YES!!!   Now I understood. You are absolutely right!

This is known issue. I just use these controls by totally different ways which excludes any bugs with hide/unhide ActiveX (or DX) objects. I solved this problem by using simple timer that works until all of the necessary objects become visible, "ontop" and "in the focus". Then the timer is stopping and runs the Main Script.

As well as I do not use the child/parent option for ActiveX controls.. Instead this I combine the necessary objects into one general group which should be moved (or be cloned) together. So I don't see these bugs around half of year.

But I'm agree that it would be great if Stardock will fix these bugs more professionally! 

I also have seen the "dragging" issue of activex controls.  Another fix.

I'd just like to add a couple of requests:

-It'd be nice if children objects would remain in their position and keep their rotation (both relative to their parent) after parent has been rotated

-It would also be great if a rotated object would keep itself anchored to a chosen point while resized (so creating rotated drawers would be easier and the final result better looking)

These two would enable quite a few interesting takes on user interface imo

fix the add to custom colours in the windows for shadow and font color, if you got 30 objects that need to be the same colour having to type out the numbers everytime is irritating

I agree. Just had to do that on a DX theme, Excalibur DX, soon to be released. https://forums.wincustomize.com/345517/page/9

@Anakey & RedneckDude

you could always do it with a script (loop plus setshadow)

that may be the case, however it is still a bug that needs fixing, and not all of us are fluent in Vb or java enough to do everything vi scripts

Write me that script , please, and I shall owe you immensely.....

Here, this should be helpful:

'///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Sub Object_OnStateChange(state)
    If state="Command executed" Then

    'preferences:

    selector_mode = 1
   
    'Selector will use different techniques to gather all objects that
    'you want to modify.
    '1: it will modify every object on your desktop (except for the ones with "<Unassigned>" name)
    '2: will modify objects you put in the modify_these
        modify_these="object1|object2|object3"

    '/preferences
        If selector_mode=1 Then
            For Each elem In DesktopX.Objects
                Call recolour(elem.name)
            Next
        ElseIf selector_mode=2 Then
            s=Split(modify_these&"|>>endcap<<","|")
            counter=-1
            Do
                counter=counter+1
                Call recolour(s(counter))
            Loop until s(counter+1)=">>endcap<<"
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Sub recolour(obj)
    enabled=True
    sharpness=10
    darkness=500
    x_offset=2
    y_offset=2
    color=RGB(100,200,150)
    'prefernces
    mode = 1
    '/preferences
    'MODE 1
        'will recolour only specified state
            'If chosen object doesn't have this state nothing happens
            state_to_modify="Mouse away"
       
        DesktopX.Object(obj).states(state_to_modify).SetShadow enabled,sharpness,darkness,x_offset,y_offset,color
    'MODE 2
        'will recolour object's current state
        x=DesktopX.Object(obj).state
        DesktopX.Object(obj).states(x).SetShadow enabled,sharpness,darkness,x_offset,y_offset,color
End Sub

'///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

It would be nice to be able to resize, rotate and move an object in one step (like Object.Reformat 100, 100, 45, 0, 0)

Stop doing bad things to the command line of single-exe gadgets and pass it properly to the extracted exe

I think Stardock missed the boat in the gadgets market. I just can't see customers flocking to pay for Desktop X to run gadgets/widgets when there are free sidebar gadgets/ yahoo for almost everything. I think the Market is in full blown themes and noone has really done anything revolutionary in quite sometime. Look at Gef's work. He makes arguably the better themes out there and they are basically the same thing just reworked with new graphics.

There is nothing more frustrating than findingan attrative DX theme and installing it only to find out it doesn't match your resolution. If there is a way to make it easier for Authors to make resoltuion independaent themes Stardock should look into that. Making it mandadory might not be a bad idea.

DX is what got me started skinning but I lost interest in it fast as new verions were buggy at the time and unless it works perfectly the bad press will easily outweigh the good. I would have never even got into skinning WB had DX been a more user friendly program.

I haven't tried in in quite sometime and to be honest I don't care to until something revoltionary with the program happens.

When I started using DX it was very simple for someone to make a theme. I relied on Martin's scripts to do everything. I was as compuiter illiterate as anyone could be yet I made some pretty cool themes that at the time I was embarrassed to share. Now I look back and I see how original some of the things I was doing were.  

I have the themes saved on cd but we are going back to version 1 so the themes stopped working a long time ago. The coding quickly got way over my head and I switched to skinning WB.

Just emptying my mind on the mattter as I enjoyed making DX themes more than anything else so far. I really did make some original stuff for myself, and that was on Win ME so I am sure some of the high taxing themes I made would work much smoother on todays systems. The freedom involved in the graphics and what you could do was the attraction for me. I guess when I lost interest I just could never get it back. Especially when I see all this coding talk. It scares the crap out of me. Obviously the more advanced it gets, the more knowledge of DX coding you need. There are only a couple of people that take it seriously and it just seems like it isn't enough to support the product. I could be wrong and DX hasn't been a loss in a lucrative sense but over the years it just seems to me that Stardock has fumbled it's way through DX.

Last thin is that Desktop X developer should have a free versio to help people get started making their own themes.  Maybe there is now and I spoke without doing my homework but that's where I am at. I simply ignore the program like thousands of other apps out there.

I know too long didn't read. LOL

The thing is that well myself as pretty much a noob in DX  yet just from looking at what has already been done have created a imo good multi functional widget, yet when i place it on WC it has to go in a specific catagory, there isn't a "all in one" catagory available.

Another thing is that there are very few DX skinners that feel their work is good enough to be able to make them into stand alone gadgets to be worth the extra $50 or so to do it, I would want to make my gadget stand alone, so that it could be stuck on usb and i could use it on any computer. My work is no where near proffesional enough to be sold so there is no point in me getting the pro edition for this perpose. Although if a portable version of DX was available then it would be ok to run just a widget as it would work on the copy of DX on the flash drive, would give dx skinners something to do on their lunch break as well