NoelC

I was speaking generally, not specifically - sorry. It's hard to have things come out as intended with this forum software fighting every step of the way (I still can't paste anything into it). -Noel

Thanks for all the lively conversations in 2013... ...and may your 2014 be prosperous! -Noel

I'd like it to look and work substantially as it does now, but with a more sensible Z-ordering. Is that what the "Old Style Alt+Tab Dialog" setting does? Going to try it out in a VM... -Noel

Is there something wrong with laughing? 'Tis the season to be merry after all! Please allow me to suggest something, though... Rather than write to others disrespectfully, try to make positive suggestions intended to help. Such a suggestion might be worded something like "it would be really great if Aero Glass for Windows 8.1 would ultimately again allow the configuration of a Taskbar blurring override as an option." You have here, a very unique opportunity to help positively influence a very significant product. We all see the value in it. It may be that for reasons beyond your control the product won't be able to implement that feature, or maybe it must be delayed to a future release where the scope of the product is changed. I can assure you that insulting the people doing the work isn't making it more likely your suggestions will be taken seriously. Fa la la la la! Happy Holidays! -Noel

Thanks for that correction. I need to better keep my details straight. -Noel

But as I mentioned in an edit to my post above, there's nothing fundamentally different about tweaking Windows 8 to make it more usable. Anyone in their right mind did that with Windows 7 as well. I'm not at all happy with the direction Microsoft is taking - turning away from serious computing - but they haven't removed quite enough of the "To Work" options yet to make Windows useless. -Noel

Well, yeah - you're absolutely right. It's pretty much a POS without those tweaks. But it IS tweakable, and the kernel underneath is actually quite solid (it's probably little different from Windows 7 under the covers). We used to tweak Windows 7 almost as much - so using Windows 8.1 this way is not fundamentally different. But it's not like we've spent a lot of money to get the tweaks we use, and I've even published a book on how to set up systems like we do. The ones I can think of quickly offhand, most of which we used with Windows 7 as well... ClassicShell (desktop usability enhancement) - $0 Aero Glass for Win 8.1 (desktop usability enhancement) - a few dollars donation FastPictureViewer Codec Pack (thumbnail generator) - $12 I think it was. WizMouse (mouse scrolling coordinator) - a few dollars donation ShellFolderFix (Explorer tweaker to pre-position windows) - $0 Avast! free edition (anti-malware) - $0 7-Zip (compressed archive access) - $0 Z-VSSCopy (shadow copy access) - $0 (though still looking for a less clunky solution) Skype (audio online collaboration) - $0 Tortoise and Ankh Subversion (software configuration and data management) - $0 Frameworkx Shortcut Manager (cleans up shortcut icons) - $0 ShellExView (shell extension manager) - $0 Autoruns (SysInternals background program manager) - $0 FileTypesMan (associate applications with file extensions) - $0 FolderOptionsX (Explorer usability tweaker) - $0 Plus of course we use a number of commercial applications. -Noel

Something not really mentioned here, but worth discussing in context: Bear with me please, it's been a long time since I thought about this, and some of it is from memory... With Vista (I think it was) the Z-ordering of windows was no longer maintained the same way as XP - I guess Microsoft figured some half-baked sorting of the list was somehow better than deterministically knowing that when you minimized a window it would always show up at the end, and the next most recent window used would be second in the list, third most recent third in the list, and so on. In short, with XP and earlier you could keep a mental image of the Z-order and instinctively use Alt-Tab (or Shift-Alt-Tab) the proper number of times to reach the various windows you had been using. A power user didn't have to look at the list as much. I found that convenient, though I've gotten somewhat used to not having it. Is there any way to tweak Explorer (or whatever) to return the old XP-like behavior? -Noel

