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SmoothText 1.1.8


WildBill

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LOL Same post times :P

No idea why, but SmoothText with taskbar translucency on caused lockups on explorer.exe.

Explorer CPU Usage went to 90+, and all programs stopped responding.

Windows Security (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) did appear, but all actions from there were uneffective.

Could only use the physical reset button on my computer. :(

On the other hand, WinRAR is working perfectly now :)

EDIT: My explorer is 5.0.3900.6920, 236 KB (242,448 bytes).

Edited by Colonel O'Neill
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I have tried SmoothText 0.7.9 on Windows XP Professional, SP2.

I found 3 problems with the taskbar translucency:

- there are no minimized windows on the taskbar, i.e. the taskbar is empty

- clicking on the Start menu, the menu appears invisible, although it still casts a shadow, and it actually still works, e.g. if you hover where the "My Recent Documents" entry normally is, you do get the proper, visible My Recent Documents menu.

- after a little while, this made explorer.exe crash (may or may not be an XP-specific issue, seeing Colonel O'Neill's last post)

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I've posted version 0.8.0, which I'm hoping will at least fix the crashing issues. I doubt that it will do anything on XP, but who knows. I'll have to test it on XP at some point. Please let me know if this helps.

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Here is what I get with all translucency values set to 128, and mouseover set to 255.

2ywwwh1.png

That said, I'm also seeing stability issues with Explorer on my laptop, though the desktop that I develop it on works much better. I still probably have some bugs to hunt down. I'm definitely seeing problems when changing translucency settings, which is implying to me that I need to look closely at what happens when I stop the translucent, alpha blending, or paint redirection behaviors. I'm feeling pretty lousy tonight (went to the doctor this afternoon), so I'll see what I can figure out tomorrow.

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Hmm, maybe it's the amount of patching I've done to my explorer.exe and systemto get all that Vista jazz.

The taskbar refuses to apply properly, and gets stuck as a grey bar, until I forcibly End Program Tree (if not, I think the texthook stays) on smoothtext.exe.

Irregardless, I'm going to stick to my ObjectBar for a while.

Also, did you turn off pop-up menu smoothing? Because it's not trying to smooth it anymore.

But I digress, get well soon! Don't push yourself too hard. ;)

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No, I didn't do anything to popup menus, and they're being smoothed for me.

I've posted version 0.8.1, which has had a lot of internal changes to try to make translucent taskbars stable. It's behaving very well for me, so I'm hoping to see translucent taskbar screenshots soon ;)

I've been feeling under the weather for a week, but the medicine is helping, at least somewhat. I'm going to just relax for the rest of the night.

Enjoy...

Edited by WildBill
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:( No such luck with transparent taskbar.

Plus it seems SmoothText was the cause of explorer crashing issues (even without taskbar alpha), memory could not be read/written, that sort of stuff.

Would you mind checking to see if the crashes go away if overriding standard controls is turned off? I'm having trouble reproducing any crashes, but I have a hunch. I'll see what I can find at my end, but if we can narrow it down to a particular behavior that would help.

I've also made some progress with title bars and have some preliminary text smoothing working (though there's a lot left to do).

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Turning off Override Standard Controls on 0.8.1 eliminated Explorer related crashes.

However, using 0.7.8, and with Override Standard Controls on, also did not show any Explorer crashing.

Notably, 0.7.8 was the last version to not have taskbar options.

(Note: 0.8.1 with Override On and Taskbar Off still caused Explorer crashes. Taskbar On caused worse crashing.)

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Yes, that's what I expected. I had made a small addition to the code that overrides standard controls when I added translucent taskbars. I'm able to sometimes recreate crashes here, and I'm trying (hard) to make it stable. At least now I have it narrowed down to a very small portion of code.

Edited by WildBill
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While Override Standard Controls was on, I almost always experienced an Explorer exception error using TweakUI to "Repair Icons". The icons refresh and flash once or twice, and subsequently Explorer would vomit all over itself.

Still no luck with translucent taskbars. :( Tried using an original Explorer from an SP4 installation (non reshacked) and still the same effect (and crashing too). Does it matter what version of Explorer.exe it is?

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I just posted version 0.8.2, which I'm hoping will give you better luck. I've made a ton of small changes to try to make it stable, and it's doing much better (for me, at least). I'm using a plain-vanilla Explorer from a fully patched SP4. I haven't tested repairing icons in Tweak UI, but I'll make sure to see what happens.

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(Good News)³ :thumbup

1. Explorer no longer crashes when using Override Standard Controls. (usually)

While writing this Explorer had a nasty crash again.

[ 757.129] [604, 1252] - Caught exception when named object StandardBehavior tried to process message BehaviorWndProcBefore

2. Explorer no longer crashes when applying Translucent Taskbar.

3. Explorer-originating pop-up menus don't jump back to unsmoothed on hover.

(Okay News)¹ :)

1. Taskbars don't become translucent.

This is on both an unpatched SP4 (no UR1) and my up to date Frankenexplorer (SP5.1). So, definitely an improvement.

Don't worry about me too much Wildbill :lol: For the moment, both my Taskbar and Titlebars are replaced by third-party software. (OB and TT).

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