Do you have seperate images for taskbar and quicklaunch buttons? Did you get the path statement right for each section? maybe the filename in the image path is the wrong one...

I am using the same image for the taskbar buttons and the quicklaunch buttons. but they have the same number of states, 6 each. the taskbar background is a different image of course. It still lays the button image behind the quicklaunch buttons as a background, no matter what I do. Not showing any errors in skinstudio either.

Then make a different image for the quicklaunch buttons, or the taskbar buttons, whichever one isn't getting what you want... or maybe I'm not understanding the problem.

I made a different image, but that's not solving it, no matter what image I put there, with however many states it has, the button image is also the background where the taskbar should be showing, i'll post a screen as my desktop image so you can see, and thanks for trying to help me here, I appreciate it.

Well, I can't change my desktop image right now, page keeps timing out. Hope you can understand me, and I'll post the pic as soon as I wake up.

here is a screen of what it is doing http://www.msu.edu/~conatser/wcpblm.jpg there shouldn't be any blue behind the buttons, it should be the background as seen below the PS7 button. there is no blue in the taskbar background image.

knatzz: I have had this problem for a while on quite a few skins. I solved it today on one of my skins. I think it has something to do with the size of the buttons. If you use the taskbar buttons image for the quicklaunch buttons you get that effect. So today I re-made some quicklaunch buttons from scratch, making them much smaller than the taskbar buttons. If you want a good example of this, get DavidK's new skin "Alien Tech" and look at the quicklaunch buttons, these are a good example of how to do it properly. I have tried everything else known to man to solve this problem, but this is the only thing that has worked so far. I don't know why it happens, but I'm sure that I used to use the same buttons for taskbar and Q-launch before! anyway, this will solve the problem, or it should!

Please let me know what happens, maybe we can work this out together.

Boxxi: I think your on to something! I had the problem with safety ninja and the problem is long gone now. I still don't know what I did, but using that skin as an example, the taskbar and quicklaunch buttons are the same image and are 35 pix high. the taskbar background, which I changed and MIGHT have been the cause is only 30 pix high. On my new skin the buttons are the same hight as the taskbar, 30 pix. But I can't alter the height of the bar or the buttons because i'm not using any tranparency, so they have to be of identical height or it won't look right.

Are you sure about this? I kinda figured it was the width that was the problem!
I'm confused again now. I wish there was something in skinstudio that told you the optimum sizes for all the different components, that is a major stumbling block for me.
I'm going to take a look at one of my other skins that has the problem, and play with the sizes.

Ahhhhhhh! You mean the width of the button is too long, and how many states doesn't matter! (a lightbulb appears on top of Knatzz's head, quickly grows dim, and then breaks) looking into it now

OK, Here's what I know, in safety ninja, I am using the same image for both ql and taskbar buttons, it's 492 pix long and 35 pix high, 5 pix higher than the taskbar, and that setup works. I have a separate image in the new one for ql and it is 30x474. I just resized the image to (horizontal) 35pix, then to 25, to 15, and then to 10 and nothing produced any results. when i resized it to 10 pix high it was much smaller than the alien tech ql button in length. I also toggled the mouseover effect on and off with the different sized images, so that can't be it. I have tried stretching and tiling the taskbar background and that also doesn't effect the problem. I am out of ideas now

Me too!!!! I have just spent ages making new images for most of the buttons and taskbar images. No joy! I wanted to ask you though.... your taskbar background image... is it a single image, or two? I have seen it done both ways and I don't know which is correct or if it even matters.

My taskbar image is a single image. WB cuts the inage in half length-wise and uses the first half for the bottom, and the second half for if the bar is at the top of the screen, The vertical bar is the same way, and cuts the image in half length-wize for a left and right. I just realized that too! I am going to make a loooonnngggg taskbar and see if that's it.

NO luck, my taskbar image was 79 wide x 30 high, the same as one section of the button image. I re-sized it to around 700 length and no effect.

MadIce has an excellent doc on XP taskbar skinning. It is written for WB 3.x but covers the taskbar and all the related components (Start Button, grips, taskbuttons, tray) very well.
I had a problem with a skin I was working on where the tray arrow kept coming out black and following his suggestions really helped. I've got a copy or you might see about contacting him.