Showing/Hiding Images on mouseLeave...

[Chipp Walters]

> Your suggestion is along the same line as the suggestions given by Jan
> and Terry, which were all extremely helpful. Indeed, I went the way of
> setting imageData and alphaData, and that works quite well. One little
> word of advice to others who need to implement this: set the alphaData
> BEFORE setting the imageData, otherwise for some reason the screen does
> not redraw properly using the new alphaData information...

Yes, my mistake. You do need to set the alphaData before the imageData.

>
> Wow! Wonderful! Perhaps you could give me a few pointers? For instance:
> are your 'skin' files actually stacks? - it seems that this is the best
> way to go about saving all the image and metadata information in a
> single file... Also, how do you then change the file TYPE of the skin
> stack, and how do you associate a custom file icon with that icon type
> on the Mac?

I used a "skins" folder with .png files which were loaded on startup,
similar to the way WinAmp and other skinnable amps work. I didn't concern
myself with 'transparency' areas for clicking. Generally the rect of even a
'round' image would work. There was also a skin.txt file used for
configuration. In this way even non-RR users could skin the app.

You can check out
http://www.sonsothunder.com/
and the article:
Setting Document Associations in Windows

for more info on how to associate files with apps in Windows.
I'm sure someone else can help you with Apple
(I just use resedit to do this, but I'm not sure it's still the best way to
go considering OSX)


-Chipp