bigmuscle

Yes, you are absolutely right except it's DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow API function to control blur effect and Windows 8 Explorer does not use it to enable blur behind taskbar anymore. Instead it uses SetWindowCompositionAttribute API function to enable accent on taskbar to have it semi-transparent. Versions up to RC1 were injected into every running process (=incorrect behaviour) which allowed more control what each process does and taskbar blur was achieved just by ignoring what explorer.exe sets: 28 DEFINE_HOOK(BOOL, SetWindowCompositionAttribute, HWND hWnd, WINCOMPATTRDATA* winCompAttrData);29 HOOK(BOOL, SetWindowCompositionAttribute, HWND hWnd, WINCOMPATTRDATA* winCompAttrData)30 {31 if(isTaskBar(hWnd) && winCompAttrData->attribute == 0x13) // do not allow setting accent on taskbar32 {33 return TRUE;34 }35 36 return __SetWindowCompositionAttribute(hWnd, winCompAttrData);37 }38 39 DEFINE_HOOK(HRESULT, DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow, HWND hWnd, _In_ const DWM_BLURBEHIND* pBlurBehind);40 HOOK(HRESULT, DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow, HWND hWnd, _In_ const DWM_BLURBEHIND* pBlurBehind)41 {42 if(isTaskBar(hWnd))43 {44 // enable blur behind taskbar45 DWM_BLURBEHIND blur = { 0 };46 blur.dwFlags = DWM_BB_ENABLE;47 blur.fEnable = TRUE;48 return __DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow(hWnd, &blur);49 }50 51 return __DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow(hWnd, pBlurBehind);52 }Now it injects into DWM only (= correct behaviour) so only rendering engine is controlled. There is absolutely no reason why DWM should change any window (including taskbar, alt-tab window etc.) attributes. And one thing ... when ace2 likes installing additional software to bypass donation popupbox, console window etc, then he can install additional software to blur his taskbar

WindowBlinds is 3rd party skinning engine which disables DWM rendering of window frames and completely replaces default Uxtheme engine - mostly uses GDI. My Aero Glass is nothing more than reimplementation of code to blur glass areas during DWM rendering - uses Direct3D in Vista-Win8 and Direct2D in Win8.1. The basic differences between rendering engines can be found e.g. here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff729480(v=vs.85).aspx

I sent you a pm with a video to show you exactly what's going on. --edit-- Strange, I played a bit with the colors in Personalization panel and now I can't reproduce that bug... Thanks, I fixed glitches in thumbnail windows.

Ah, I guess those artifacts appears when the window is layered. I must admit that I don't know if I manage to fix it, because the same problem appears for layered windows even in Windows 7 implementation.

I checked your log and there is nothing wrong, no error reported so everything seems to be working correctly. Except one thing... when the new loader is being executed, the Aero Glass library seems to be already injected so there is something wrong with your installation. I will check tomorrow - I just hope it will be easily reproducible. BigMuscle, Ivo Beltchev has said he is willing to enable better Taskbar transparency when your product is used with his ClassicShell product... Perhaps you could contact him and communicate your specific meaning of "disable accent"? Please see: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1889 -Noel Accent is specific undocumented feature of DWM which makes whole window to be rendered with specific color and hardcoded alpha channel. It can be controlled via SetWindowCompositionAttribute API but I have not found any suitable documentation except small information how to enable/disable accent from Tihiy.

Does debug.log contain some error message? ralcool: if it is the first you're going to upgrade your CPU, the form on website will do the key upgrade for you automatically (if HDD/SSD part is still same).

It's up to you to try it :-)

which will be very soon, because I have only one non-important bug to fix... unless someone reports something new

The "Disable Taskbar Transparancy" label is a bit inconsistent with DWM API description. If you want any window (not window frame!) to be blurred you must call DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow with fEnable = TRUE, there is no other way to achieve it. The main problem is that documentation does not mention that enabling blur in Win8 results in fully opaque window - which is the reason why most of the software has label "disable transparency".

