Transparency's in 98se

[triger49]

Hi;

Ever since the advent of the "Aero" desktop, I was always told

that 98se Does not, Cannot support it. Well, along comes Opera

ver 10:10. As I am rumaging thru their addon archive, buried about

10 pages deep is one to make the overlays on speed dial wallpaper

transparent. Not only does it work, but quite eloquent. I realize

it's not an earth shattering discovery, just seems like folks will

tell you anything to bury Win9x.

Jake

[Tripredacus]

Yes transparency does work but back in the olden days of computers made for 98, transparency was a big time burden on the system. Even my old computer (Shiva) which was beefy back then for 98 displayed well if you didn't, say move stuff around or try to run a program that used 3D acceleration or shell. I managed to find this screenshot of transparency on Shiva which was taken on Dec 01, 2001 (date seems right, its in the properties of the pic) which actually used whatever the current version of ObjectDesktop was available at the time to do this. Oh it was Windows 98a or, not B or SE or Plus! I am really out of the loop on 98 nowadays...

Oh and don't worry. None of those AIM names are active anymore except mine.

[triger49]

Hi;

Nice screen shot...

It was one of those deals where I knew I was getting snowed,

because the ability to make the back ground transparent on

desktop Icon labels had been around since the days of Windows 95.

I seem to remember some talk about WindowBlinds having some minor

capabilities in that area also. But what caught my attention was

Opera's popup when started that "msimg32.dll" from Windows ME was

needed to make transparency function correctly. I saw that and asked

myself what was built into Windows ME that I never knew about. Then

when I found that addon for Opera 10 and the resulting great looking

Opacity levels...Well, let's just say it grabbed my attention.

Jake

[Mijzelf]

Of course you can create transparency in W9x. Just grab the background, mix it with the intended foreground, and write it back.

The problem is that it's not done by the OS. So there is no easy and/or elegant way to let the background be updated. As far as the OS knows, it's covered, so it won't update it. 

When you put your transparent Opera over a clock or so, I suppose it will stop in w9x, while it will keep on running in W2K+.

[Tripredacus]

That's right. Windows can't do it by itself, you need a third party program to do it. I would be interested to know how well that Opera add-on works over time. I had stopped using ObjectDesktop (even the demo lets you do this but it asks you to buy it once a day) because if I left the PC on for an extended period of time, it would lock up. Other things it would do were graphical glitches or artifacts.

I wanted to point out that my screenshot above looks a little distorted. It didn't look that way in action, only in the screenshot. I'm not really sure why that was. In any case, as fun as it was to toy with, I stopped using transparency altogether because I needed to keep the PC on for extended periods, as I was using it as a server. I think the Shiva specs were:

EDIT: I AM ERROR

I just noticed my C drive in that picture is "Hive City". This is my really old PC! I don't remember how much RAM it had. Also this one wasn't a server. Durrrr. It had a 133MHz CPU and a 32MB Riva TNT 2 video card. I used it to play Quake 3 (it was my main computer).

So transparency might work a lot better on the systems you guys are running Windows 98 on nowadays.

[triger49]

I would be interested to know how well that Opera add-on works over time.

So transparency might work a lot better on the systems you guys are running Windows 98 on nowadays.

Just by way of update, I did experience some artifacting of Opera's Personal bar

on occassion. That's the bad news.

The Good news, since Opera 10.50 hit the streets it has never happened again,

and their widget engine (Opera itself) now allows you to start and keep widgets

on the desktop with out Opera being opened....incredibly with no noticable drain

on system resources.

Can't speak for anybody else, but this most recent release has been the most

stable version to date for me.

Jake

[coolman]

Yes transparency does work but back in the olden days of computers made for 98, transparency was a big time burden on the system. Even my old computer (Shiva) which was beefy back then for 98 displayed well if you didn't, say move stuff around or try to run a program that used 3D acceleration or shell. I managed to find this screenshot of transparency on Shiva which was taken on Dec 01, 2001 (date seems right, its in the properties of the pic) which actually used whatever the current version of ObjectDesktop was available at the time to do this. Oh it was Windows 98a or, not B or SE or Plus! I am really out of the loop on 98 nowadays...

Oh and don't worry. None of those AIM names are active anymore except mine.

What program is that? If it's ObjectDesktop which I'm assuming it is, what is the skin for it for the transparency? (If you remember)

Edited February 16, 2013 by coolman