[BUG] On Desktop Positioning and layers mix up

[ScreamerBG]

Hello to everyone,

It's my first post here so please bear with me
I really like the Rainmeter app and all the freedom it gives you.
So at some point I decided to use it as fully featured desktop extension, revamping my entire desktop and that required that the Rainmeter app won't minimize on "Show desktop".
Unfortunately as it turned, that's not an easy task and knowing my workflow habits, I'm using the "Show desktop" button A LOT (I'm web developer).
I've read around about how I could use custom minimization app, or use other tricks, all of which change the "Show desktop" functionality and then figured that I can use the "On desktop" Plugins (Skins) positioning to bind them to the desktop.
Using a mass replace in Notepad++ I managed to change them on to "On desktop", but then a bug appeared which lead me to believe that it's in the Rainmeter itself.
The symptoms are that after you use "Show desktop" or switch between desktop and an app frequently, and then use a Rainmeter plugins switcher (like tabs between Facebook and Deviantart plugins), the background of the theme (which also is a plugin) or other plugins mix their layer positions (as z-depth) and often switch to the top of either the newly enabled plugin or even all over the other plugins (pic 2).
Also that state can be identified by using a desktop tool that would popup a confirmation dialog that would appear behind all Rainmeter plugins (pic 3).
Additionally I found that I don't have to restart Rainmeter to restore the normal behavior, but I can click edit on any plugin and select "Edit", then enter some value in "Load Order", which immediately cause Rainmeter to correct the layers order. I don't even have to change the load order value permanently, just changing the value to something and then returning the previous number is sufficient to correct it.
Unfortunately setting the Load Order to each plugin doesn't correct the issue permanently, even if the background is set to 1, top most plugins set to 20 and so on.
The only way to force Rainmeter to fix the problem was to either restart it or change one of the plugins load order, which can be quite annoying if you do it 15 times a day!
I can send you a full backup of my theme so you can investigate it yourself or help you in any other way that is in my hands - just let me know.
Other than that, probably having a global "Make Rainmeter non-minimizable" option would be great as most of us use it exactly as fully featured desktop extension.

Thanks in advance,
Screamer

[jsmorley]

The trick is to set all skins (please, not "plugins") to the position "On Desktop". Then, when you have skins that overlap, use the LoadOrder setting in "Manage" for the skins to specify what order in the Z (front to back) plane you want them to appear.

So a background skin might be LoadOrder=0 and a skin sitting on top of it will be LoadOrder=1

That should fix what you are seeing.

[ScreamerBG]

The trick is to set all skins (please, not "plugins") to the position "On Desktop". Then, when you have skins that overlap, use the LoadOrder setting in "Manage" for the skins to specify what order in the Z (front to back) plane you want them to appear.

So a background skin might be LoadOrder=0 and a skin sitting on top of it will be LoadOrder=1

That should fix what you are seeing.

This is exactly what I did. ALL my skins are "On Desktop" and to make sure they are all set I used a text editor to change "AlwaysOnTop=0" to "AlwaysOnTop=-2".
Then when I figured the Load Order trick I replaced "AlwaysOnTop=-2" with "AlwaysOnTop=-2\nLoadOrder=1" (that "\n" is newline as regular expression) and manually set "LoadOrder=0" to the background layer.
None of these help

[jsmorley]

This is exactly what I did. ALL my skins are "On Desktop" and to make sure they are all set I used a text editor to change "AlwaysOnTop=0" to "AlwaysOnTop=-2".
Then when I figured the Load Order trick I replaced "AlwaysOnTop=-2" with "AlwaysOnTop=-2\nLoadOrder=1" and manually set "LoadOrder=0" to the background layer.
None of these help

Where are you making these changes? What file?

[ScreamerBG]

Where are you making these changes? What file?

Rainmeter.ini

Code: Select all

[WP7\Background]
Active=2
WindowX=0
WindowY=0
AlphaValue=255
FadeDuration=250
ClickThrough=1
Draggable=0
HideOnMouseOver=0
SavePosition=1
SnapEdges=1
KeepOnScreen=1
AutoSelectScreen=0
AlwaysOnTop=-2
LoadOrder=1
[WP7\Gallery\Color]
Active=0
WindowX=753
WindowY=443
AlphaValue=255
FadeDuration=250
ClickThrough=0
Draggable=1
HideOnMouseOver=0
SavePosition=1
SnapEdges=0
KeepOnScreen=1
AutoSelectScreen=0
AlwaysOnTop=-2
LoadOrder=20
[WP7\Gallery]
Active=0
WindowX=644
WindowY=542
AlphaValue=255
FadeDuration=250
ClickThrough=0
Draggable=1
HideOnMouseOver=0
SavePosition=1
SnapEdges=0
KeepOnScreen=1
AutoSelectScreen=0
AlwaysOnTop=-2
LoadOrder=30
WindowX=857
WindowY=339

[jsmorley]

Looks right. I use a similar approach and have no issue at all. I'm not sure what else is going on with this. This is part of that Omnimo suite isn't it? You might want to make sure that there are no bangs in the skins themselves that are messing with Z-Pos.

[ScreamerBG]

I also figured that even if I disable this in the background.ini file "OnRefreshAction=!execute [!RainmeterZPos -2 WP7\Background]" it solves the background overlap issue but doesn't solve the applications popup dialogs issue.
And even if it did, the statement above seem to be valid to me as you allow runtime changes of the Z positioning of a skin and in this case the Z position changes from -2 (the default) to -2 again on refresh.
Also following your advice I inspected all the files using "Find in Files" and found no other ZPos modifications within the skins I am already using.

[ScreamerBG]

Looks right. I use a similar approach and have no issue at all. I'm not sure what else is going on with this. This is part of that Omnimo suite isn't it? You might want to make sure that there are no bangs in the skins themselves that are messing with Z-Pos.

Yes, that's right, this is the Omnimo suit with few modifications by me to correct few of their skin issues.
As noted earlier I can send you full backup of the theme so you could investigate them yourself.
Or just send you the Rainmeter.ini file and you could install Omnimo yourself if you are concerned about viruses and trojans.

[jsmorley]

Yes, that's right, this is the Omnimo suit with few modifications by me to correct few of their skin issues.
As noted earlier I can send you full backup of the theme so you could investigate them yourself.
Or just send you the Rainmeter.ini file and you could install Omnimo yourself if you are concerned about viruses and trojans.

I really think you might want to contact the Omnimo guys on deviantART and see what they think is going on. Omnimo is like 300 skins or something and I am just not going to dig into that monster. I'm happy to help with "Rainmeter" issues, but I think this is some kind of "Omnimo" issue that the authors might be able to help you with.

http://fediafedia.deviantart.com/art/Omnimo-4-1-for-Rainmeter-158707137