I've had to abandon having the furry edge free against the background as I'd missed the fact that the start menu isn't always shown against the wall paper of course! D'oh

I infer from this comment that the fur effect on the edges is made up in part of alpha-blended pixels, thereby preventing you from using magic pink to get the freeform shape? And I'm guessing that if you leave out the semi-transparent bits, it no longer looks like fine-fur, but rather something more like my dog when it comes in from playing in the mud...

Oh, well, keep trying. I know I will. I'm having nearly as much fun with my mistakes as I am with my successes.

Nearly.

#16 SD - exactly. The edges need to be sub pixel fine to look anyhting like fur. I'd made the stooopid assumption initially that this didn't matter as I could just create it against the intended wallpaper and skip the tranperancy...a cunning plan with just 2 drawbacks - one, the wallpaper is often covered by a window/icons, and two - the wall paper is often covered by a window/icons. OK, that's only 1 drawback, but it's such a big one that it's worth mentioning twice

Now, if only WB could deal with alpha blending the outer edges of things it would be so empowering creatively...but I can understand the technicalities of why this is just about practically impossible for now. Once everything is rendered by Direct3d this'll be fixed I'm sure

Ahhh...I've just had a thought. I could concentrate on making a DesktopXP theme to make use of the alpha blending, and keep the matching WB skin fairly "simple"...that's so simple it might just work

I think that could be a better DesktopX (not XP) theme than a WB. You're doing good though, keep on chuggin'