I'm on XP Pro, fully updated, and I have the latest caliper build. At any transparency setting other than "solid" I get annoying rectangles that appear, starting at the caliper and extending up and to the left, all the way to the screen edges.

The rectangle washes out and lightens everything behind it, and the effect reliably happens when I merely hover over any of the buttons on the tool. a couple of seconds later it goes back to normal, but the bug keeps happening on further hovers.

I bought the tool mainly to get transparency, and now it's driving me nuts. The free version was trouble-free too.

John,

I'm very sorry that you're experiencing the error, this is something we have not seen on any of our tests and I would very much like to resolve it for you and other users.

I think the first step would be for you to re-download the application, I know it's a pain but please ensure that you've got the latest version 3.3 of the Calipers installed. Version 3.2 did have transparency issues and we did a lot of work to improve this, and we've also made a few small fixes to 3.3 so you might have an old version.

Secondly, if the problem still persists then please email me a screenshot of what's happening. You can do this by pressing the 'PrtSc' key on your keyboard and then using 'Paste' in any graphics package.

I should be able to give you more insight after seeing the image, and then we can take the next step.

I'd like to add that if we cannot solve your errors I will be more than happy to issue a full refund.

You can find the screenshots here:

http://www.frontiernet.ne...p/caliper/

The start.jpg is unhovered, the hover.jpg is
hovered over one of the color buttons, and
the appover.jpg has another "ontop" window
overlapping the caliper. In the last case,
the rectange remains permanently until the
top app is removed.

John,

Thanks for the screenshots, I'm sorry that the latest version did not help the fix. I'm actually out of the office until this evening, however when I get back I can send you a copy of the Calipers that I think might help your problem.

In the mean time could I ask if you have multiple monitors running as we've had trouble with that in the past?

I'd also like to know if the Calipers totally disappear when you hover over them, from the screenshot it looks like they might?

Yes, the calipers vanish when the rectangle is there, and they seem to occupy the lower right corner of the rectangle.

No extra monitors, just a typical PC set up. It is only 550Mhz, but that should not be causing this issue. I do happen to have a lot of apps as you can see from the shots, and I also have a recently installed Radeon 9600 graphics card, altho how that could cause this I don't know.

The real cause is that everything ALWAYS happens to ME. I have a talent for that. Must be Karma. ;)

BTW, I bought the app partly to get the features, partly to pay for all the time I have enjoyed the free version, and partly because I'm about to write a review on it. This development is disturbing, but the free version is still good, so it's not too bad, I suppose.

John,

I've just got a response back from the people who make the graphics library which is used in the Screen Calipers. They're over at graphics32.org in case you're interested.

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Their response:
I looked at the screenshots your user provided - I can almost say for certain that this problem does not relate to GR32. It looks very much like a graphics driver issue! But on the other hand, it could also be a problem in the way you use the windows alphablending. I am not very skilled regarding the latter.
I suggest you ensure that the user has the latest driver installed. If this is no good, you have to isolate the problem, try with a very simple application from which a set of steps will reveal the introduction of the problem.
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You've mentioned your new Radeon graphics card, I think this may well be causing the problems. Would you mind checking that the drivers are all up to date? If you can ensure that they are then I can proceed with some test applications. It may just come down to a graphics card compatibility issue, which I would be very surprized at as we've never had any problems in the past.

I let the XP wizard look for new drivers, but it found no better matches, which makes sense since I installed the card just 4 months ago.

I also went to ATI, but they suggest using the wizard too, and the drivers I found were for other than standard use.

Just to close up this thread:

John and I eventually found out what was happening and have fixed this issue. The ghosting was only happening when the tooltips were show up when transparency is set to less than 100%. This only happens on some systems, we presume it's something low level in windows or a graphics card that's causing it.

Nevertheless the bug is now fixed and is uploaded on the site.

Thanks to John for your help and diagnosis on this.