TBTK button graphics. On the background, or not?

[Tankbuster]

As I began to understand the TBTK, it seemed to me that having to have the button graphic on the tab background is not the best way to do this. Surely the button graphic should be part of the button, not of the background?
The thing is, because TBTK doesn't handle transparent GIFS for button graphics, we have to put the graphics on the background and round the edges off there. We can't have curved edge buttons because GIFS and JPEGS etc always have squared off corners.
Furthermore, once you've committed your button graphic to the background image, you can't easily move it around. You have to reauthor the background image.
Please, don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining about the TBTK. I think it's a wonderful piece of software and I certainly don't mean to diss WBK's hard work, but this is certainly an area for improvement.
Of course, If I'm doing something elementarily wrong, I'd be more than happy to take back everything I've said!

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

It doesn't matter if a button graphic is transparent gif, jpg, tif, or not. TouchBuddy and the Toolkit will aways create square buttons. If you look at my IL2 profile I don not have the button as part of the background. I have background panels, and the details of each button is in the button itself. I can then move these buttons around without having to edit the background.

If I remember correctly the only advantage to using transparent image formats for buttons was that you could share on image on several buttons letting the background show through like you are doing. But then you still have the drawback of the background containing some of each button's images.

Maybe I don't understand what you are saying totally. But the bottom line is that I have no intentions of adding 'true' transparent image support into the Toolkit because that would require a total rewrite of a large part of the code. However you can use transparent images with the Toolkit, but they will be displayed with placeholders and only be truly displayed in TouchBuddy. Rugg has made good use of this feature in his F15 profile to place clickable areas over Lockon modules. and also to add his own custom skins over some Lockon Modules to make them look like custom panels in his cockpit.

WBK

[Tankbuster]

Originally Posted by Wild.Bill.Kelso

However you can use transparent images with the Toolkit, but they will be displayed with placeholders and only be truly displayed in TouchBuddy.

WBK

AHA! You're saying they don't appear transparent in the editor 'preview' but will work when the actually get into the TB client application?

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

Bingo! That is correct. They will not be displayed in the Toolkit, but you can still add them to the Toolkit to be part of your profile. The toolkit will just display a placeholder graphic for the button. But when you open the profile in TouchBuddy, your transparent image will be displayed.

PS:
I don't know if anybody has used this 'feature' much lately as they mostly just use non-transparent images. I think Rugg used .gif images.

[Tankbuster]

That's good then! All I said in the first post is redundant.
Of course, it'd be nice if the editor could render the transparency, but if it's a major rewrite, then I can live without it.
Thanks for your help.