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Big Muscle is right.  If you have an SSD use the daylights out of it.  That's what it's for.

 

If you're concerned about the possibility of losing data, make backups.

 

Don't read too much in other people's problems...  SSDs break because of heating/cooling cycles, bad cables, dust and moisture, etc. (I.e., reasons electronics fail in general) FAR more than they fail because of exceeding write cycles leading to NAND wearout.  There have been tests (e.g., Tom's Hardware) where they tortured SSDs with constant writes 24/7 and still found them to last a very, very long time.

 

And it's not a mystery how much you've written.  The SMART statistics you can get from the drive controller will tell you (with most if not all brands).

 

Lastly, if you have an intensive application where you're truly worried about SSD longevity, put the SSD into a RAID 0 array with another one or several just like it.  The write load will be spread among them.

 

-Noel

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... and one more post, with a link to the "OldNewExplorer" tool here that allows you to remove the Ribbon in Windows 8.x, thereby allowing caption glow in all Explorer windows:

 

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170375-oldnewexplorer-make-your-81-explorer-work-like-win78-one/

 

Apologies for replying to my own post here... Unfortunately O-N-E only solves the problem of "missing caption glow" in Explorer windows.  But MS in their infinite wisdom has apparently seen fit to force the Ribbon on other things that are bundled with Windows 8.x, like WordPad (which I use extensively for documentation).  Not sure if there are any other parts of the OS that use Ribbon (and I'm not including MS Office in this discussion since it's not bundled and I never use it anyway).

 

I just now noticed that my WordPad captions are hardly visible with the border coloring I have enabled, and I see no way to disable the Ribbon there.  NUTZ.  :realmad:

 

Thanks for the tip, but I'm trying to avoid a full blown theme.  Just want the basic Glass that bigmuscle is providing here, and if RoundRectRadius can't be made to work in 8.1 then c'est la vie. :}

 

Yeah, I prefer drop shadows, rounded corners, and not to use a full blown theme as well.  Fortunately, Big Muscle's software facilitates replacement of the theme atlas resources, and through that and crafty manipulation of the drop shadow resources that are composited all around a window you can achieve the appearance of small rounded corners.

 

On Win 8.1 this is the dream I'm living - simple and easier on the eyes.  I also reduce the size of the Window chrome by importing a registry key saved from a Win 7 system on which the sizes of several elements were reduced.

 

[Win81WithThemeAtlas.png]

 

Use this replacement theme atlas file, which adds the appearance of rounded corners through a trick of the light using the drop shadow resources...

 

For dark title text:  http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/FauxRoundedCorners.png

 

For light title text (shown above):  http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/FauxRoundedCornersLightText.png

 

 

Yes that is the simple elegance I'm looking for Noel, and thanks for your efforts on this.  The only issue I have is needing to use separate atlas files for light and dark themes.  I'm using Bing Desktop daily wallpaper and allowing Windows to automatically color window borders and taskbar based on the current wallpaper, so I never know if a particular coloring will be "light" or "dark".  Maybe it's possible to script a swap between atlas files?  Do I just need to restart aerohost.exe or would I also need to logout/login to make a theme atlas change take effect?

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Yes that is the simple elegance I'm looking for Noel, and thanks for your efforts on this.  The only issue I have is needing to use separate atlas files for light and dark themes.  I'm using Bing Desktop daily wallpaper and allowing Windows to automatically color window borders and taskbar based on the current wallpaper, so I never know if a particular coloring will be "light" or "dark".  Maybe it's possible to script a swap between atlas files?  Do I just need to restart aerohost.exe or would I also need to logout/login to make a theme atlas change take effect?

 

 

I'm thinking a background glow that's a middle gray and maybe a bit more opaque might do the job and make it work for both colors of title text.

 

I don't have a lot of time right now, but at some point I'll look into making a unified version.

