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Aero Glass for Win8.1 RTM RC3


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Why do user try it on Preview version of Win8.1 when it is stated that it is intended for Win8.1 RTM and build 9600 only :huh:

Bigmuscle, the windows 8.1 alpha is running well in VMware. There is a glitch with windows photo viewer, as seen in the photo. also, the glow file that you provided makes the window titles distorted. maybe because I'm using build 9431. Other than that, it is working great. I'll upgrade my main machine to 8.1 once you release the final aero glass for windows 8.1. Great work!

Yeah, I haven't upgraded my vm to build 9600 yet, :whistle: but i'll be sure to do that when I have time. That's probably why I have so many glitches, like the glow.bmp not working.

Edited by Nickygamer
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Here's a complete version of the themeatlas.png file resembling the Windows 8 Release Preview. I used the original resource from the RP theme file and besides some minor edits I basically just moved the different parts around to match the new 8.1 theme mapping. The only glitch I found is that the right margin of console windows (cmd.exe, powershell.exe) isn't painted correctly.

post-381566-0-23167600-1379250341_thumb.

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Can you suggest how to test that? I do see transparency at the bottom of things like the Picture Viewer and Tortoise SVN. Or is that not what you mean?

FullyBlurred.png

Edit: Now on looking again I do see something wrong with the bottom right edge of the Tortoise window. Let me see what I can do about that.

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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Hancoque, this one paints those parts correctly; maybe you can compare and try to see what's gone wrong.

I don't think it can be fixed in the image. Look at the screenshot I made with a rainbow debug overlay (ranging from red on the left to purple on the right in 30° hue increments). In the themeatlas.png it covers an area of 10x8 pixels but only the inner 8x8 pixels are actually used, which is why the red and purple columns aren't visible. You'll notice that the light blue column (hue 210°) is repeated three times by the theme. The problem is that the release preview theme has a two pixels border, a dark outer border with a light inner border. The RTM theme uses a one pixel border while the adjacent inner part is used for filling the window. The borders of normal windows are thin enough that no repetition of the light blue column occurs but the command shell windows show the anomaly of having thicker borders, thus causing the inner border column to be repeated.

post-381566-0-78900800-1379400296_thumb.

Edited by Hancoque
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I did notice the borders seemed a little different size.

That smells like Microsoft futzing around with the theme implementation to try to frustrate 3rd party developers who are trying to return some style to the desktop, not to mention make it uglier for users. :(

The basic flawed assumption in all this is that people want Windows 8, presumably for all the wonderful great things in the App Store. Microsoft is falling on its face by actively making parts of its system less than perfect in order to try to herd Windows users in a direction that makes Microsoft more money.

-Noel

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Hancoque, this one paints those parts correctly; maybe you can compare and try to see what's gone wrong.

I don't think it can be fixed in the image. Look at the screenshot I made with a rainbow debug overlay (ranging from red on the left to purple on the right in 30° hue increments). In the themeatlas.png it covers an area of 10x8 pixels but only the inner 8x8 pixels are actually used, which is why the red and purple columns aren't visible. You'll notice that the light blue column (hue 210°) is repeated three times by the theme. The problem is that the release preview theme has a two pixels border, a dark outer border with a light inner border. The RTM theme uses a one pixel border while the adjacent inner part is used for filling the window. The borders of normal windows are thin enough that no repetition of the light blue column occurs but the command shell windows show the anomaly of having thicker borders, thus causing the inner border column to be repeated.

There is a problem with the System Metrics on Windows 8 and 8.1, I think since MS removed the advanced appearance settings they must have broken it, the system metrics now do not change when a different theme is selected with different Metrics, they are no longer read from the msstyles or from the values in the .theme file, there is one way to force them to update though and that is with the use of Windows Style Builder, this is for creating msstyles themes and when testing a new theme the new metrics are written to the registry and when you stop testing the metrics from the previous theme are written to the registry, doing this fixed the problems with the frames and they displayed correctly.

