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A Legitimate Alternative to Glass8 (Curtains Theme)


AntVenom

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Heyo! I've been a supporter of Glass8 for quite some time now, to the point where I would usually delay updating Windows 10 until Glass8 was ready as well. But seeing as BigMuscle has gone MIA (which I totally respect, life happens), I decided to look for a legitimate alternative that I felt fit the look and feel of what Glass8 was going for. I tried a Windows 7 theme for WindowBlinds, which looked great, but WindowBlinds caused my quite overpowered computer to lag quite a lot.

Recently, within a post on this very sub-forum, I found a theme for Stardock Curtains called "Eleven Seven". I checked it out, but found a few issues with it that I really wanted to fix. I thought the rounding on the corners didn't look sharp enough, the forced blue color made blending it in with non-blue backgrounds was impossible, among a few other things listed in the download page.

Thankfully, Curtains is PNG based, so modifying the issue I had wasn't a big deal. I feel I've modified it to the point where it's worth sharing with others. Full credit to atslah01 for the base theme. All I did was make a few changes here and there to touch it up. I also use "StartIsBack++" and "OldNewExplorer" to further push Windows 10 towards a Windows 7 look.

This theme does not have blurring behind the Window frame, because Curtains as a whole lacks that feature. If that's a deal-breaker for you, then I wouldn't recommend Curtains themes at all. I THINK Curtains might also lack the feature that allows for the glassy looking reflections to move behind the window frames, which is a distinctive look of Windows 7, but I'm not absolutely sure if that's the case. If I ever figure out if that's possible, I'll also try to modify the theme with it. I've gotten used to the differences though, and find that by setting the color theme to a light-ish gray, the benefits make up for the lack of blurring and lack of the glass movement reflection effect. It sure beats the stock Windows 10 look by miles IMO. Hope you enjoy, and hope this helps hold people over until BigMuscle returns, if he does. Wish him all the best!

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/curtains/199/

Win7Grayscale.jpg

Edited by AntVenom
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i couldve sworn curtains had the feature to blur the window frame, at least from some screenshots i was looking at. ive been sticking to the dwm patch and my personal windows 7 theme for now though, the blur really is a dealbreaker for me, especially the ability to use acrylic. if i can easily port my atlas theme to curtains, i may just do so if the blur really is a thing. curtains is far better than window blinds from what i heard, the use of png files is huge. being a graphic designer, tga is extremely outdated and not a user friendly format at all.

old screenshot but its the closest ive ever gotten to windows 7s aero on windows 10.

s7xtCIE.jpg

edit: your name... do i know you? feel like it might be runescape lol.

Edited by xemnes
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4 hours ago, xemnes said:

i couldve sworn curtains had the feature to blur the window frame, at least from some screenshots i was looking at. ive been sticking to the dwm patch and my personal windows 7 theme for now though, the blur really is a dealbreaker for me, especially the ability to use acrylic. if i can easily port my atlas theme to curtains, i may just do so if the blur really is a thing. curtains is far better than window blinds from what i heard, the use of png files is huge. being a graphic designer, tga is extremely outdated and not a user friendly format at all.

old screenshot but its the closest ive ever gotten to windows 7s aero on windows 10.

edit: your name... do i know you? feel like it might be runescape lol.

Yeah dude, same guy lol. I recognize your name too. Small world. I still do YouTube stuffs lol, just not in RS anymore.

And I expected the lack of blurring to be a deal-breaker for me as well, but I did ultimately get used to it since the faintly transparent window doesn't look gaudy without a blur. With a more traditional Windows 7 look with a greater level of transparency, it definitely would be a deal breaker. If I were able to get my Win10 to look like that, I would. But for now, I'm making due with the options I have to have decent looking windows on the latest version of Windows 10. This is the first solution I've been able to live with, since while WindowBlinds does have the blurring feature (not Curtains from what I can see), it gives me exceptionally bad performance issues.

Edited by AntVenom
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oh nice, how funny lmao. went and checked, youre on my friends list. perhaps we should catch up!
yeah i dont really go on rs at the moment. being comped and there never really being any updates with a priority on monotonous mtx, it really isnt a fun experience anymore.

windowblinds has always been a resource hog, it was terrible back in the windows xp days. im not entirely sure what windowblinds uses for its blur, but it doesnt use native dwm which is very odd. currently for now, i will stick to glass8 and the dwm patch to get it working until the inevitable day when that stops working too, then i may consider curtains.

curious though, other than the lack of blur, does curtains have the ability to round the window corners? i installed the trial, but never used it as i never got round to doing so sadly so it ran out.

Edited by xemnes
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why not make it a lil blueish or so? but grey is also good ... u might also want to use some glass themes from deviantart, the only thing about them, is that they don't conform with firefox and thunderbird which I use .... I think, Curtains is also just a compromise to Aero Glass, if then I would also make it OpenSource, but I got nothing to say here I guess hehe ... cya and happy ny ....

Edited by Lizard
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  • 2 years later...
On 12/29/2020 at 10:01 AM, xemnes said:

oh nice, how funny lmao. went and checked, youre on my friends list. perhaps we should catch up!
yeah i dont really go on rs at the moment. being comped and there never really being any updates with a priority on monotonous mtx, it really isnt a fun experience anymore.

windowblinds has always been a resource hog, it was terrible back in the windows xp days. im not entirely sure what windowblinds uses for its blur, but it doesnt use native dwm which is very odd. currently for now, i will stick to glass8 and the dwm patch to get it working until the inevitable day when that stops working too, then i may consider curtains.

curious though, other than the lack of blur, does curtains have the ability to round the window corners? i installed the trial, but never used it as i never got round to doing so sadly so it ran out.

DWM patch?

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/11/2023 at 2:33 AM, Ten2O said:

DWM patch?

patching dwm to an older version to get glass8 to work on newer windows 10 versions. you cant do it anymore.

Edited by xemnes
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