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Aero Glass for Win8 RC4


bigmuscle

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since today I get the messagebox every hour that tells me that this is a preview:

I imagine BigMuscle wants to ultimately turn this into a product that people will have to send him money for at some point. Assuming he gets it polished up and solid, I know I'd pay for it.

Wouldn't make much sense to release a beta version that mostly works, then try to start charging money when it's released, now would it? So for now he's previewing the technology to both get some feedback on its efficacy, and to drum up interest so there will be a latent market when he releases it.

-Noel

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just wondering, is there a mailing list for when this gets released?

I've got windows 8...currently dual booting it in a virtual harddisk...just for testing

startisback helps but I really miss the aero glass experience, its like going back 10 years using the desktop, so far i'm waiting for either this or another project like this to complete before going ahead and switching. If its got sensible pricing for a mod like startisback i'd happily pay for it also :)

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just wondering, is there a mailing list for when this gets released?

I've got windows 8...currently dual booting it in a virtual harddisk...just for testing

startisback helps but I really miss the aero glass experience, its like going back 10 years using the desktop, so far i'm waiting for either this or another project like this to complete before going ahead and switching. If its got sensible pricing for a mod like startisback i'd happily pay for it also :)

Just stay subscribed to this thread, and if you want, this one too:

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Bigmuscle, is it possible to make address bar to be glass... like Win 7?

Are you talking about the Internet Explorer 10 address bar? Seems to me it's every bit as transparent and nicely blurred by BigMuscle's program.

Win 7 screen grab on top, Win 8 on bottom...

post-376593-0-19201900-1365800755_thumb.

-Noel

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Hi there.

I'm still in Win7 here, so the app doesn't apply to me yet, but I'm posting for a little rant, and a question.

I love the blur since Vista, and have always hated the glass stripes over it. As a programmer, I was waiting for a version of Windows that'd allow to enable *just the blur* & not the stripes. I know that in Win7 it's possible through the registry or the undocumented DwmSetColorizationParameters, alas not per-window.

So I was hoping that in Win8 it'd be improved.. NOT REMOVED! I thought that the whole "aero is gone" was a joke, it actually mostly was, except for the blur, sadly. I don't even understand, because blur goes well with a flat look. & it's not even just eye candy, it helps roughly knowing what's behind windows when you focus enough, while still keeping things readable.

Anyway, question to a programmer: is it even technically possible to hack (in Win7 or Vista) the colorization parameters *per window*? Since you've digged deeply in the DWM, maybe you know? I don't think that it's a technical limitation, since blur has to be applied per-window anyway.

Also, do you think the occlusion problem you have is fixable? I'm actually working on a GUI system, purely private to a window, so, within my own painting surface it would normally be easy to implement my own blur, not over the Windows desktop obviously, but at least over my own GUI. But I'm facing the same occlusion problem, a control requiring a blur would require a large area present around it, & the window invalidation process can grow pretty complex & inefficient (maybe that's why M$ removed the blur?).

Thanks

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I don't think that it can be done per-window basis at this state. The main problem is that at the time when the content is rendered to the render target, window handle is not known so you can't identify which window is being drawn. But from my knowledge, the colorization is stored with each window visual in uDWM so changing it could work. I'm not sure about the stripes.

The occlusion problem is fixable and I have already fixed it with the small exception that the uDWM occlusion technique does not deal with the blur radius. Thus there is a small glitch a few pixels around the inactive window border. I didn't have time to check this small problem.

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I don't think that it can be done per-window basis at this state. The main problem is that at the time when the content is rendered to the render target, window handle is not known so you can't identify which window is being drawn. But from my knowledge, the colorization is stored with each window visual in uDWM so changing it could work. I'm not sure about the stripes.

mmh but the thing is, stripes happen to be much less visible on unfocused windows. Also the fact that, depending on several things, you can have or not have the NC client's border (not 100% sure this is drawn in the same part, but judging by the smoothness of the system border when resizing, it looks like drawn in the DWM, not the app's GUI thread), and you can of course have good old transparency without blur (layered windows, which are said to work for children window now btw, a bit late) . So if the window handle is not known, there must be a lot more than just the colorization pre-stored.

