I've almost got it...

Anyone know of a way to script a button so that the script runs independently of mouse events? According to the documentation, I should be able to call a script on window activation or deactivation. However, there is no setting for that in SKS, and adding it manually doesn't appear to work.
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No doubt about it. Either 'ScriptActivate' and ScriptDeactivate' are broken or the documentation on it is in error.

I don't know if this is relevant but it seems to me that if the title on the bottom was broken then skins that used that wouldn't display right.  I just checked two of them and they work fine. On is the second skin I ever made from back in early 1999 (Darkmarble) and the other is Doreen's TV which has a real fat bottom bar and a much thinner top bar.  Maybe it's just Skin Studio that's not working but the skinning engine is ok? or maybe the text isn't far enough from the window in both of these to have the clipping effect?

Other thing is... wouldn't a titlebar text background be the same as a text button and wouldn't a titlebar text background automatically resize to fit the text so you wouldn't need to run a script?

Both of the skins you mentioned have large enough top borders to keep from clipping the text on the bottom. For instance, if your top border is only 3 pixels wide, the text on the bottom would only show as a 3-pixel strip. So text backgrounds still wouldn't work for that (I've tried it).