Fast Alpha-Blending In Your GUI

visnu writes: "I've been waiting for this for 2 years now -- a REAL glass-like windowing system. And yes, it's Microsoft to do it. Ever since W2k came out, and they included alpha-blending in the GDI, I was tempted to write a little tool to turn on any window's transparency, but of course I'm way too lazy to do that. These guys weren't though: glass2k runs in the systray and handles turning on any window's transparency. yes, here's a screenshot. I'm not too sure about the speed in W2k, but in XP w/ the newest Nvidia drivers and a somewhat recent video card, it's hardware accelerated, and yes, you should be drooling." Update: 11/26 19:00 GMT by T : Links updated, so hopefully you'll be able to actually get to the content again :)

Comments

Great for always on top windows

[snake_dad]

There are some apps that I would like to run "always on top", but most of the time they get in the way. This would sure be a nice way to still sorta see them .

Great stuff, now implement it for NT4 and win98 :P

Re:Great for always on top windows

[DaEvOsH]

The required API's needed to do this in any windows than ME or NT4 is not there. It can be done 'manually', but it is very slow, difficult to do well (I have done it in one of my progs but at the end disabled it when the prog detected the alpha api was not there) and brings problems when running with other programs that alter the way a window is shown.

It is a pretty esy thing to do. For win32 programmers:

1. Find the window handle you want to alpha blend. (say, hwnd).
2. Add the WS_EX_LAYERED extended style to the window with this call:
SetWindowLong (hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE) | WS_EX_LAYERED);
3. Call SetLayeredWindowAttributes. Look up MSDN for the info.

Also, this API in Win2k does not seem to work well in some video cards - windows which update themselves a lot will cause problems i.e. an opengl window, etc (my program has a few of them).

It's nice and all that...

[AltGrendel]

...but it strikes me as "Not that useful". Most of my users get confused with standard GUI look and feel. I'd hate to think what this would do to their poor little minds.

Re:It's nice and all that...

[be-fan]

When its on Windows, it's not useful. When its on Linux, its the great, awesome, ground-breaking new technology that Packard dreamed up.

Operation Brainfuck

[Eloquence]

Overlapping windows were a pretty brain-dead idea to begin with. This is increasingly being realized by developers who add sidebars and "panels" to their applications which can be moved and resized (knode, the KDE newsreader, implements this quite fully, although it's a bit awkward to use). The information below the window you're overlapping is cut in half: A browser window you're overlapping might show you text like

as not a good idea
creasingly being interested
ot to be confused with the

i.e. noise. The only purpose it serves is to faster identify the window you're dealing with. This has become unnecessary with the invention of the taskbar. Further additions to this concept, like window summarization and application-specific taskbars, make it even easier to use. If you want to view a lot of information simultaneously instead of having everything in full-screen mode, a smart window-manager like ion will rearrange windows automatically in useful tiles. Additional usability can be gained with clever hotkeys for application-switching.

But while overlapping windows are stupid, transparent windows are really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to stupidify the masses by making computers incapable of displaying information. The next step will be window-spectific screensavers, which turn on after a specific period of inactivity in a single window. Just you wait. Thanks to transparency:

• Information becomes unreadable, especially with unfortunate color combinations.
• Information you think is there is actually part of another window -- have fun editing that picture.
• When two windows overlap with the wrong alpha-blending setting, you can no longer be sure which one is on top without looking at the taskbar or focus (in this screenshot, thanks to additional braindead color gradients in the title bars, this is especially hard).
• Even your calculator will use more RAM than Mozilla ..

If you like eye-candy, you may "drool" over this one and get your brain fucked by the Illuminati. A frontal lobotomy may be a quicker solution though.

Re:Operation Brainfuck

[hattig]

One good reason for the emergence of overlapping windows: low screen resolutions. You didn't have a choice when you were running at 512x384 or 640x480.

It is the brain-dead operation of the GUI in Windows (active window has to be on top) that necessitates such nasty hacks as this. A desktop that allows the active window to be behind another window removes this necessity altogether (for when you are e.g., copying text from one window into another).

Other good systems include multiple desktops, as provided by all good X Windows Managers and various windows hackons. Amiga Screens were another great system. Screens and multiple desktops are like having a large desk (plenty of space to spread your pens, paper, notebook, encyclopaedia, etc), whereas Windows by default is like trying to do all your work on a desk the size of a mousepad.

There are times of course when overlapping windows are not required. Multiple webbrowser windows when a tabbed interface within a single browser is adequate, for example. Need to display 2 web pages at once - explicitly open two windows, or split the current web page view in two horizontally or vertically, a function provided by Konqueror.

'What's wrong?'

[DABANSHEE]

You load that up on the average bloke's computer & they'd be complain about their buggy Windows desktop till the cows come home.

Overlapping windows rule

[GregWebb]

Sorry, no.

What if I want a large workspace, but I'm working on multiple applications? I create two or more windows with a total surface area greater than the desktop size and overlap them. I can switch more easily than via a taskbar (not so far to move the mouse), I can still drag items between windows, I can see what's going on in different windows. Say I'm comparing two lists of contents. Each window may well contain rather more than the list, but that's all I need at that point. So, I lay it out so I can see both lists and compare away, without losing the larger workspace in the primary application.
Or maybe one is performing a task - by just displaying a portion of its GUI, I can monitor that task without losing a potentially large portion of my desktop for its full UI.
The day a desktop GUI bans me from overlapping windows is the day I look for new GUIs.

Glass and icing

[viktor]

There might be a very good reason it's taken two years for the glass-like windowing system. And that would be that it isn't a good idea.

Sure it looks pretty. It's technically cool. It's very nice eyecandy. But useful? Hardly.

If our desktops were three-dimensional, there would be a point - in that case you could refocus on a window below your current. When refocusing, the frontmost window would be so blurry to you that it didn't interfere with your view of what was behind it.

But desktops aren't 3D (and "fake" 3D doesn't work, refocusing requires that your desktop is not displayed on a single plane, as that plane only has one focus), and you can't refocus. What you get is just a blur of all windows that happen to be ontop of one another (and the background if you have a background/wallpaper image).

I would guess that the only time that transparent windows help is if you have an OS/wm that does not offer workspaces or similar. The transparency might help cram an extra three windows onto the screen. Using workspaces you can just put those extra three on another workspace instead.

I have yet to see anybody argue how great it would be if all books were printed on plastic rather than paper, so that we could see through them.

Yup, 'tis an easy thing to do

[Bothari]

Basically all you have to do is make a dll to hook the WM_CREATE message. Then you just have to check which type of window (or even which window).
Easy-peasy, done in an hour or so, back when w2k came out.

It *is* bloody useless, though, I only use it ... well, for the look of the thing ;)

Glass windowing on Linux

[ortholattice]

Translucent windowing has also been in Linux; here is an example (not mine; look it up on Usenet). (Warning: Partial nudity.) I don't know how it compares since the site referenced in the article has been slashdotted.