I was thinking over your blending bug the other day... am I correct to assume that the blending bug blends whatever its drawing over with the new image with some kind of function you write? If so, it may take some altering of the code but you could pull off a trick like igzoom v2:
-put all of your interface on a new window
-set the new window to layered transparency (with no borders or caption)
-use BitBlt to copy the contents of iguidances window into memory somehow so you have a fresh copy of the iguidance display every time you refresh
-Have the new window follow around the status changes (minimize, zorder changes, ect) of iguidance/skinbedder (with set parent or something) by making it a modal window
-Have the new window follow around the size/position of iguidance/skinbedder
And then you have buttons that appear to be in the window, and arent affected by iguidances redraw. Its alot of codeing though
