Icon images, hilites and inks

[Richmond Mathewson]

David Bovill wrote:
> I've got some grey images that are used for icons - and I want to hilite
> them with a simple coloured overlay of equivalent when the mouse rolls over
> the button. I'm wandering if it is possible to use some combination of inks
> and button colours to achieve this effect? The only way I can see how to do
> it at the moment is either to create a coloured icon image and swap them, or
> create an overlay button in front of the icon button which at least does not
> require creating another set of images but seems ugly.
>
> Any thoughts?
> _______________________________________________
>   
Aaah; just the sort of thing I like at the end of a working day to wind down
with - Thanks David . . .   :)
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Well, I've just made myself a suitably repulsive png file with an amorphous
grey blob in the middle of some transparency and imported it into a stack.

Set up a button and set the icon to my png.

1. Tried the COLOR OVERLAY combined with an INK (which, for some funny 
reason,
     is now termed BLEND in the Preferences Palette).

This does not work because the INK / BLEND is applied to the whole 
button rather
than just the ICON . . .   b*gg*r.

2. Tried mucking about with the INK / BLEND of the png:

on mouseEnter
   set the ink of img "sbone.png" to blendDstIn
   set the icon of me to 1004
end mouseEnter

on mouseLeave
   set the ink of img "sbone.png" to blendXor
   set the icon of me to 1004
end mouseLeave

where "sbone.png" is the icon image.

This works, as far as ot goes, insofar as it applies an INK,
but not a coloured overlay.

3. Mucked around with the COLOR OVERLAY of the button:

on mouseEnter
   set the ink of img "sbone.png" to blendDstIn
   set the icon of me to 1004
   lock screen
   set the coloroverlay["color"] of me to green
   set the coloroverlay["opacity"] of me to "100"
   unlock screen
end mouseEnter

on mouseLeave
   set the ink of img "sbone.png" to blendXor
   set the icon of me to 1004
   set the outerGlow of me to empty
   set the colorOverlay of me to empty
end mouseLeave

This is really quite 'sexy'; the only problem being
that if you have a standard metal-effect button
everything disappears except the grey shape
(which turns green).  Even if you set the
border so it is NOT 3d it is still hidden.

Unfortunately my Website has been playing dead for
48 hours so will not be able to pop my experimental
stack there just yet.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.