 

Ribbon-enabled windows (Wordpad, Explorer, etc.) continue to be a problem.  It would be nice if somehow a patch could be made to get them all to use a title glow that's unified with the other windows.  Alas, Microsoft doesn't seem to be moving in the direction of more desktop unification, though.

 

-Noel

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[...] Not sure if there are any other parts of the OS that use Ribbon (and I'm not including MS Office in this discussion since it's not bundled and I never use it anyway).

 

I just now noticed that my WordPad captions are hardly visible with the border coloring I have enabled, and I see no way to disable the Ribbon there.  NUTZ.  :realmad:

 

Seems that Paint is the other most-commonly used bundled app that implements the Ribbon in Win8.  And I actually use the Ribbon there.  But caption text still needs to be made visible with Aero Glass enabled.  Hmm...

 

[...] Yes that is the simple elegance I'm looking for Noel, and thanks for your efforts on this.  The only issue I have is needing to use separate atlas files for light and dark themes.  I'm using Bing Desktop daily wallpaper and allowing Windows to automatically color window borders and taskbar based on the current wallpaper, so I never know if a particular coloring will be "light" or "dark".  Maybe it's possible to script a swap between atlas files?  Do I just need to restart aerohost.exe or would I also need to logout/login to make a theme atlas change take effect?

 

Just tested this and unfortunately a logoff/logon is required to make the theme atlas change take effect.  So scripting a swap between atlases would also require that part, which would be pretty clunky.  Double hmm...

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By the way, for what it's worth the (beta version) Aero Glass GUI tool made by Big Muscle (and downloadable from his site) can effect a change without restarting DWM.  I know that's not a direct solution for you but it shows that it's possible.

 

-Noel

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Is it normal that areoglass uses like 300 MB of VRAM (v1.3.1)? just noticed it on startup, and no programs where open yet. It kind of makes a differences in games that use a lot of VRAM so I have to disable it every time I want to play a game. 

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Big Muscle. Answer. WHEN WILL U IMPLEMENT THE START MENU AS SHOWN ON UR SITE ?

I am not Start menu developer.

 

Is it normal that areoglass uses like 300 MB of VRAM (v1.3.1)? just noticed it on startup, and no programs where open yet. It kind of makes a differences in games that use a lot of VRAM so I have to disable it every time I want to play a game.

No, it is not normal. How did you detect that? How do you know that this memory is allocated by Aero Glass itself?
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Big Muscle. Answer. WHEN WILL U IMPLEMENT THE START MENU AS SHOWN ON UR SITE ?

I am not Start menu developer.

 

Is it normal that areoglass uses like 300 MB of VRAM (v1.3.1)? just noticed it on startup, and no programs where open yet. It kind of makes a differences in games that use a lot of VRAM so I have to disable it every time I want to play a game.

No, it is not normal. How did you detect that? How do you know that this memory is allocated by Aero Glass itself?

 

Then who developed the Start Menu shown in the wallpaper on ur site?

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Big Muscle. Answer. WHEN WILL U IMPLEMENT THE START MENU AS SHOWN ON UR SITE ?

 

Wow, either we have a heck of a language barrier here or someone never learned any manners.

 

Anant, do the necessary reading to understand how to get a partially transparent start menu yourself.  Hint:  Start by researching which of the various start menu replacement tools offer options to use the glass attribute.

 

-Noel

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In Win10, it is default Win10's menu.

 

Presumably for the build shown on the screen.  The current one doesn't seem to do the proper accent to make it translucent. 

 

Build9879StartMenu.png

 

Figures, Microsoft is moving further and further from Aero Glass, despite most of their toes already being strewn around the room...

 

central-bankers-300x200.png

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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That's possible.  I probably don't have any transparency dialed-in for that.

 

Speaking of which...  Weren't you going to make inactive window coloration (other than the transparency) subject to a setting in the registry?  I've never been able to make any difference in the inactive frame color; I'd like to make it darker.

 

I'm supposed to be using the ColorizationColorInactive registry value for that, right?

 

-Noel

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