Btw the few shots of stripes-less glass frames I saw online were WPF stuff. I first thought that the guys behind them had just tweaked their global aero properties, but now I realize that the DWM & WPF have things in common. So I'm starting to wonder if WPF, while not being the DWM, can do its own blur (& more) that's as smooth (& I mean properly synchronized) as the DWM?

Edited by anothergol
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Hello! First time user in this forum!

I am very happy that someone (in the occurence BigMuscle) managed to get Glass on Win8!

My problem is the following: I can't get it to work. :(

Here's a bit of information:

Path changed in REG file: YES.

Verified that the path is right in the registry: YES

Graphic Card: nVidia Geforce GTX 660 (ASUS)

CPU: AMD FX8350

OS: Windows 8 X64 UEFI (No secure boot)

edit: I use UxTheme for custom themes.

I tested all the DirectX settings in the GUI tool, none works.

I also tried several themes, including Windows 8 RP (taken out of it by myself), Windows 7 themes, windows 8 "Clownfish" theme supporting glass.

Is there something I missed out?

My windows 8 also is up to date.

Edited by Tarzikaf
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Hello! First time user in this forum!

I am very happy that someone (in the occurence BigMuscle) managed to get Glass on Win8!

My problem is the following: I can't get it to work. :(

Here's a bit of information:

Path changed in REG file: YES.

Verified that the path is right in the registry: YES

Graphic Card: nVidia Geforce GTX 660 (ASUS)

CPU: AMD FX8350

OS: Windows 8 X64 UEFI (No secure boot)

I tested all the DirectX settings in the GUI tool, none works.

I also tried several themes, including Windows 8 RP (taken out of it by myself), Windows 7 themes, windows 8 "Clownfish" theme supporting glass.

Is there something I missed out?

My windows 8 also is up to date.

Tried both D3D and D2D mode? Try lowering the color intensity of the theme (Personalization->Color) while in D3D mode. Also try out the latest GUI made by ORelio.

EDIT: See here: http://img.thebloggieman.com/blog/pers-color-intensity.jpg

Edited by Rayn19
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Tried both D3D and D2D mode? Try lowering the color intensity of the theme (Personalization->Color) while in D3D mode. Also try out the latest GUI made by ORelio.

I tested all the DirectX settings in the GUI tool, none works.

I also tried to lower color intensity, to no avail.

win8result.JPG

Edited by Tarzikaf
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Hello! First time user in this forum!

I am very happy that someone (in the occurence BigMuscle) managed to get Glass on Win8!

My problem is the following: I can't get it to work. :(

Here's a bit of information:

Path changed in REG file: YES.

Verified that the path is right in the registry: YES

Graphic Card: nVidia Geforce GTX 660 (ASUS)

CPU: AMD FX8350

OS: Windows 8 X64 UEFI (No secure boot)

I tested all the DirectX settings in the GUI tool, none works.

I also tried several themes, including Windows 8 RP (taken out of it by myself), Windows 7 themes, windows 8 "Clownfish" theme supporting glass.

Is there something I missed out?

My windows 8 also is up to date.

Tried both D3D and D2D mode? Try lowering the color intensity of the theme (Personalization->Color) while in D3D mode. Also try out the latest GUI made by ORelio.

EDIT: See here: http://img.thebloggieman.com/blog/pers-color-intensity.jpg

i had similar problems with versions 0.6 and 0.7 - earlier versions worked fine for me - so first try one of those - see what you get - my argument was it cannot be me as it worked until i updated to 0.6 - there may have been some truth in that but by changing the theme i was using back to a stock theme 0.6 and then 0.7 worked perfectly

so - yes - something in the program may have changed - but the solution seems to be finding the correct theme to run with it

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i had similar problems with versions 0.6 and 0.7 - earlier versions worked fine for me - so first try one of those - see what you get - my argument was it cannot be me as it worked until i updated to 0.6 - there may have been some truth in that but by changing the theme i was using back to a stock theme 0.6 and then 0.7 worked perfectly

so - yes - something in the program may have changed - but the solution seems to be finding the correct theme to run with it

Interesting. There might be a problem with my setup, because I noticed that the 0.5 version contained a loader, so I used it. It works with loader, both with 0.5 and the DLL from 0.7.

So... The DLL doesn't seem to be loaded right at boot.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7425443/HoTS_glass.png

Edited by Tarzikaf
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