And I just need to reiterate one thing, since I'm coming across in this thread as kind of critical... Though we have a measurable (though small) incremental speed decrease, I quite like Windows 8.1. At this point we've got it working very smoothly and it's completely stable (better than I expected this soon after release, actually). Windows Updates kept me from running it longer, but so far it's gone one stint of 17 days straight without a reboot on one workstation (under heavy daily software development use). You wouldn't believe the amount of work we crunch through on these workstations. I use mine for not only software development, testing, etc. but also business management. -Noel

Wrong. It blurs the Taskbar just fine if a 3rd party program sets the proper attribute in the Taskbar. From what I gather, Windows (Explorer) itself stopped setting the attribute to blur the taskbar via the SetWindowCompositionAttribute API - probably because Microsoft figures there's no software any more in DWM to blur it. It looks to me that in the latest version BigMuscle's software doesn't forcibly override that by trying to magically detect which Window on the screen is the Taskbar. Can't say I blame him. That would be a nice option to have built right into Aero Glass for Win 8, but other software that's more aware of the Taskbar, such as StartIsBack or ClassicShell, can be set up to do the work. -Noel

I have already found such benchmarks, and have shown some of the results above. Every test and all my experience since moving our development environment up to Windows 8.1 confirm that there's a file system performance loss of 5% to 10% more or less. Our testing wasn't limited to this one system. And as I said, Windows 8 slowed things down a little, and Windows 8.1 slows them down a little more. Microsoft doesn't seem to care too terribly much about actual functionality as compared to their prime focus on what things look like. They're trying to reset the clock back to Windows 1.0 so they can grow up all over again. -Noel

I wasn't even aware anyone else had accomplished translucency blurring yet. Thanks for bringing that up. Unless StarDock is giving away their software, BigMuscle's solution costs less. -Noel

Want more benchmark info? ATTO disk I/O speed measurement on the same hardware, again showing an incremental degradation on Win 8.1... Win 8.1: Win 7: -Noel

Benchmark results? Sure. Passmark overall disk assessment. The blue results were from a run under Windows 7 back in September, and the red results were the same benchmark run on the same hardware two days ago, on Windows 8.1. Here's a more advanced test, which simulates "Workstation" type loading, with a combination of read and write operations. Win 8.1: Win 7: And you can discount Explorer all you want, but how well it can follow the file system structure to enumerate all the files is an activity that actually does give a very good assessment of file system performance. I literally used to be able to enumerate almost 30,000 files / second on this modern workstation, running from an SSD array. Now it's more like 10,000 files / second. Yes, everything's optimized and up to date. There can be no conclusion other than to do useful work, Windows 8.1 is slower than Windows 7 on the same hardware. In my case it reduced disk access from blindingly fast to just blazingly fast, so it's really not a serious problem. My software builds went from 29 seconds to 35 seconds - not a big deal. -Noel

I agree it's a bit daunting to go figure out the answers, given the size of the thread. You need to find a suitable graphic file (.png) for use with Aero Glass for Win 8.1 (I think MrGRiM has posted one), then add the following to your registry, adjusting the values as appropriate: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM]"ColorizationGlassReflectionIntensity"=dword:00000040"CustomThemeReflection"="C:\\BIN\\AeroGlassReflectionImage.png"-Noel

It's possible that the method of installing the software (which now allows Secure Boot) excludes the ability to directly detect the Taskbar, so the software just blurs those regions on the screen where the blur has explicitly been established by DWM API calls. I don't know that, it's just a guess. -Noel

Hey BigMuscle, I've been on ATI Catalyst 13.12 (up from 13.9 before) for almost 2 full days now and haven't seen a single DWM restart. From what I can tell, Aero Glass for Win 8.1 works perfectly with the newest driver release. -Noel

P.S., Try out ClassicShell. Free and no ads. StartIsBack is another very inexpensive alternative, and written by a regular on this forum. -Noel

