TPanel color is black no matter what - delphi

I just activated the themes in my Windows XP (usually I work using the classic Win9x look) and I have seen that two panels are pure black. Other panels are ok (color = clBtnFace).
What these 2 panels have in common is their parent. Both are placed directly on a TForm. If I move them to a different parent (another panel for example) the have the appropriate color.
Delphi 7, win xp pro

This is another grandiose Delphi bug. I started do delete stuff from my project and recompile the project. After one hour I finally went to the main form. I deleted the XPManifest control and now, magically, the program works.
The new issue (XPMan) is discussed here: TPanel color is black when I drop a XPManifest control on my form
Edit:
Removing the XPMan is not enough. You will have to delete also the RES files. For large applications it may take a while to manually reconstruct that file. Maybe it works to big into that file and manually remove the resources added by XPMan.

Make sure the panels do not have ParentColor=false and Color=clBlack assigned to them, and that ParentBackground=true is assigned.

Related

How to restore/clear form position after multi-monitor setup change

Within the IDE, when F12 toggles between code and form,
the forms are displayed outside the monitor borders,
and therefore not visible.
This happens after a multi monitor setup has changed,
and the forms no longer open within the available new monitor screen areas.
One way to resolve this is to use the property inspector and
set the Top/Left properties to 4 to make the forms visible.
This is however a lot of work,
especially if many forms and possibly many projects are involved.
Is there a better way to reset the form locations once and for all,
so they are all visible with the new monitor setup?
There is nothing (AFAIK) in Delphi 6 IDE that would help. But assuming you are using Windows, the help is near, (tested on Windows 7):
Right-click on taskbar and select 'Cascade windows', this affects all windows in one go.
or
Alt-Tab to the window, press Alt-Space and then M (for move). Move the window with the arrow keys. This you would have to do seperately for each window.
Close your Delphi IDE. Then, if your current project group file is xyz.groupproj, open the file xyz.dsk with an text editor. Look for section [UndockedDesigner] entry "Count" and change its value to zero.
[UndockedDesigner]
Count=0
That will force all design window positions to 0,0 on your main monitor.

Delphi D2010 Component Palette icons all wrong

I have just built a new system. (Win 8.1, 64 bit, D2010). Install went fine... adding some various VCLs. For some reason, in the Delphi Component Palette, all component glyphs PAST the 'Gestures' palette are all defaulting to the 'generic' icon. The first 13 tabsheets use proper icons. The remaining 30 or so tabsheets use the generic 'Blue box, red triangle, gold circle' image.
Delphi compiles my apps fine. For some reason the GLYPHs are just messed up. I have exited Delphi, restarted, even rebooted the machine. It was initially working fine, but then it messed up. So what did I do? I installed a few components, which I have installed before... I added some help files to the Windows help system for one of the components. I added some directories to the Delphi Path, and added a new BPL file for some of the components, and I went into the Tool/Options/Component Tool Bar and moved one component from a page by itself to another page. This left an empty page/tabsheet, so I deleted it. Thinking this might be the problem, I went back in and clicked on 'Reset to Default'. It did reset the one component back to a page by itself. Restarted Delphi... same issue.
UPDATED INFO***: Some Embarcadero supplied pages show fine, others show 'Unknown/Default' Glyph. For example, the first 13 pages are good, then are 10 or so pages bad, then SAMPLES, INTERNET, and few others are good. Pages that are bad include INDY (the whole set) and IW (the whole set). All my TMS stuff is good (which I installed). Some of the JVCL pages are good, some are bad. Interestingly, one page, Jv Edits, is half bad, then the rest of the page is good.
I don't know why, but when I switched back and forth to different IDE Layouts (Default Layout, Classic Undocked, etc) a few times, the palette glyphs got reloaded, and now everything looks as it should.

