Custom control decal not clickable

[RonB]

I created a custom Boolean button by adding a decal (Boolean glyph). When I attempt to operate the button on my front panel by clicking on the decal, nothing happens. If I click outside the bounds of the decal, the button does operate as expected. What's up?

[Benoit]

Can you send us the example of you button so we can test it?

Benoit

[RonB]

Attached ctl

[Benoit]

I dont know why, but when I'm creating one, everything is working fine. I try yours,  and it doesn't work.

Can you send me your picture I will creat it for you and send it to you back

Benoit

[Darren]

Hello,

I think I know what the problem was.  If you use the Control Editor in the "tweezer" mode, and move all the parts around, you'll see that there are actually two folder images...one of them was buried under the button.  I think that one is the decal.  I think the other one is just an image, which, as we now know, doesn't let you change the button state when it's sitting on top of the button.  I removed the image (so that only the decal was left), and brought the decal to the front (using the "Bring Forward" under the Reorder toolbar button).  After I did this, the button was clickable over the image.  I have attached a "fixed" version of the original control here.

Hope this helps,

-D

[Benoit]

You are absolutely right. I reopen it, and I found exactly the same thing.

You solve it.

Benoit

[RonB]

Thanks, Darren. Great troubleshooting. I don't do a lot of custom controls.

A related question for you: My decal has a gray background around the folder glyph. Do you know if its possible to make those pixels transparent so the button is visible there?

[Darren]

Hi Ron,

Looks like you're encountering all the same issues that I did when making some custom buttons a while back.  🙂  I think you need to mask the gray part of your image as transparent in your image editor, then paste the image with the transparent background as your decal.  Whenever I've needed to create a transparent mask on an image, I've used Microsoft Photo Editor (it's included in Office XP and previous, but you have to explicitly select it under the "Additional Office Tools" component during the Office XP install).  There's a button on the toolbar in Photo Editor that lets you assign a transparency mask.  If you don't have Photo Editor, I'm not sure how you would do it in another image editor.  I was really disappointed when Photo Editor was removed in Office 2003.

Good luck,

-D

P.S. - If there's an easier way to make those pixels transparent, I hope somebody else posts with more information.

[tst]

OpenG includes a package with some buttons, including a folder button, and I think it might be transparent. Even if it isn't, they have some very useful tools.

[RonB]

Didn't think to look there. Just what I needed. The decal background is indeed transparent.