MyStyle 's are the means to define how widgets (menu items, titlebars, wharf buttons, Pager desktops, etc. ) should be rendered. It defines widget's  background (solid  color ,  gradient , textured image and/or semitransparent texture), shape - making widget non-rectangular,  text font,  text 3D style, widget's border  bevel colors.

All the GUI elements are rendered using consistent approach in every  module and every part of the AfterStep. Interface is build from so called TBars. TBar is rectangular area that may be focused(hilited) or unfocused and pressed or unpressed.

TBAR STRUCTURE


Each TBar has the following structure :

- the  background of the TBar, which is defined by  MyStyle and state of the bar - there are two MyStyles assigned to each TBar - one for focused and one for unfocused state.

- tiles of the TBar. Tiles are smaller features that gets arranged inside the bar according to its size, alignment, position and order. Tiles could be static icons ( cannot be pressed ); blocks of buttons - each having two shapes - pressed and normal; Text labels; Empty space tiles. There could be upto 256 tiles, each residing on one of the cells in 8x8 grid. Several tiles could reside in single cell, in which case they get superimposed on top of each other.

-  bevel of the TBar. When TBar is rendered all of its tiles are superimposed on top of its  background , and resulting image will have a 3D  bevel drawn on it, using colors from same  MyStyle as used for  background .  Bevel could be switched off partially or entirely. Respective configuration options has been added where appropriate. When TBar is pressed - its  bevel is inverted.

TBAR RENDERING


When TBar is rendered all of its elements gets superimposed on top of each other using one of 13 blending methods supported by libAfterImage, with default being simple alphablending. See  MyFrame configuration for more details. This is refrred to as "Composition Method".