How to make my Deskband's (Taskbar Toolbar) Form transparent

I'm working on a Windows Deskband in Delphi XE2 for Windows XP, Vista and 7 (Win32 and Win64)...
I've implemented all the necessary interfaces (ITrayDeskBand, IDeskBandInfo, IDeskBand2, IDeskBand) in my code, and that all works exactly as it should (there are no warnings on Vista/7 complaining about compatibility as others have experienced).
The problem I have is that my Deskband Form appears with a non-transparent band. Also, only certain Controls are displaying (in this case TBitBtn and TImage containing a PNG). I need it to display TEdit and TComboBox objects properly too, but they won't appear at all.
I've tried enabling GlassFrame and SheetOfGlass properties on my Form, but this doesn't help one bit.
Furthermore, the Form itself is exceeding the top boundary of the Taskbar, meaning you cannot (for example) resize the Taskbar if the cursor is in-line with the top of the Taskbar immediately above my Deskband.
I believe there is something Delphi's VCL TForm type is doing behind the scenes which renders the TForm type incompatible as a Deskband container... but this is just a suspicion.
Here's a screenshot illustrating the various problems:
As you can see (above), the Deskband's Form is pale (instead of Transparent), it overlaps the top of the Taskbar (preventing resizing and Autohide triggering when the Taskbar is "hidden")
Any ideas?
UPDATE 1
Okay, I have been playing around and noticed that a totally different behaviour is observed when creating a TToolBar control to be used for the Deskband, rather than a form:
Notice there are three TToolButton controls (with their text virtually invisible due to the Glass theme)? There should also be a TEdit and TComboBox between two separators, but these refuse to display at all.
Also notice the artefacting (the repetition of actual Taskbar Icons)?
I'm not sure if this is a step in the right direction or not, but it might help you (or others) to deduce a solution!
Okay... I've finally figured this out, and it is the most absurd thing I've ever come across.
I'm posting my findings here for the benefit of others (to save you going through the nuisance I've just been through).
To get all of the controls on your Deskband Form to display and function properly, simply set the Visible property of your Form (in the IDE designer) to True.
Ridiculous, I know, but it works and is easily repeatable.

TButtons and "runtime themes": peculiar behavior

Have you seen this?
I have a little utility application (for easy load / test xml generation from CDS and/or DBGo), and I had put some buttons (the poorest button of all, TButton) to trigger some actions.
I never paid attention to appearance, because I'm the only one that uses it. So today I added a new button, and they appeared different from the others in designer - but not when running. It's just an copy and paste process (change the button name, caption and event - the rest is equal to the origin).
When I looked the other buttons have an grey gradient and round corners, the button I copied and pasted not (just a bare rectangle). When running all buttons where just bare rectangles.
So I discovered that on designer, W7 and delphi are applying themes. On running, they are obeying the Project/Options/Application/Enable runtime themes flag.
This is annoying. There's a way to make Delphi doing that obeying the project options flag on forms designer?
(Or even manually if is not possible to automate that)?
EDIT:
The toolbars on the form are from CNWizards ;-)
EDIT II:
Apart of disabling themes for the IDE executable, all buttons get themed equally if the form (or project) is reloaded. But it's really weird.
If you want to enable/disable themes in the IDE, then open the properties of bds.exe, select the 'Compatibility' tab, and make sure that the 'Disable visual themes' checkbox is unchecked/checked.
Programs that you run from the IDE will inherit the compatibility settings of the IDE.
Delphi IDE itself is an application and the way the designer draw the form is using the setting for the IDE application (delphi32.exe or bds.exe's compatibility settings) so the answer is no. The default behaviour is different between IDE versions, for eg. the opposite behaviour (not drawing themed) happened in past.

3 TToolBar's on a TCoolbar band

I have TCoolBar with two bands. On the first band I want to put 3 separate TToolBar's in it. I take TToolBar in TCoolBar and set align to alNone but cannot adjust the size of TCoolBar.
I look at my Delphi 5 and it uses TControlBar that the sites tell me to avoid.
I'm installing Speed buttons on my Toolbar with spaces and separators to get flat button effects.
has any one got a good solution to this problem
Thanks in advance.
I can't replicate your problem. Here's what I did (exactly):
Started Delphi 7, which gave me a new blank VCL forms application
Dropped a TCoolBar on the form, and then dropped three TToolBars on the CoolBar.
Hit Escape to change the designer's focus from the last dropped ToolBar.
Used Shift+DownArrow to increase the height of the CoolBar so that all the ToolBars were visible.
EDIT: After posting this, I also tried setting the TCoolBar.AutoSize property to True instead of manually resizing as the last step above describes. This also worked properly.
I don't know what
I look at my Delphi 5 and it uses TControlBar that the sites tell me to avoid.
means. What "sites", and why "avoid"? If you're telling us that the Delphi 5 IDE uses TControlBar, IIRC D5's IDE worked just fine.
Also, don't use SpeedButtons on a TToolBar. A TToolBar is designed to hold TToolButtons, which you can put on the TToolBar by right-clicking it and choosing either "New Button" or "New Separator" from the context menu.

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