Aero Glass for Win8.1 RTM RC3

[bigmuscle]

paul70: I was trying it in the past but I could not get it work, now I figured out that I must add new monitors manually and it works :-) I will inform when I fix the problem.

[Tusticles]

Created BlurDeviation dword, it works with 0(removes glitches completely) and 30(this will show different glitches), and any other value will cause a bug, when you drag and move the window from right to left and from bottom to top. This can be fixed by removing the BlurDeviation entry from registry or if I set it to 0 or 30 but 30 will create different glitches.

I took the picture with a phone because Print Screen won't catch the bug.

Image

Keep up the good work!

Edited October 7, 2013 by Tusticles

[Soukyuu]

Is the place we're supposed to get the symbols Technet/Dreamspark(MSDNAA)? There is a "symbol" package available for download but I'm not sure it is what I need.

[paul70]

Is the place we're supposed to get the symbols Technet/Dreamspark(MSDNAA)? There is a "symbol" package available for download but I'm not sure it is what I need.

You need the symbols for the RTM (if you have windows 8.1 RTM)

This one: en_windows_8_1_symbols_x64_2712576.msi (search with google) ;-)

then, create a new folder "symbols" in your Aero Glass folder and install the symbols (.msi) into that folder.

But only if you didn't donate and don't have a license.key. If you donated, Aero Glass will automatically download the necessary symbols from the MS server.

Edited October 7, 2013 by paul70

[MikeRL]

Great job, bigmuscle! You've brought back more desktop features yet again! Though I tend to favor Linux, I dual boot and use Windows a lot as well. I think I love you! LOL. No, I just love your work. By the way, even though I had a license.key, the correct DLLs, and followed your instructions, Alpha 2 never worker. I figured since you were just getting your hands on the RTM of 8.1, I'd give you a while to work your magic. By the way, I figured Alpha still means big changes ahead, so today I tried the beta. No flaws on my laptop. Then I will try it on my desktop. Speaking of that desktop, there's still something I'll need to clear up with you later. It's just that I would like another machine code and key for the desktop. I'll email you so you don't forget. I donated with two email addresses (about $5 or more each) so I'm not attempting to milk cheap keys out of you. But perhaps we could do something for convenience (I did donate well before you decided on monetization and had no clue it would be a slight inconvenience to use two email addresses, so sorry about that). Anyhow, I'd like to have an additional license.key for my Gmail, and I'll give you the Comcast key, just so you can blacklist it or keep it as an extra. Just out of convenience. Anyhow, expect me to test it on both my machines. The desktop had issues before on Windows 8 with a test build of Aero Glass, which you fixed rather professionally, by the way. Just expect more feedback and id*** testing from me. I had a bad cold for weeks, and then my allergies went out of control (worst I've had them in my life) but now I have the energy to do testing. Let's hope Microsoft's pre-public release "updates" don't bork anything! And as of now it's running perfectly, at least on the laptop. Even Firefox with an Aero Glass mod meant for Windows 7 works. Also, on a side note, I read a rumor a while back on Windows 9 (take this with a grain of salt because it's a rumor for an unannounced operating system) but the rumor is that Microsoft might return Aero glass and Desktop effects. That would suck for you, but let's hope they return it like they "brought back" the start button (with no start menu). Meaning you still have this as a source of income. Also, will there ever be a way (or is there a way) to hide the command prompt for donators? Would be nice as an option, just so that it doesn't suck up space in the taskbar. Thanks!

EDIT: Screenshot must be too big to show here. Click it and it will show on Dropbox.

Edited October 7, 2013 by MikeRL

[Tusticles]

@paul70

Yes, symbols are automatically downloaded.

[paul70]

paul70: I was trying it in the past but I could not get it work, now I figured out that I must add new monitors manually and it works :-) I will inform when I fix the problem.

Cool! Thank you.

You also asked for my display resolutions:

Main display: 1920x1080 (native)

Second display (monitor rotated 90° CW): 1200x1600

Edited October 7, 2013 by paul70

[bigmuscle]

Created BlurDeviation dword, it works with 0(removes glitches completely) and 30(this will show different glitches), and any other value will cause a bug, when you drag and move the window from right to left and from bottom to top. This can be fixed by removing the BlurDeviation entry from registry or if I set it to 0 or 30 but 30 will create different glitches.

I took the picture with a phone because Print Screen won't catch the bug.

Image

Keep up the good work!

Do you have Win8 RTM or preview ? it seems that glass safety zone failed to create, could you share your debug.log ?

[NoelC]

I just tried it on a dual monitor setup. I'm getting transparency on both monitors but no blurring on the second monitor (i.e., the rightmost 1600 pixels in this all-monitors screen grab).

The other thing wrong I've seen so far are minor visual artifacts after a window is dragged over a blurred transparency region.

Link to: debug.log

-Noel

[NoelC]

I'm on Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview, by the way, as there hasn't been a Windows 8.1 RTM version of Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation version yet - at least not that I'm aware of. I hope I'm not muddying the water by reporting something that's fixed in the RTM.

-Noel

[bigmuscle]

Preview version is not supported - it has different offsets for some members and it will not probably inflate blur regions correctly (+ it will incorrectly "inflate" wrong memory data)

[paul70]

@bigmuscle

I made some testing on this dual-display issue and got following results (I don't know if it will help you tracking the problem. If not, just ignore my post:-) ):

Option 1:

- both displays 1&2 set as "cloned". In this configuration, Aero Glass works without issues on both displays, at least during the several test moving windows around

- or second display disabled: also no issues

Option 2:

- display 2 (second display) set as "expand" display 1 (main display). In this configuration, the mencioned issue occours: second display completely black and draged windows not correctly displayed on display 2 + flashing borders on windows displayed on main display.

Option 3:

- displays first set to "cloned" followed by set to "expand" with second display rotated 90° CW. This leads to an immediate dwm crash with minidump.dmp file (I can provide you with this file if you want).

In my hardware configuration, due to the fact that both displays have diferent sizes, I use different native resolutions (mentioned in my previous post), but I did test setting the same resolution on both displays to see if this would affect the issue and it doesn't, so the issue is probably not related with this.

Another "funny" thing is that if I set resolution and not rotated on second display, the screen remains black no matter how much I move the windows into it and back to the main display.

Edited October 7, 2013 by paul70

[bigmuscle]

I already tried examining this problem and the cause is that even if rendering area is e.g. [1920-2500], Direct2D context still returns the size of the first screen only (1920), so I must find a way to fix it :-)

[usaff22]

I already tried examining this problem and the cause is that even if rendering area is e.g. [1920-2500], Direct2D context still returns the size of the first screen only (1920), so I must find a way to fix it :-)

Any chance of an x86 release for the next version bigmuscle? Would love to try aero glass on 8.1, your solution in 8 was great and I do miss it.

[NoelC]

Preview version is not supported - it has different offsets for some members and it will not probably inflate blur regions correctly (+ it will incorrectly "inflate" wrong memory data)

All well and good, thanks. It won't be long before I can run RTM code.

-Noel