I've moved my business machines up to Windows 8.1 recently myself. It can be quite nice - I actually like it as well, though I personally have no love nor need for the Metro / Modern toy side and just don't use it. So yes, I have to admit, with some additional 3rd party stuff like BigMuscle's Aero Glass tool, it's pretty good. But... You did make one statement that caught my eye: "It really felt like a less animated, but more speedy Windows 7" During the (very thorough) evaluation we did here to determine if we could move up to Windows 8.1 (from 7; we skipped 8), I set out to determine whether Windows 8 really is faster. After extensive testing on the same hardware, it turns out it's NOT faster, really, except for one key thing: Booting up. Primarily that's the only thing, and part of it is because Microsoft has integrated what used to be called hibernation into the shutdown/bootup process. In head to head comparisons, with identical setups booting from SSD - and eliminating the hybrid shutdown/bootup (which we found had downsides we weren't willing to accept), we found the difference in bootup speed was just a few seconds, with Windows 8.1 being ever so slightly faster. But beyond that, one of the most important things an operating system does - provide access to files - is actually slower in Windows 8! You read that right - Windows 8 is slower to access files, and 8.1 even a bit slower than 8. If you have both Windows 7 and 8 on equivalent systems, and especially if running from SSD, try this: 1. Open Windows Explorer / File Explorer and navigate to the root of drive C:. 2. In the files (right) pane, select all folders and files, right-click, and choose properties. 3. Time how many seconds it takes for the Properties dialog to stop enumerating the files. A healthy Windows 7 system will be able to count up about 20,000 files per second on an SSD. Believe it or not, a Windows 8.1 system will deliver only about half that performance! Benchmarks that show actual read/write performance show a reduction in throughput on Windows 8 as well, as compared to Windows 7. I could hardly believe it and I did the tests many times over. Other things, such as operation of controls in the Windows interface (e.g., as measured by the 2D benchmark in PassMark PerformanceTest) are also a little slower on Windows 8, believe it or not. We did quite an extensive evaluation. So why do people feel it's faster? I believe most folks compare a loaded-up Windows 7 system with their freshly installed Windows 8 system, and would sense the very same "speedup" if they were to install Windows 7 afresh. That, plus the fact that MIcrosoft's hybrid bootup really is a good bit quicker than a full shutdown and restart in Windows 7, makes it "seem" faster. Bottom line is this: Don't think that Windows 8 is going to radically speed up your computing experience. It really doesn't, and in some cases can actually slow the same operations down a little by comparison. -Noel

At least I gave you credit for the possibility of it being a legitimate bug report, though one wonders why you couldn't have just described that problem without being begged for the information. -Noel

You should know that your first post sounded like a lot of others, which go something like "I want I want I want! whiiiine! wahhhh!" Is there something fundamentally going wrong on your system because the pop-up is showing up before you're logging in? I'm sure that if you're having a legitimate problem, BigMuscle will want to hear about it. Please understand that people have been complaining about the pop-up and watermark forever, and it gets reeeeally tiring to those of us testing this software and trying to help BigMuscle perfect it to have to keep hearing childish complaints about it. I can't imagine those complaints make him feel all that cheerful either. So either document the problem, or stop complaining. -Noel

Ah, realization dawns... ClassicShell is a competitor of StartIsBack. I didn't realize the connections behind the scenes. Hopefully Ivo will discover the feature now that he's been pointed in the right direction. But it's not a big deal for me - I kind of like the partially transparent Taskbar without blur. -Noel

Having just installed the trial of Office 365 (desktop applications), and having had it port my complex set of Outlook 2003 configuration settings quite well, I'd be interested to know if any of the competitors even try to port Microsoft Office settings during setup/startup. I have to say, it's been a more pleasant experience than I expected to get this going, but I'm not committed yet. -Noel

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

Exactly right. But I think once you've settled on the final functionality of Aero Glass for Win 8.1, Ivo Beltchev might be willing to add some tweaks to ClassicShell in order to provide better performance with your product. Together they make a dynamite pair of usability enhancements!! I have to say, the transparent and non-blurred Taskbar is starting to grow on me... Perhaps I'm becoming infected with whatever brain parasites the Microsoft people who "designed" the Windows 8 UI have... -Noel