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Aero Glass for Win8 RC4


bigmuscle

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First and foremost, I would like to start by saying, awesome work, I'm really grateful to see this. The removal of aero glass has been my primary, only, and huge complaint about windows 8 :(.

That being said, I've noticed a huge issue. After running, many processes will jump up to huge amounts of CPU utilization. (particularly skype and explorer start really freaking out, 7-8% utilization each on an i7, both normally use a fraction of a percent). This does not go away after closing the app, and only resolves once you kill the apps in task manager and reopen them. DWM also doubles or triples in utilization (sometimes more) - I assume primarily due to everything being a layered window, an approach I've been heavily against in other solutions. This requires not only extra dirty region calculation but now alpha blends the entire window. Even with an efficient blur implementation this will start to kill battery life on any device not plugged into a wall. The ideal solution would be to find where you can adjust DWM's dirty region calculation (it's possible :)).

I would love to help with your project, please let me know if there's anything I can do, I know quite a bit about graphics/DirectX :)

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You "approve the idea"? Isn't that for bigmuscle to decide? I think we're thinking too far ahead. I'm sure many things remain to be done and this is still just a very early preview.

"To approve" = "to have or express a favorable opinion of"

So going beyond the obvious that this was a translation issue, you are also wrong :) Good one! Plus, this use of 'approve' is always warranted, anyway, because it does not imply the assumption of decisive power over another person, but rather the issuance of where one stands on a matter. Sigh... language has really gone down hill the last 50 years...

Edited by trala
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Before running the hook:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=117848CD6E19433A!758&authkey=!AGgyGoqJ-YKMpOw

After:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=117848CD6E19433A!759&authkey=!AOIgdJvJyAhKBC4

Not sure why it only seems to affect these two processes, but it's a pretty large jump and my temps will get quite high on my CPU by leaving it running. This jump occurs IMMEDIATELY following installing the hook, perhaps these two apps are stuck trying to process your hook? I do not know your method of injection. But I cannot run this until this would get fixed which is unfortunate...

Here are the threads if that helps at all:

explorer: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=117848CD6E19433A!760&authkey=!AFvP-jkWiTM6A_4

skype: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=117848CD6E19433A!761&authkey=!AACQxWUUtSx3HPU

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I apologise too. I didn't realise you're French.

No problem. Glad to see that the misunderstanding is cleared up.

Tray icon won't probably be implemented because it would require running a background application which would handle icon actions.

After more thought about it, it is true that a background application for handling the tray icon would be a waste of system resources. The main tool should be as light as possible.

It might be more appropriate to use a third party tool to customize the transparency or blur. The user would launch it, make the wanted changes and then close it.

Example :

guiexample.png

I'm absolutely not experienced in C + + or DirectX but I know enough C # and Windows Forms to say that it's not very difficult to do.

If you want, I may code it for you. If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know too :)

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Does this high CPU appear also with tools such as bLend or WinAeroGlass?

EDIT: if this is due to layered windows and anybody is interested, I can also implement different approach of drawing transparent areas (with registry option). The problem of this different approach is that it does not draw totally obscured objects. Objects means window, window caption, border or window icon. If some of these object is totally hidden, you don't see it in the transparent area at all.

Edited by bigmuscle
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Does this high CPU appear also with tools such as bLend or WinAeroGlass?

Nope. (at least not WinAeroGlass)

The CPU usage goes high even if I open explorer or skype after opening the DWM hook. And it seems to share a processor thread, between the two it won't go over one hardware thread's worth of usage :).

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You "approve the idea"? Isn't that for bigmuscle to decide? I think we're thinking too far ahead. I'm sure many things remain to be done and this is still just a very early preview.

"To approve" = "to have or express a favorable opinion of"

So going beyond the obvious that this was a translation issue, you are also wrong :) Good one! Plus, this use of 'approve' is always warranted, anyway, because it does not imply the assumption of decisive power over another person, but rather the issuance of where one stands on a matter. Sigh... language has really gone down hill the last 50 years...

*sigh* I'm sure you're well aware that a single word can have multiple nuances and interpretations. I am not "wrong":

Verb

  • Officially agree to or accept as satisfactory: "the budget was approved by Congress"; "an approved profit-sharing plan".
  • Believe that someone or something is good or acceptable: "I don't approve of the way she pampers my father and brothers".

Synonyms

sanction - endorse - confirm - approbate - indorse

I interpreted his use of the word "approve" to mean that he was giving "official" acceptance on a matter that only the creator has control over. The word "approve" as used in my country is reserved for "official" approval where the approving party has the power to grant permission. I'm well aware that in other places, people use the word "approve" frivolously: "I approve this message" for example where their approval really means next to nothing except that they agree on something although they do not have any "official" capacity for doing so. If a parent approves of their child returning home at a certain hour, that parent has the official capacity to do so as opposed to if the child's friends "approve" of him going home at a certain time. The latter sort of "approval" is not commonly used in everyday speech where I'm from and your understanding of the use of the word "approve" is according to common American usage, I suspect. Therefore, there is no "wrong" in this situation. He merely expressed himself in a certain way and I interpreted his word in certain way. It was mutual miscommunication and hence we both apologised and cleared up our misunderstandings. Frankly I believe your little quip at the end about language going downhill to be a bit condescending but that is merely my interpretation of your statement. I'm sure you did not mean to be condescending or at least I hope so.

Edited by vjott
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It might be more appropriate to use a third party tool to customize the transparency or blur.

[...] I know enough C # and Windows Forms to say that it's not very difficult to do.

As I had some free time, I coded a GUI :

agtweaker.png

Everything is fully functional including the "Start with windows" setting.

It registers the loader as a Windows task with elevated privileges, triggered on windows logon.

@Big Muscle: I explicitely mentionned in the about form that you are not the author of this GUI.

If you don't approve it, please let me know and I'll remove the download link.

Download link for the GUI : AGTweaker-1.0.zip

Download link for the Sources : AGTweaker-1.0-Sources.zip

Sources are released under the CCDL license. (why ?)

Edited by ORelio
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It might be more appropriate to use a third party tool to customize the transparency or blur.

[...] I know enough C # and Windows Forms to say that it's not very difficult to do.

As I had some free time, I coded a GUI :

agtweaker.png

Everything is fully functional including the "Start with windows" setting.

It registers the loader as a Windows task with elevated privileges, triggered on windows logon.

@Big Muscle: I explicitely mentionned in the about form that you are not the author of this GUI.

If you don't approve it, please let me know and I'll remove the download link.

Download link for the GUI : AGTweaker-1.0.zip

Download link for the Sources : AGTweaker-1.0-Sources.zip

Sources are released under the CCDL license. (why ?)

Nice work, thanks mate :)

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Nice thing! I was actually thinking whether there is still possible to do something like in Win9x - WinXP. It was possible to register DLL which then automatically created a new tab in Display settings where any custom options could be placed.

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