As I know, ClassicShell has an option which can bring the taskbar blur back. I just tested and it works but I think they do not disable accent so taskbar will be double-colorized resulting in less transparency. If it is my bug then I will be glad to fix it but unfortunately I have no possibility to reproduce it so I am not able to fix it. Are you sure that it does not happen when Aero Glass is not running? I just added to the statement to my homepage just to inform users who still around send me e-mails such as "Hey, I donated 1 euro but debug log still appears" that "you cannot live in the house which is under development regardless how much money you pay for the living". In reality, this change is not so big, because it has been present in Aero Glass library since the beginning and it was already working in old loader in Windows 8. I just fixed some small bugs and released install.bat script to public.

Hancoque: bypassing the theme signature is the thing which causes blackscreen when custom theme is being loaded before the bypassing feature is correctly injected. Also, theme signature bypassing has never been presented as my Aero Glass feature because it has nothing to do with DWM hook. It was meant only as debugging mean to correctly develop glass effect in all possible cases.

AERO GLASS for Win8.1 Release Candidate 2 We are getting closer and closer to release so here is another build to test. This build makes some things to work in different way, because it does not use AppInit_DLLs registry value to load my library into memory. This requires also some other significant changes: * simply unpack to your folder and execute install.bat with admin privileges, it will inform you with success or error message * although you can still use AppInit_DLLs registry value to load this library, the method won't be supported anymore and library won't be tested for this functionality With these changes, some functionality has been removed, because it cannot work - especially uxtheme.dll and explorer.exe hooks: * bypass theme signature feature has been removed - WARNING: if you currently use unsigned theme, your system may become unbootable so restore default Windows theme at first * taskbar won't be blurred anymore unless you use some 3rd party tweak to restore this effect (e.g. StartIsBack) * custom swatches are not loaded and colorization control panel will fail to load if you have custom swatches applied in the registry * all of this removed functionality may be restored in separate libraries in the future but they won't be maintained in DWMGlass.dll anymore, because they are out of scope of DWM hooking. Some other important changes: * this version contains hardcoded default patterns for DWM functions so you don't need DWMCORE.PDB and UDWM.PDB files unless any future Windows update changes the patterns. However, Aero Glass will work in limited mode when DWM.PDB is not present because it is needed to correctly load user settings from registry. Limited mode means that all settings are in their default values and you cannot control them in any way. * fixed small blur glitch

Everyone who enters the beta/testing phase of any software is supposed that he will read all the instructions for this testing software. There is no license buying.

It is really weird that nothing more is logged, because all my code is called from here: HRESULT hRes = _CDrawingContext_DrawVisualTree(...);if (hRes != S_OK) debugTrace("CDrawingContext::DrawVisualTree failed 0x%X\n", hRes);

so maybe minidump.dmp was generated?

I checked your log and I see absolutely nothing which would point that problem is in my code. It's just regular DWM restart and if eventvwr log contains same entry as before, it does not come from my code (because I log every returned value which is different from S_OK).

Hancoque: I am not sure if it is connected but I found interesting bug in DWM. When sidebar is opened when RDP is being closed, DWM crashes immediately after logging back into your account. And this happens regardless my Aero Glass library. Tusticles: if your theme supports, it will be there.

I don't see anything wrong with it, because it is not crash. It is normal that DWM is restarted when user is logged out/in.

btw, if anyone is interested I could create a little DLL to re-enable glow on ribbon windows (it would be separate from aero glass).

ok, but I until you do it, you should remove your content, because I doubt that this forum wants to be connected with warez.

frizouy: Do you have permission from Microsoft to publish their copyrighted work? If not, I believe you are violating copyright by publishing/sharing it.

AERO GLASS for Win8.1 Release Candidate 1 Not much changes: * a few fixes * donation key is loaded from donation.key file (license.key still supported but it will be removed in the future) * added more error logging * added 32-bit build * added settings to tweak text glow effect: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM:TextGlowMode (DWORD): 0x0=No glow effect, 0x1=Glow effect loaded from atlas, 0x2=Glow effect loaded from atlas and theme opacity is respected, 0x3=Composited glow effect using your theme settings I'm not sure if I changed something more. http://glass8.berlios.de/win81.html

Maybe you are running on battery or have incompatible Windows theme.

Win8/8.1 Uxtheme service/DWM will fail when loading Win7 theme, because it has different internal structure. So you don't have to try it.

NoelC: I'm adding some additional error reporting so I will provide it in next build.