in Explorer on the Mac... who knew?

If it's something I should be ashamed of, please don't tell anybody

bbxstudio · May 25, 2003, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by bOOzo:
I'd say that you are screwed, at least for now. Hopefully theming abilities will be greater in the future...

Well, if Panther does allow a return to themes, even in the OS8+9 sense, we may see the ability to choose from different display fonts right in the prefpane (in addition to any other goodies/new resources 'theme' ability brings with it). Let's hope

bOOzo · May 25, 2003, 03:00 PM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Well, if Panther does allow a return to themes, even in the OS8+9 sense, we may see the ability to choose from different display fonts right in the prefpane (in addition to any other goodies/new resources 'theme' ability brings with it). Let's hope

Yes, let's.

I have some good news though, contrary to what I just said. ButtO'sigh sent me an email and he wanted me to test the Tequa and DXB themes. What I noticed is that his Menubar has the text 1 pixel higher than normal. But you wanted this for the menu item, right? Anyway, here is the file that he made:
http://www.desktopper.net/theme/4-54...ancer.sitx.bin

Although in this edit the Apple menu gets cropped, I asked him to fix that. Perhaps you could send him an email and illustrate what you want and maybe he could do a layo hack for you?

mrtew · May 25, 2003, 06:22 PM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Hey Mr.. Tew, you seem to be familiar with the new Silk - in the screenshots you posted a while back your 'application' menu item (finder beside the Apple) is switched, yet I myself am stuck with LucidaGrande for that particular menu item in every application.

That's actually a bug in the latest beta of Silk. Rosyna was trying to make the Application menu show up as bold type like normal. The other versions of Silk always displayed that menu in non-bold type. The problem is that most fonts don't seem to have a bold version built in or something, so you see Lucida instead. I told Rosyna and went back to the original Silk alpha because of that. I sure can't wait until the final version is working, done, and released.
Here's my new favorite font Babylon5Credits...

fireside · May 25, 2003, 11:32 PM

arg rosyna STILL hasnt emailed me back with the silk alpha beta. i asked so nicely too

mrtew · May 26, 2003, 12:51 AM

Originally posted by fireside:
arg rosyna STILL hasnt emailed me back with the silk alpha beta. i asked so nicely too

I think Rosyna is really busy trying to stomp bugs and doen't want to send out ones that are known to be problematic. Hopefully the final version will be ready pretty soon!

bbxstudio · May 26, 2003, 12:59 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
That's actually a bug in the latest beta of Silk. Rosyna was trying to make the Application menu show up as bold type like normal. The other versions of Silk always displayed that menu in non-bold type.

So can we expect this to be fixed then for the release version then? I hate the bold font - gah!

bbxstudio · May 26, 2003, 01:02 AM

Originally posted by bOOzo:
What I noticed is that his Menubar has the text 1 pixel higher than normal. But you wanted this for the menu item, right?

No wait - that's what I meant, the menubar text (not the dropdown menu items). Now if only Desktopper.net would translate... am I the only one having problems with it?

fireside · May 26, 2003, 02:06 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
I think Rosyna is really busy trying to stomp bugs and doen't want to send out ones that are known to be problematic. Hopefully the final version will be ready pretty soon!

i emailed her a on 4-2-03. yes, april second.

bOOzo · May 26, 2003, 06:09 AM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
No wait - that's what I meant, the menubar text (not the dropdown menu items). Now if only Desktopper.net would translate... am I the only one having problems with it?

Oh ok, well to see the effect, download that file and copy and poaste everything into your Extras.rsrc. The problem whit that file is that the apple menu is cropped, as I said. But send him an email and illustrate with pictures what you want him to do.

I'll look into it myself too, since I have some (very limited) knowledge of the layo.

bbxstudio · May 26, 2003, 10:50 AM

Originally posted by bOOzo:
I'll look into it myself too, since I have some (very limited) knowledge of the layo.

Much thanks Max!

bOOzo · May 26, 2003, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by bbxstudio:
Much thanks Max!

I looked into it, and it seems that the file I linked to is pretty good. The only problem with that file is that the Apple menu is being cropped. I haven't tried any editing myself yet, but I'll ask buttosigh if it's possible to just move the menubar text up 1 pixel.

Btw, you do know that with that file, you will be able to have menu title selected fill caps, and menu separators? And if it's any use, it's also possible to make the menubar stretch instead of tile.

bbxstudio · May 26, 2003, 09:43 PM

Originally posted by bOOzo:
I looked into it, and it seems that the file I linked to is pretty good. The only problem with that file is that the Apple menu is being cropped. I haven't tried any editing myself yet, but I'll ask buttosigh if it's possible to just move the menubar text up 1 pixel.

Btw, you do know that with that file, you will be able to have menu title selected fill caps, and menu separators? And if it's any use, it's also possible to make the menubar stretch instead of tile.

Well I actually need the menubar to tile, not stretch. I'd love to find a way to have Carbon titlebars tile instead of stretch as well (but that's another probably undoable nightmare).

Rosyna · May 27, 2003, 01:31 AM

Originally posted by fireside:
arg rosyna STILL hasnt emailed me back with the silk alpha beta. i asked so nicely too

You did not supply your full name

I need it for the mass email software. I am the only one that sees it.

Rosyna · May 27, 2003, 01:33 AM

Originally posted by mrtew:
That's actually a bug in the latest beta of Silk. Rosyna was trying to make the Application menu show up as bold type like normal. The other versions of Silk always displayed that menu in non-bold type. The problem is that most fonts don't seem to have a bold version built in or something, so you see Lucida instead. I told Rosyna and went back to the original Silk alpha because of that. I sure can't wait until the final version is working, done, and released.
Here's my new favorite font Babylon5Credits...

Can you tell me if fc1 made it better, worse, or neither? Any silk screenshots are welcome

Rosyna · May 27, 2003, 04:03 AM

http://www.unsanity.net/beta/silk-20fc1.dmg.sit

Keep it on the low down or whatever.

bbxstudio · May 27, 2003, 08:52 AM

Keep it on the low down or whatever. [/B]

MIRAI with HelveticaNeueBoldCondensed is a beautiful thing =) Now if only Cocoa apps would understand what a baseline was... Silk is probably one of the most useful hacks I'll ever use =)

fireside · May 29, 2003, 01:14 AM

Originally posted by Rosyna:
You did not supply your full name I need it for the mass email software. I am the only one that sees it.

you could have emailed me back saying that!! anyway, ill be firing off an email to ya RIGHT NOW!

mrtew · 04:22 PM

Originally posted by fireside:
you could have emailed me back saying that!! anyway, ill be firing off an email to ya RIGHT NOW!

Uh,... dude,... you don't have to email her. She just posted the link to the new version two posts above you! Geez!

fireside · May 29, 2003, 09:58 PM

the first link she posted was a 404. the one you posted wasnt. and i dont think she wants people downloading it without her consent, im guessing.

bbxstudio · May 30, 2003, 12:57 AM

Silk works great but why doesn't it affect Adobe applications like Photoshop or Illustrator?

NetworkShadow · May 30, 2003, 01:24 AM

BBX: That's on the application settings I think, it comes with a default setting for all the adobe apps. If you delete that setting the global one will take over, or you can change the settings for the adobe apps. I hope that helps.

bbxstudio · May 30, 2003, 11:20 AM

Originally posted by NetworkShadow:
BBX: That's on the application settings I think, it comes with a default setting for all the adobe apps...

D'oh! Stupid me - now it works! Woot!