Hey Look: Aero is NOT Gone in Windows 8 RTM!


Recommended Posts

You are confusing desktop composition (provided by the DWM) with the Aero theme. The Aero theme required desktop composition, but it is not the same thing. Desktop composition is now always on in Windows 8 and cannot be disabled.

  • Like 1
I don't remember anyone complaining that aero was gone, just aero glass.

You clear didn't see the "Why did Microsoft remove aero?" topic then. People are getting confused because Microsoft hasn't been clear about the situation.

The reality is that Aero still exists, it's just been updated. Like a new model of car there will be some people that like the changes, some that don't and most people won't care / notice the difference. And like a new model of car the reason it changes is not because the old version was bad or that the new version is better but rather to differentiate the new version, to keep it fresh in the minds of consumers. Microsoft did exactly the same when moving from Vista to 7. For what it's worth I like the new theme. I don't love it; I don't think it's the biggest improvement in history; I don't think it's going to redefine the world. There are simply subtle changes that I appreciate.

You are confusing desktop composition (provided by the DWM) with the Aero theme. The Aero theme required desktop composition, but it is not the same thing. Desktop composition is now always on in Windows 8 and cannot be disabled.

Technically, yes, it is the Desktop Window Manager. However, through the lack of clear communication from Microsoft, many people are mistaking the removal of Aero Glass as the removal of Desktop Window Manager. As theyarecomingforyou pointed out, people replying to the thread "Why did Microsoft remove aero?" are clearly confused and many are thinking that DWM is gone in RTM of Windows 8.

Furthermore, many of the features are still present in Windows 8 that was once branded as Windows Aero back in the days of Windows Vista and Windows 7 Beta. For instance, in Windows Vista Home Basic, the DWM was in fact turned on, however, some of the "premium" features of Aero was intentionally turned off, including Glass, taskbar thumbnail, Minimize/Close animations, etc. These features, along with Flip 3D, were the big advertisement point of Aero back in the day. In the Beta of Windows 7, the Snap, Peek, and Shake, were branded with the prefex of Aero.

In Windows 8 RTM, only the visual look is gone, but many of the features are present that once were branded as the hallmark of Windows Aero.

Final Remark: STOP CRYING ABOUT "NO AERO IN WINDOWS 8".

LOL, before I read this part I thought the whole post was you complaining about how Aero's still a part of Windows 8 :)

but I was a little disappointed that they didn't replace more of the Aero icons with Metro (excuse me, Windows-8-Style :D) icons.

People want transparency on their windows. Also you confused Aero and DWM in some parts.

DWM is needed for the animations and magnification. Not Aero.

Please read my response a couple of posts above yours about desktop window manager. I explain it all there.

Technically, yes, it is the Desktop Window Manager. However, through the lack of clear communication from Microsoft, many people are mistaking the removal of Aero Glass as the removal of Desktop Window Manager. As theyarecomingforyou pointed out, people replying to the thread "Why did Microsoft remove aero?" are clearly confused and many are thinking that DWM is gone in RTM of Windows 8.

Furthermore, many of the features are still present in Windows 8 that was once branded as Windows Aero back in the days of Windows Vista and Windows 7 Beta. For instance, in Windows Vista Home Basic, the DWM was in fact turned on, however, some of the "premium" features of Aero was intentionally turned off, including Glass, taskbar thumbnail, Minimize/Close animations, etc. These features, along with Flip 3D, were the big advertisement point of Aero back in the day. In the Beta of Windows 7, the Snap, Peek, and Shake, were branded with the prefex of Aero.

In Windows 8 RTM, only the visual look is gone, but many of the features are present that once were branded as the hallmark of Windows Aero.

You are explaining all that to a Microsoft employee? :p Brandon is a very well known name around here. I think now that he is actively posting here again, we can conclude that his work on Windows "codename" 9 hasn't started yet. :shifty: :laugh:

Technically, yes, it is the Desktop Window Manager. However, through the lack of clear communication from Microsoft, many people are mistaking the removal of Aero Glass as the removal of Desktop Window Manager. As theyarecomingforyou pointed out, people replying to the thread "Why did Microsoft remove aero?" are clearly confused and many are thinking that DWM is gone in RTM of Windows 8.

