19 replies to this topic

[E-xecutive]

[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]On mouse-movement, the [/color]bbLeanSkin plugin consumes an abnormal volume of CPU time.

Sure, the absolute volume depends on the processor power. But, in any case, a CPU is busy about 6-10 times more when the bbLeanSkin is in use.

 

For me, it's not a problem - just turned it off. For others, it's better to know

[pitkon]

I have no CPU issues with BBLeanSkin at all. But then, I use Windows XP 32-bit with an i7 processor and 6 MB of memory (more than enough for a 32-bit environment). Maybe it's a matter of the bbleanskin flavor you've been using combined with your BB build? Turning off BBLeanSkin is no solution, after all BBLS is part of the Blackbox experience

[E-xecutive]

May be I misunderstood the '[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin flavor[/color]'... If you mean some special or extra options on a user side, I didn't create any special environment for this (just standard options for [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin), no enforcement for special software that could be incompatible to [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin. I've tried Grishka's[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;] build on minimal XP (only VC redistr., no additional libraries), and checked the [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin with no other plugins turned on.

May be it depends upon the CPU instructions...

Well, if you have no intensive CPU consumption, it's better to rename this topic or to delete it. Which variant is better for the forum?[/color]

 

[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]PS:
Pitkon, please, rename this topic into '[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbLeanSkin is hard for old computers[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]' or something like that.
Next time, in similar situations, I'll test on a modern computer before posting here. OK?

PPS:
Oops, my explanation was not concrete enough  The [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]CPU consumption is abnormal on mouse-movement. The first post corrected now.[/color]

[pitkon]

Edited the title. I am not deleting this topic, maybe other members will have more to say.

By "flavor" I meant which build of BBLS you are using. There must be at least 5 or 6 around

[E-xecutive]

Edited the title. I am not deleting this topic, maybe other members will have more to say.

By "flavor" I meant which build of BBLS you are using. There must be at least 5 or 6 around

Ouch! Where can I find all of them? Or they go only with BB builds?

[pitkon]

They usually go with BB builds, but there is at least an independent one, bbleanskin+ http://blackbox4wind...skinning/?p=115

[E-xecutive]

They usually go with BB builds, but there is at least an independent one, bbleanskin+ http://blackbox4wind...skinning/?p=115

As I see, after testing, the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]BBLS v.1.16 (including the mod) is better for old computers.
On mouse movement, it consumes only 3[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]-5 times more of CPU time.[/color]
Thank you.

 

PS:

Finally, after deep examination, I prefer to use bbWinSkin instead. The bbWinSkin is not intensive for CPU at all.
And it has some other interesting features

[pitkon]

As I see, after testing, the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]BBLS v.1.16 (including the mod) is better for old computers.
On mouse movement, it consumes only 3[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]-5 times more of CPU time.[/color]
Thank you.

 

PS:

Finally, after deep examination, I prefer to use bbWinSkin instead. The bbWinSkin is not intensive for CPU at all.
And it has some other interesting features

Glad you found something to your liking. bbwinskin was by the late unkamunka (Malcolm Wagner) and accompanied his Blackbox4WindowsMod build. Among its "interesting features" are two more styling options, block and wave. What other features did you find interesting?

[E-xecutive]

Glad you found something to your liking. bbwinskin was by the late unkamunka (Malcolm Wagner) and accompanied his Blackbox4WindowsMod build. Among its "interesting features" are two more styling options, block and wave. What other features did you find interesting?

Exclusions.List and Shell.WM.Skins   Probably, the last one won't be used by me personally, but it's included if I need it.
BTW, the '[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]block and wave[/color]' options are at the top left of a window, am I right? What they do when are pressed (I see no results)?

[pitkon]

Exclusions.List and Shell.WM.Skins   Probably, the last one won't be used by me personally, but it's included if I need it.
BTW, the '[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]block and wave[/color]' options are at the top left of a window, am I right? What they do when are pressed (I see no results)?

They are split graphics styling options. To use them, you have to use a style with those options.

[E-xecutive]

They are split graphics styling options. To use them, you have to use a style with those options.

OK. Frankly speeking, I'm not so interested in graphics environment (is it attractive or more attractive)... to aggregate and speed up work is all I need. So, if '[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]split graphics[/color]' means split a window into two, it would be greate  Could you propose an existing style that supports such bbWinSkin function, just to see it in action?

[pitkon]

OK. Frankly speeking, I'm not so interested in graphics environment... to aggregate and speed up work is all I need. So, if '[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]split graphics[/color]' means split a window into two, it would be greate  Could you propose an existing style that supports such bbWinSkin function, just to see it in action?

Split graphics do not split window into two, but use a 4-color pattern (instead of a 2-color pattern) to create various effects, splitting 4 color commands into two pairs. And you can see split graphics in action by using any of my styles, but you have to have a build that supports split graphics (most of the modern ones, like xzero's, mojmir's (not the one uploaded here, though, you have to wait for its update), dblake's, nocd5's etc. You can find all of them either in New Builds or in Download builds sections.

[E-xecutive]

OK, I see. They are really good functions for people creating an attractive interface, but to place the two buttons at the top of every window is a bit illogical, IMHO    Thanx a lot for explanation

[pitkon]

OK, I see. They are really good functions for people creating an attractive interface, but to place the two buttons at the top of every window is a bit illogical, IMHO    Thanx a lot for explanation

You are very welcome - and you can take off (or add) any button you (don't) like by editing bbleanskin.rc Want me to show you how?