Here are all the system metrics, you can edit the registry yourself or just use the reg file provided, a log off is required to see the changes.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics]"SmCaptionWidth"="-330""BorderWidth"="-15""SmCaptionHeight"="-330""CaptionWidth"="-330""IconTitleWrap"="1""ScrollHeight"="-255""CaptionHeight"="-330""CaptionFont"=hex:f1,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\  00,00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"ScrollWidth"="-255""MenuWidth"="-285""SmCaptionFont"=hex:f1,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,\  00,00,00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"MenuFont"=hex:f4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,00,\  00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"StatusFont"=hex:f4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\  00,00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"MenuHeight"="-285""MessageFont"=hex:f4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,\  00,00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"IconFont"=hex:f4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,90,01,00,00,00,\  00,00,01,00,00,05,00,53,00,65,00,67,00,6f,00,65,00,20,00,55,00,49,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00"Shell Icon Size"="32""PaddedBorderWidth"="-60""AppliedDPI"=dword:00000060"IconSpacing"="-1125""IconVerticalSpacing"="-1125""MinAnimate"="1"

Windows 8.1 default RP System Metrics.zip

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I did notice the borders seemed a little different size.

That smells like Microsoft futzing around with the theme implementation to try to frustrate 3rd party developers who are trying to return some style to the desktop, not to mention make it uglier for users. :(

The basic flawed assumption in all this is that people want Windows 8, presumably for all the wonderful great things in the App Store. Microsoft is falling on its face by actively making parts of its system less than perfect in order to try to herd Windows users in a direction that makes Microsoft more money.

-Noel

People keep aying things like that, but Microsoft doesn't go and add stuff just to piss off 3rd party developers and try to disable circumventing of third party themes. What would they gain? The reason is almost certainly just a theming bug that isn't caught because Microsoft only ships a single theme. Since they do not officially support third party theme modding, they likely don't have any kind of tests that would ensure things like that work.

More importantly, you have no proof to back up your claim, so why form these irrational justifications just so someone passing by on the forum sees it and then spreads it as a rumor, what does that solve?

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Oh come on. Like you understand what Microsoft does and doesn't do. Some of us have friends on the inside...

Microsoft didn't just "accidentally" remove Aero. They're actively removing things that people want. Who does that serve? How does that help? Do you actually buy their BS that window effects cost battery life? Give me a break. There have been non-DWM themes for a long time that could have been used.

No, why are we here, in this thread? Because we want something Microsoft won't give us any more. They're obviously turning away from the desktop (all meanings), by taking away things like Aero, Windows Backup and any number of other things that computer users use and need.

The management at Microsoft are manipulative bastards who are actively trying to steer us away from our love of the desktop, in order that they may make more money. Sooner or later they will win. There are only a handful of brilliant and energetic persons on the planet capable of making the Windows 8 desktop better to use. One day they'll grow tired of doing so.

-Noel

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AERO GLASS for Win8.1 Alpha 2

Let's have a look at alpha 2 of Aero Glass for Win8.1. This is still for preview only, so no internal optimizations (just a code mess to make it work). This version includes several changes:

* fix (or rather workaround) for glass safety zone on windows with extended frame (ribbon etc.)

* included NoelC's glow.bmp

* fix for invalidly blurred pixels at screen edges

* fix for glass being on incorrect places (e.g. background of the desktop when explorer is not running)

Because Win8.1 uses Direct2D for desktop rendering, the blurring algorithm works a bit different than Direct3D in Win8. This makes ColorizationBlurBalance settings unuseful and amount of color transparency is taken directly from alpha channel specified in ColorizationColor (this value is in form 0xAARRGGBB where AA represents two digits of alpha value 00 [fully transparent] - FF [fully opaque]). This is still controlled via intensity slider in control panel but ColorizationBlurBalance is completely ignored now (maybe we could add it some special function later).

Glass reflection has been ported to this version and its intensity can be controlled via common DWORD settings ColorizationGlassReflectionIntensity where value is 0 - 100.

I also added temporary function which makes glass work correctly even for all already opened windows. This is very low level thing which will be removed in the final version and it can be even broken by any Windows updates (and there is no other solution for it). This version does not include hardcoded DWM function patterns and thus it needs public symbols to be present - symbols are downloaded automatically from MS server for donators (i.e. if license.key is present).

Maybe I fixed/modified more but I don't remember everything. And yes, there is still present one glitch when window edge is behind the frame (and needs to be blurred) and you slowly move another window over the frame - do no report it, I'm aware of this and it is currently not easy to fix.

http://glass8.berlios.de/win81.html

win81_alpha2.png

Remember! It's still only alpha intended for preview and not for regular usage!

Edited by bigmuscle
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