I ran into a very strange problem with transparent GIFs. I created an image with a transparent background. I added this image to a device page, sent it to the remote, and testing things. Worked fine, the button displayed properly.

I then copied and pasted this button across a number of devices. It looked fine in the design view, but I transferred the program to the remote, some copies of the button had an opaque gray background. I couldn't figure out a way to get rid of it, or why it worked on some devices and not others. I checked the emulator and saw that it displayed the same behavior as the remote -- some copies of the button were correctly transparent, others had an opaque gray background.

I eventually just gave up and "burned in" the background so that I wouldn't have to use transparency at all, but it still bugs me and I just thought I would ask if anyone else has seen something similar.

While I'm on the subject of transparency, it would be unbelievably wonderful if we could get support for PNGs with 8-bit transparency. Any chance we'll see that added in a future update?

Your button must be animated. The actual specification for GIFs doesn't allow layering of transparent animated GIFs. If you go hunting on the web, you'll have a very hard time finding animated GIFs that are layered.

It IS possible to layer them, technically, but it's a lot of programming work. I'm not expecting to see this feature any time soon.

As for PNGs with alpha transparency don't just talk about it here. Contact URC and let them know what you want. URC is very customer-responsive. If enough people want a feature, it's likely to become a priority.

Dale

Nope, not animated. It was a single-layer indexed-color image saved in Photoshop.

Okay... that's really weird then. I've never seen the transparent background of a GIF go opaque in any case other than in layering animated GIFs. You have stumped.

Try to import it for each button instead of copying it from device to device and see what happens. And then please let us know.

Greg

I had an issue the other night using the default metal layout. A graphic from fireworks with a transparent background would not stay transparent on the dark grey section on the right side of the background found on the special page of the dvd. It would go transparent on the lighter colored areas of the background but not in the dark section on the left.
Anybody know why this might be.
Derek

Tried that too, and it worked exactly the same -- it was transparent on some pages and not on others.

I could change the color of the opaque background by using the background color chooser (the color never showed up at design time), but there was no apparent way to say "I want a transparent background". The "Hidden" option in the background color chooser, which I thought would mean "hidden background", apparently means "hide the whole button graphic" because the image disappeared too.

Metal is a skin of Circuits. As such, the blinking blue LEDs you see at the top and bottom are actually a tall thin animated GIF that takes the place of the "scanner" animation on Circuits. I'm betting that the problem you're seeing occurs when you move your GIF on top of the transparent area in between the top and bottom blue LEDs.