[E-xecutive]

You are very welcome - and you can take off (or add) any button you (don't) like by editing bbleanskin.rc Want me to show you how?

But I need to take off two buttons from the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbWinSkin. I don't use [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin any more because of the above reasons.[/color]

[pitkon]

But I need to take off two buttons from the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbWinSkin. I don't use [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbleanskin any more because of the above reasons.[/color]

OK, open bbleanskin.rc in your plugins/bbleanskin folder with an editor like Notepad. Look for the lines

 

# - Titlebar Buttons

# - 0 = Empty

# - 1 = Close

# - 2 = Maximize

# - 3 = Minimize

# - 4 = Rollup

# - 5 = AlwaysOnTop

# - 6 = Pin

 

bbleanskin.titlebar.buttons:            647-45321

 

(the numbers in the titlebar line may be more or less).

Take out buttons you don't need by deleting their numbers. The dash - separates left from right side of the titlebar. So, if - say - you want to take off Rollup and AlwaysOnTop, keep only Close, Maximize and Minimize and place them on the right side of the titlebar, the line above should be this:

 

bbleanskin.titlebar.buttons:           321

 

If you want to pay tribute to good old Windows 11 and place those buttons on the left in reverse order, the line should be

 

bbleanskin.titlebar.buttons:            123-0

 

If you want to place Maximize and Minimize on the left and Close on the right, the line should be

 

bbleanskin.titlebar.buttons:            23-1

 

After editing bbleanskin.rc, save it, unload bbleanskin and load it again. The changes should take effect. If not, you probably need a reboot (it's the bbleanskinengine.dll that causes some issues and needs rebooting).

 

Hope that's clear

[E-xecutive]

bbleanskin.titlebar.buttons:            123-0

This is the clue! I didn't mention the zero before.
Once more. I don't use the bbleanskin, it's turned off totally.

 

By analogy, I edit the bbwinskin.rc in such a way:

bbwinskin.blackbox.titleButtons: 400321

Now it works as I need, the two buttons unavailable   
 

By default, it was:

bbwinskin.blackbox.titleButtons: 654321

 

This variant:

bbwinskin.blackbox.titleButtons: 4321

didn't help me before.

 

Thank you very much for the way!

[pitkon]

 

This variant:

bbwinskin.blackbox.titleButtons: 4321

didn't help me before.

 

Thank you very much for the way!

 

It would help if you had used 4-321

And you are very welcome!

[diabol]

I see the topic has already moved elsewhere, but just for future reference:

- bbLeanSkin probably does require a bit of extra processing power (after all it has to redraw the title bar whenever the window is changed)

 

However, the proper solution for this is not to turn off bbLeanSkin but to turn off opaque window movement altogether.

Old computers/OSs do a lot of the drawing on the CPU (because of technical limitations back then) which modern ones offload to the GPU.

 

Turning off opaque window movement and other effects like mouse drop shadows, menu animations (fade in/fade out), trasparency and going for Windows Classic instead of Luna/Aero usually save a lot of resources on older systems.

 

That being said, bbLeanSkin is and always was a hack - a beautiful and pretty stable hack, but a hack nonetheless, so it does have it's technical quirks.

 

I haven't checked this, but from the occassional flickering in applications which fight back suggests that bbLeanSkin's drawing code invalidates the title bar region of the window forcing windows to redraw it upon move (or resize or mouseover).

After moving the window, windows draws the default title bar which triggers bbLeanSkins redrawing it's title bar (and if the application handles the whats-it-called-which-causes-custom-frame-drawing event itself, it draws it's stuff afterwards, causing the flickering).

 

ANYWAY, even on older systems it has always been faster to just cut-and-paste (bitblit) a screen region (window) and redraw whatever's left empty from the cutout instead of redrawing everything, however, when the window's region gets invalidated after the blit, windows actually blits the screen region AND redraws everything anyway.

 

A lot of speculation here, but something like that might probably be happening. Also I suspect bbLeanSkin's code is not completely optimal

[E-xecutive]

[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]Turning off opaque window movement and other effects like mouse drop shadows, menu animations (fade in/fade out), trasparency and going for Windows Classic instead of Luna/Aero usually save a lot of resources on older systems...........[/color]

A lot of speculation here, but something like that might probably be happening. Also I suspect bbLeanSkin's code is not completely optimal

Thank you for a deeper approvement 

All the performance tunings, you mentioned above, are done totally. It doesn't help, the resources consumption raises on every mouse-movement over any part of a whole window skinned by the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbLeanSkin.[/color]

 

Would anyone examine this topic from left to right or vice versa -- it doesn't matter for the main idea:

the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]bbLeanSkin is a bad consumer for computer resources (CPU or GPU). Moreover, it's an unreasonable one comparing to the bbWinSkin.[/color]

 

[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]The only functional lack I see in the bbWinSkin is that a user should be informed with a popup when a window can not be skinned. Such a window just not appear at all. The problem can be solved by including the application to exclusions.rc, but for most people it's hard to remember constantly this very reason for casual lost windows.[/color]