TUTORIAL MMB Custom Shape windows. Iam going to do some fancy project with custom shape window. I decide to make the background in Macromedia Fireworks, Look at the picture. | place the artwork on white background - because | want to use the same picture as a mask for creating Custom Shape window. Lg iia You cannot get better program for creating the backgrounds than Fireworks - MMB can even read the Fireworks native PNG format. Since the tracer in MMB doesn't know holes | have to create the shape without holes. Click here to see the shape | created in Fireworks in the full size. | created a couple of objects and what is great about Fireworks | can change the objects any time ! So | have a background picture and | save it as a background. png, Now lets go to MMB | create new project. Go to Project - General Settings. Put window size 540 x 350 Uncheck Standard Window and check Window has custom shape. Now we can start TRACING. What tracer wants to know is the Starting 2A crappy point where to start tracing. This is the point OUTSIDE the image on the background : ohne The tracer will pick-up the color from that stnvcg at» [I vf por point and create shape outlining the objects with different colors inside. The 0,0 should be fine - itis on the white background. | used antialiasing option in Fireworks, so my background in the pixels on the edges with the drawing is not 100% white. The Tracer Tolerance will help me to eliminate this - it will recognize pixels with color similar to background color (from the starting point) about some tolerance | can specify.If you put 0 - the tracer will take only 100% white pixels. (After few trials I put 25 in tolerance and it was fine - no white pixels were visible on the edges. ) If something goes wrong the tracer will show error. (Complex object and it cannot return to the start point to outline the shape ... etc. If this is the case try tu start from different point. Generally you have to have enough space between the drawing and edges of picture. No Error messages so | press OK. Now in MMB I see the blue line showing the outlined shape. Everything inside will be visible and everything outside will be transparent - you will see your windows stuff Because | am to lazy -| didn’t want to prepare one picture for shape and one for the background | will use the same background.png picture for background image. This is also good because the position of image and the shape will be perfect. \Pages\overview.mbd","") Note: See | used is not path to mbd file but path to the PLAYER. And player (autorun.exe) is or will be in the root of CD! Understand ? To go from the Overview back to the menu we will use RunMBD("\Pages\menu.mbd","") If you don't know why read the Note again. and so one 4. Creating other pages Now that's easy, just few months of work with photoshop and we have all the kix graphic and text, We can move between our ‘pages’ with RunMBD command and we know why we put everywhere \Pages\ before the name of the file. Sound We will copy all wave files into Sound directory - because we want them there! And we will use for sound path all the time \Sound\ For example: \Sound\beep.wav How to test This kind of project? From designer nothing is working! Sound is not playing and it doesn't go to the next file !!! HEEEELP.+ We would like to have also some readme.txt on the disk - this could explain something about installation etc + And on the end - user can be also able to conect to company web site to get new updates. Lets do it. First run MMB. :-) Settings We would like to have the size of autorun 470 x 300. Why? Your boss told you so. So lets go to Set the Project Settings. GO to Menu Project and select General Settings. or click this button We will set the size Width 470 and Height 300. Into the Window Title we put Adventure Traveller. We don't want to have the window Caption, we would like to have a bit different look than standard window so we un-check Standard window and We check Client Border. The settings should look like this: TF Standard Window (Caption, Close Guten and Bader) FF Cher Border Nonstandard vindow (no border. dtlerent shape wanspavent TF Window has custom shape K% Movable [7 See Through That's fine, press OK Caption and Close Button Since we will not have the window caption, we will create one by our own (On the toolbar on the left click the Rectangle button (Fill Rectangle) and draw the rectangle over the top of the frame - where the caption bar should be. The rectangle is red, doubleclick on it and select black color from the Fill. Now the workplace should look like on the picture right: Well turning Standard window off we don't have the close button ! Lets make ‘one. On the top toolbar find the Wizard. “ and click on it. It will open small menu with some predefined objects. We select ‘Insert Close Button’ and it will add a small close button on our workspace to the left side. Move the button to the right part of our black caption. Caption Text: Click on the text tool on the left. “™ Place the text on the black rectangle. You see nothing - the text is black. Double-click on it if you remember where you drop it or look at the Object list in right and double-click on the Text item Set the Color in only one enabled Color combo-box to White Now click on Font and select font - | used Arial 11, Bold - because | am sure