Transparent default skin images

[---MAD---]

Hello,

I was wondering why vBulletin never make their images properly transparent?

If say you were to turn this skin darker, you would notice that nearly ever single image has white dots around it..this is very fustrating because lots of people prefer darker skins so they are easier on the eyes but it takes a long time to make it presentable as you have to fix each image unless you make a new image.

Is there a reason for this?

Surely when making the images, they should be make properly tranparent without pixel errors to avoid these problems.

Thanks
MAD

[Zachery]

All of the images are matted for the skin that they were developed for, the style was made when png images were not an option.

[Wayne Luke]

It is a limitation of the GIF file format and anti-aliasing images. You can't do alpha transparency in GIF images, you can only specify a single color in the 256 color palette to be transparent. To get around this, we make a Graphics Developer's Kit available in the member's area and provide instructions on how to matte the images to your background.

Hopefully in the future, the developers will go with PNG format since Internet Explorer natively supports PNG's alpha transparency as of version 7. In Internet Explorer 5 and 6, you had to utilize DirectX.

[---MAD---]

But its still possible to have them cleaner than they are now (for example the calendar image - that one is a big old mess ;)).

Edit: Thanks for referring me to the graphics kit - I always forget about it, I will have a look at it now.

Edit 2: Hmm I will need photoshop or a program like that, I dont have it installed though :(.

[Wayne Luke]

Should be able to use GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/), Paintshop Pro XI (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1155872554948) or Photoshop Elements (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/) as well.

GIMP is free. The others only a fraction of the cost of Photoshop CS.

[Wayne Luke]

Curved table image discussion split to:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224809

[HappyPike]

Those images are certainly a weak point of vB 3.x. It's too late to change them now. We can only hope that in vB 4, we'll get a new set of graphics that work well with different kind of background colors. For now, many vB forums (such as mine) just use the vB 2.x style graphics, which have good transparency.

[forumguy]

PNG Transparencys are all good and well, except IE6 (which is what the majority of people are using) doesn't display them correctly.

[Wayne Luke]

Actually only takes a javascript and 3 lines of code in vBulletin's headinclude template to add this. So hopefully in the future. Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher can use DirectX filters to apply Alpha Transparency. Probably earlier but it isn't support.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=123230&highlight=pngfix

One of the reasons that PNG wasn't used though is they didn't start becoming commonplace on the Internet until after Firefox 1.0 was released. Before then they were pretty much relegated to niche sites and Linux OS icons. Things change over time though.

[JakeS]

I never even noticed this before :( as I always made my own images.

[forumguy]

Actually only takes a javascript and 3 lines of code in vBulletin's headinclude template to add this. So hopefully in the future. Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher can use DirectX filters to apply Alpha Transparency. Probably earlier but it isn't support.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=123230&highlight=pngfix

One of the reasons that PNG wasn't used though is they didn't start becoming commonplace on the Internet until after Firefox 1.0 was released. Before then they were pretty much relegated to niche sites and Linux OS icons. Things change over time though.Thanks for that. ;) But why doesn't vBulletin come with this?

[---MAD---]

Thanks for that. ;) But why doesn't vBulletin come with this?
I was wondering that too, since its possible, wouldn't it be obvious to include it to solve all these issues?

[Wayne Luke]

It was a design decision at the time to not use it. It is available as addons for 3.0-3.6.5 so not really a big deal for people who want to use it.

[Quillz]

Those images are certainly a weak point of vB 3.x. It's too late to change them now. We can only hope that in vB 4, we'll get a new set of graphics that work well with different kind of background colors. For now, many vB forums (such as mine) just use the vB 2.x style graphics, which have good transparency.
Why is it the 2.x images had good transparency but not the 3.x images?

[Wayne Luke]

They are square and not anti-aliased... In reality they would suffer from all the same problems if they were anti-aliased.

[Zachery]

Why is it the 2.x images had good transparency but not the 3.x images?
They did not have good transparency, they were not 3d images, all of the vB2 images had sold borders so they did not need any trasparency.

[JakeS]

If they was transparent I wold have trouble seeing them :O