Hi,

I faced this problem already some time ago during Countdown Live 2 development, but I thought it was simply caused by my terrible coding. Maybe it is caused by it, but after so many revisions I think there has to be something else with this...

This is what my script does:

1. I create a popup menu with CreatePopupMenu.
   
2. I add a string menu item to it with AppendMenu.
   
3. I create a HBITMAP from an image:
   
   1. I create a GDI+ Bitmap object from an image file (in my case, "test.gif") using GdipCreateBitmapFromFile.
      
   2. I create a HBITMAP from the Bitmap object using GdipCreateHBITMAPFromBitmap with 0xFF000000 0x00000000 as background parameter (totally transparent, according to Matty Matty made a mistake, PLSC updated).
4. I add the HBITMAP to the menu item:
   
   1. I create a partial MENUITEMINFO structure with the cbSize, fMask and hbmpItem members set.
      
   2. I use SetMenuItemInfo to assign this structure to the menu item.
5. I let the menu pop up when the user clicks on a button using TrackPopupMenu.

From my experimenting, it seems that only the blue component of your background parameter affects the background. Changing it to 0x000000FF yields a bright blue, and values in between (like 0x0000007F) produce dark blues. The alpha, red and green channels seem to be ignored and taken as 0.

I don't know whether it's a problem with your image or a bug with GDI+, but I found some links for you of other people having the same problem: [1] and [2].

Aww... you're giving me headaches, phalanxii!
Unfortunately, I can't do testing myself as all PCs here at home are upgraded to Vista.

So, from what I understand, there are problems with converting a GDI+ Bitmap to a HBITMAP. But, let's say that instead of preserving transparency, would it be easier to create a color mask and create transparency by filtering out one color? Would that solve the need of using GDI+ Bitmaps? Would it be possible in fact?

UPDATE: Okay, markee and NanaFreak use exactly the same function for their Web2Live script to add new signatures to the list. They modify the image list and it works great. I try to add it to a menu item and it fails. So, maybe it's not the bitmap loading, but the bitmap drawing... I guess that we'll have to look at the 4th step, namely the the SetMenuItemInfo part. Any known issues with that bit?

UPDATE 2: Hmm... this looks like an interesting MSDN article: Vista Style Menus. It looks like it's really caused by the menus!

After a read, I think it's clear to me that Vista causes the icons to work, while lower versions don't support it. Maybe an owner-draw could fix it... but I doubt Plus! scripts can actually handle those!

• Make the menus of MenuButtonControls editable in run-time. Something like PlusWnd::MenuButton_SetMenu(CtrlId, MenuXML) would be great!
  
• Add some kind of support for images in menus. Plus! already does an owner-draw on the menu, so why can't you use that to draw images on it? You already did so with ComboBoxControls!