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Beta Software Discussion


NoelC

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I don't know how to divide up what's what at this point, since parts of Aero Glass for Win 8+ seem to be growing together, so I figured I'd start a thread for discussing all test software.

On my Win 8.1 system I have stopped updating, with the released and fully working Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.4.5.520 x64.  I don't want for anything with this version, glitches are virtually nonexistent, and it's quite efficient.  When I actually tried released version 1.4.6 on this system, I saw more display glitches.  I reported them in some thread or another here, but I don't recall getting any feedback.  No matter, 1.4.5 is fine.

I have all the latest versions, I believe, running on my Win 10 system, build 14393.447:

  • aerohost.exe is 1.3.0.0, dated October 22, 2016, 12:48 pm.
  • Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.5.1.834 DEBUG x64 correctly loaded (C:\AeroGlass\DWMGlass.dll)
  • ModernFrame-x64-debug.dll is 1.0.0.2, dated August 24, 2016 at 12:16 pm.
  • AeroGlassGUI.exe has no embedded version, is dated October 2, 2016, 5:08 pm.
  • UxTSB.dll is 1.1.0.0, dated October 21, 2016, 4:19 pm.
  • Nothing is being loaded by AppInit_DLLs.
  • I have loaded a 3rd party theme (Aero7) which works fine.
  • I use my own theme atlas.
  • The Settings App title bar shows transparency.
  • Title coloration in File Explorer windows seems OK.
  • I haven't seen a display zone glitch in a long time.  I think maybe you have most all of those fixed, Big Muscle.

Observed glitches that I HAVE seen with this set of beta software:

  1. The title coloration in ribbon-enabled windows like WordPad is wrong/missing.  For me it's white text without a backing "glow" when the window is current, and gray text with no backing glow when it is not.  This seems like a regression from past versions, in that title text used to be handled by Aero Glass for Win 8+ on all ribbon-enabled windows.  I understand that the old way of doing that was a bit ham-handed, because it could also cause text not in title bars to be affected.
    RibbonWindowTitles.png
    By contrast, these work okay...
    NonRibbonWindowTitles.png
    ...and...
    ExplorerWindowTitles.png
     
  2. Title text coloration in Modern Apps goes from white to gray if the window becomes not current.

    Okay:
    AppWindowCurrentTitle.png
    Not okay:
    AppWindowNotCurrentTitle.png
    If there is a workaround that would keep title text white in all cases, I don't know it.  In any case, it would be nice if title text was handled properly for all windows.

     
  3. The title bar coloration isn't quite right at the ends (though the right end problems are mostly obscured by the caption buttons).  This has been true for quite a while now; it's not unique to the current betas.  I don't believe this is a problem with the theme atlas setup, as I have tried it with an entirely transparent theme atlas and seen the same issue.  Under some conditions it's hidden but in others it's irritatingly visible...

    UnevenTitleBarColoration.png

     
  4. There is an errant debug.log left in the root folder of drive C:. 
    ErrantDebugLog.png

I encourage others to list the problems they're seeing with the current test software in this thread.

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for my late answer, I didn't have much free time during the last period.

1. This is not the problem of Aero Glass - it cannot influcence if some application draws something into titlebar with its own colour.

2. This will probably be the bug. The Win10 defaultly uses the caption color as blending the active color with the accent color. Thus if you set your own caption color then it may look wrong. I'm not sure what the correct solution should be.

3. Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed. In pre-Win10, window frame has been drawn as one big rectangle. Now, the upper caption is rendered independently and thus blur effect will be always wrong on the areas where it is connected to the rest of the frame.

4. yeah, this is bug.

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About #1, active text can also be black, depends on colorization gathered from desktop background. What's funny about this whole thing, when no tweaks are applied, both normal and ribbon title text appear the same. Only when you start tweaking, it becomes apparent ribbon text is actually managed separately, I assume by the Ribbon framework.

https://officeribbon.codeplex.com/releases/view/113126

Judging by this demo, whenever window has extra buttons on the title bar, it will have its own title text colorization.

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On ‎12‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 5:33 AM, bigmuscle said:

Sorry for my late answer, I didn't have much free time during the last period.

1. This is not the problem of Aero Glass - it cannot influcence if some application draws something into titlebar with its own colour.

No worries, and no hurries!  Just making sure you know about all that I see.

Regarding item #1, are you saying a File Explorer window is not handled by you differently from another ribbon-enabled window (e.g., WordPad)?  Because somehow the File Explorer windows are coming out right.

I suppose we expected that without having to adhere to a concerted theme the Windows desktop programs would start to diverge from consistency.

-Noel

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Yes, the only reason Explorer is handled differently is because UxTSB.dll is injected in Explorer and it hooks DrawThemeText/DrawThemeTextEx function to change the text appearance, which I suppose is called by the underlying ribbon framework. But even there, eg. if you click any hard drive in my PC, Drive Tools appear in the title bar and I don't think that's supposed to have its drawing parameters changed. But given the purpose of those APIs, you can't tell from the parameters they take what exactly is it being used for, so I think it would appear properly only if you intercepted at the exact place where call is being made, not when when you're already in the function. But that's probably cumbersome to implement and isn't solving the problem that the text is still under user application control making the call, in this case indirectly via ribbon framework.

I'm not really knowledgeable about how these thing actually work under the hood, so I can only point at stupidities from the user perspective. There is also this oddity in Firefox for example, unless you set it to use regular titlebar without extras like tabs and buttons on it etc., hovering the mouse over close, min. and max buttons will overlay ugly blue rectangles over them, instead of simply taking light-up versions of those buttons from the theme. Even if you use stock Win10 theme, hover-over version of buttons is inconsistent with the rest of the system, at least if you have good eyes to notice. GlassMyFox is apparently only able to restore non hover-over versions of the buttons.

But with ribbon windows, title text has to be special, even though other elements on the frame are fine.

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Here's a screenshot of interesting experiment, I ran Paint with CustomNCRender option from Compatibility Administrator, part of Windows 10 ADK. Regular applications will just get the frame you got on Windows 7 with disabled DWM, aka. Windows 7 Basic, not Aero.

I could grab it by the invisible frame, resize it, but couldn't close it by clicking where close button would normally be. Process Hacker's window commands weren't effective neither.

Anyway, I think this clearly demonstrates what is under DWM control and what isn't. CustomNCRender option supposedly leaves entire non-client area of the window under application control, though regular applications still get backup basic frame without fancy effects.

I forgot to mention that CustomNCRender is available only for 32-bit applications. And strangely, it doesn't do anything for the Wordpad.

PaintCustomNCRender.png

Edited by UCyborg
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