Furthermore, many of the features are still present in Windows 8 that was once branded as Windows Aero back in the days of Windows Vista and Windows 7 Beta. For instance, in Windows Vista Home Basic, the DWM was in fact turned on, however, some of the "premium" features of Aero was intentionally turned off, including Glass, taskbar thumbnail, Minimize/Close animations, etc. These features, along with Flip 3D, were the big advertisement point of Aero back in the day. In the Beta of Windows 7, the Snap, Peek, and Shake, were branded with the prefex of Aero.

In Windows 8 RTM, only the visual look is gone, but many of the features are present that once were branded as the hallmark of Windows Aero.

Actually, Microsoft has been very clear about it only being Aero Glass and not DWM being removed. The people who are confused are non-technical people who come onto a technical forum to discuss something they know nothing about.

All the information is there for those who know anything about Windows and have followed it for a few years. Microsoft always references the DWM in documentation and in technical blogs when discussing the engine behind Aero Glass. It's also very clear that DWM is used in all videos showing the Desktop. It's even clear when I go into the task manager by a process called DWM.

While on the subject, Microsoft has also stated that the underpinnings of Metro Apps uses Direct2D. Direct2D as many will know here was Microsoft's answer to the failure of WPF catching on by moving the Graphical capabilities to Native Code so that apps can rewrite the UI while keeping their back-end in C++. That is why the vast majority of Microsoft's apps are not in WPF now, they are all moving to Direct2D, hence the loss of support of XP. This includes IE9/10, Windows Live Essentials, and now Office 2013 (surprise, surprise).

Seeing how even in the RTM they left the taskbar with a bit of transparency then then option or ability to turn it back on to how it was at the RP should still be in there, just hidden. I doubt they actually went though all the trouble to just rip out the code for windows borders yet left the taskbar with it.

I give it a few weeks and someone will find and release a hack or a tweak tool that will let you go crazy with transparency again, or if not that then some custom theme will add it back

Personally I'm ok without glass borders as long as I can tweak the thickness of the new solid borders. I'm all for the Office 2013 style thin borders with a thin drop shadow.

They did actually remove the code like they did the startmenu

Am I the only one who wants to cry whenever I look at these screenshots of Windows 8 RTM? Colors are just dull for a full fledged interface. I didn't expect this from Microsoft! I guess first thing I would be doing after upgrading to RTM is to upgrade Windowsblinds as well, as and when it becomes available....or may be find a way to enable some other colors.....although, that's not what I always intended to do......Aero in RP looks (looked) so promising and usable!! :/

The reason I din't do RTM screenshots is because these screenshots would look almost exactly the same in Windows 8 RTM.

No, they don't!

Trolltastic

My complaint is about the transparency being gone, and the general ugliness of the new design. I'm well aware that the UI is still GPU accelerated, that doesn't make it any less ugly though.

You do realize you can use third party utilities to flip any type of transparency back on you want.

By creating the shader blur of the borders, Microsoft left the chrome of Windows less customizable. In removing this effect, the ability for developers to touch the chrome and create borderless applications with more consistency is far easier.

Additionally, because of the new rendering order by removing this, more functionality is possible. This spans a lot of topics from the RDP aspects to the Software DWM fallback features Windows 8 has. (The vector composer does not need a GPU to operate anymore.)

If you really need the 'glass' effect, there will be utilities that flip it back on, trust me.

Is it just me, or is Windows 8 desktop mode extremely ugly? Even in Windows 7 - transparency disabled is ugly. Aero without glass makes me want to puke :(

It's just you. I think Aero in Windows 8 is the best it has ever looked. But then again, I've always been a fan of minimal, simplistic UIs. Always loved the Windows Classic theme and always went from the most minimal looks in Linux. I, for one, really like the squared windows, simplified widgets, etc.

  • Like 1

It's just you. I think Aero in Windows 8 is the best it has ever looked.

Same here. Someone complained about the look of the Screen Saver Settings window in another thread. Personally I think, it has never before looked as tasteful as this:

EDIT: Wait a minute...that was you! :laugh:

post-5569-0-94221900-1344116576.png

Same here. Someone complained about the look of the Screen Saver Settings window in another thread. Personally I think, it has never before looked as tasteful as this:

EDIT: Wait a minute...that was you! :laugh:

