Step-by-Step Tutorials	#12 - ADVANCED BITMAP SETTINGS
A series by RomanDA

Listing of other DX Tutorials: Click here
Today's Lesson: "ADVANCED BITMAP SETTINGS" will show you how to make use this section of DX.

The ADVANCED BITMAP SETTINGS allows you to stretch, or tile an image. This allows you to take a simple rounded corner background (or any background) and make it stretch to fit the size you want to use, without losing the aspect ratio of the image.

Typically this is used when you have a background (or any image) that you want to make wider or taller than it was origionally created for. 

For this and all the Step-By-Step DX Tutorials you will need to purchase DesktopX for $14.95 from Stardock.

Lets get started.

Please look over the other tutorials to see how to load DesktopX, and also how to create a NEW object.

RIGHT CLICK on the icon in your system tray and create a NEW OBJECT.
The image im going to use for this tutorial is this one:

This is just a simple rounded corner box.

It's 100 pixels wide by 103 tall

The height diff is from the overhang of the little top yellow square.

APPLY this so you can see what it looks like on the screen.

It should look like the image on the right, its just a square.

STEP 3 - Stretching things out.

Edit the object. goto the SUMMARY tab, and choose the height or width to see how it changes the box.

You can see that the nice round box gets "stretched" out to match the height/width we used.
This is the problem, we want to KEEP the nice round shape, so we want to use the Advnaced Bitmap settings to setup margins that will keep our shape and "stretch" the inside of the area.

Edit the object again, and set the WIDTH to 200 and the Height to (image default).

Now go to the STATES tab and click on the ADVANCE button under the image information area.

I know how my background was created so i know that i should make the left/right margins both 30 pixels.  This sets up an area around the object.

I hope the image to the left gives you a good idea of what the margins are and how they are used to select a "section" of the image to KEEP and a section to either STRETCH or TILE. Notice that when you pick left/right/top & bottom margins, you end up really picking just the corners. This allows us to easily make the bg bigger without losing any of the basic layout and look of the object.

Origional set to 200pix wide:

Set the Width to 200 and then in the ADVANCED Tab use Left/Right to 30 and it looks like:  (notice that the LEFT and RIGHT sides are the same as the origional image, and the section between these is "stretched" out to fit the 200 pixel width.  Notice how the corners are nice and rounded? not stretched out.

Here is what happens if we make the margins a little to big since 55+55 is 110 its actually using 5 pixels on each side that doesnt even exist.  You might have to experiment a ltitle with your oen image to get the margins 100% correct.

Here is the Height BEFORE Setting the TOP/BOTTOM margins:

Now lets set the TOP/BOTTOM Margins to a little diff than LEFT/RIGHT and see how this looks:
I set them to 35x35 so that it picks up a little more of the margins.  you can experiment to see how it ends up looking.

Hey all,

I'm sure most of you think i have given up on DX. Its been months since I posted anything on DX scripting, or creation. Just been working my butt of out-of-town for most of the past 4 months.
Actually I'm sitting in a hotel room right now.  Anyway, I was looking at something the other day and wondered how many little SIMPLE tricks are hidden in DX. I was talking to miksama the other day and he pointed sent me some cool things.

I wanted to share some things that not everyone might know about, or even use. If you know one of these and have been using it forever, goodie, show us something you think we dont know about. I want this it be an ongoing article with lots of user input.

These will require that you know at lease some basics of scripting in DX. If you don't you might want to do a simple Google search for DesktopX Tutorials, I hear SOMEONE spent a great deal of time on some.

Lets get this started with a few 1 liners.

PING:
You want to ping a web site and get the resulting time to site.

x = system.Ping("www.wincustomize.com")
object.text = x & " ms"

WALLPAPER:
Want to change your wallpaper?
This is the quick way to do it.

Option:
0 = use default wallpaper
1 = Center wallpaper
2 = Tile wallpaper
3 = Stretch wallpaper

'Examples:

System.SetWallpaper "C:\temp\wall1.bmp", 1
'Sets the wallpaper to the bmp above and the 1 makes it centered.

System.SetWallpaper Object.Directory & "wall1.jpg", 2
'Sets the wallpaper to wall1 in the directory where the dx object was created, and the 2 tiles it.

System.SetWallpaper "", 0 
'This will restore the original wallpaper.

CLIPBOARD:
Say you want to dump something from DX to the windows clipboard?
Its 1 line of code easy.
I believe this works only with TEXT, not images, but i could be wrong.

System.Clipboard = Object.text

VOLUME/MUTE:
Ok, want a fast way to set your volume to 10? or 90? or mute it completely?

system.Volume = 10
system.Volume = 90

'or mute it
system.mute

READ A FILE
Want to dump the contents of a file to a text string?
Only param=1 is currently supported.

txtLog = System.SimpleRead("C:\temp\file2read.txt", 1)

WRITE TO A FILE
Ok, this is simple, dump the contents of a string into a file.
Only param=1 is currently supported.

txtstring = "This is the text string, could have anything in here" & vbnewline & "even on a second line"
System.SimpleWrite "C:\temp\output.txt", txtstring, 1

These are just a few simple SYSTEM tricks. What do you have up your DX sleeve?