I was referring specifically to the continued use of that 9x-era monitor icon. The Aero look in of itself I think looks best in Win8.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Python programmers in a nutshell. Now, guess what lang most AI programmers use... :-)
    • There was nothing whatsoever wrong with Vista as an OS after the SP1 update. People who claim it wasn't were using ancient machines for some silly reason. Not kidding, no hyperbole/exaggeration. Vista was good.
    • Windows ME was worse.
    • Dude, im talking about simply disable it from settings app. Because of the eu regulation, you could disable it here for years.
    • One big question about Mars was answered thanks to Einstein's 100 year old theory by Sayan Sen Image via DepositPhotos Scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have calculated how time passes on Mars compared with Earth, adding detail to how timekeeping would need to work beyond Earth’s orbit. The study, published in The Astronomical Journal, found that clocks on Mars run an average of 477 microseconds, or millionths of a second, faster per day than clocks on Earth. A microsecond is one millionth of a second, a very small unit used in precise scientific timing systems such as atomic clocks, which measure time using consistent atomic behavior. This difference is not constant. Because Mars moves around the Sun in a non-circular path (an eccentric orbit, meaning its distance from the Sun changes over time instead of staying fixed) and is affected by gravity from other bodies, the daily difference can vary by as much as 226 microseconds over a Martian year. The study also identifies smaller repeating changes of about 40 microseconds per day linked to synodic cycles (repeating periods that describe how planets line up with each other as they orbit the Sun from different positions). These longer patterns affect how time differences slowly rise and fall. To make these estimates, researchers compared Mars with Earth and the Moon. The work looks at relativistic proper time (the time actually measured by a clock depending on its speed and the strength of gravity where it is located, as described in Einstein’s relativity). This shows that each world has its own slightly different “rate” of time. This becomes more important as space missions expand into cislunar space (the region between Earth and the Moon) and toward Mars. On Earth, time systems rely on atomic clocks and satellites, which stay closely synchronized for navigation and communication. The study is based on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which shows that time is affected by gravity and motion. Stronger gravity makes clocks run slower, while weaker gravity makes them run faster. “The time is just right for the Moon and Mars,” said NIST physicist Bijunath Patla. “This is the closest we have been to realizing the science fiction vision of expanding across the solar system.” A day on Mars is about 40 minutes longer than on Earth, and a Martian year lasts 687 Earth days. But the main question is not just about days and years, but how fast time itself passes. An atomic clock placed on Mars would function normally, but compared with one on Earth, the two would slowly drift apart due to differences in gravity and motion. This requires careful calculation of what is similar to a time-zone difference across planets. Researchers modeled Mars using a reference surface and included gravitational effects from the Sun, Earth, the Moon, and other planets. This includes a multi-body gravitational system (often described as a three-body or four-body problem, where predicting motion becomes difficult because multiple large objects all pull on each other at the same time through gravity). Mars also follows a Keplerian orbit (an idealized elliptical orbit based on simple gravitational laws that assume smooth motion, before adding real-world disturbances from other bodies). In addition, the researchers accounted for solar tides (small changes in gravitational force caused by the Sun that slightly distort planetary motion and timing, especially in systems involving Earth and the Moon). These combined effects are described as relativistic proper-time offsets (small but measurable differences in elapsed time between locations caused by gravity and motion), which must be included when comparing clocks across planets. “But for Mars, that’s not the case. Its distance from the Sun and its eccentric orbit make the variations in time larger. A three-body problem is extremely complicated. Now we’re dealing with four: the Sun, Earth, the Moon and Mars,” Patla explained. “The heavy lifting was more challenging than I initially thought.” Although the differences are extremely small, they matter for navigation and communication systems that depend on precise timing. Even modern networks on Earth, such as mobile systems, rely on timing accuracy at very small fractions of a second. Communication between Earth and Mars currently takes about four to 24 minutes or more depending on planetary positions, meaning signals are not real-time. A shared and accurate time system could help future missions reduce confusion in navigation and data exchange. “If you get synchronization, it will be almost like real-time communication without any loss of information. You don’t have to wait to see what happens,” Patla said. Researchers note that fully developed interplanetary communication networks are still far in the future. However, understanding how time behaves across planets helps prepare for those systems. “It may be decades before the surface of Mars is covered by the tracks of wandering rovers, but it is useful now to study the issues involved in establishing navigation systems on other planets and moons,” said Neil Ashby. “Like current global navigation systems like GPS, these systems will depend on accurate clocks, and the effects on clock rates can be analyzed with the help of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” Patla added that the results also help improve understanding of time itself under relativity. “It's good to know for the first time what is happening on Mars timewise. Nobody knew that before. It improves our knowledge of the theory itself, the theory of how clocks tick and relativity,” he said. Source: NIST, IOPscience This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Grand Master
      Jaybonaut went up a rank
      Grand Master
    • One Year In
      Philsl earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      443
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      78
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!