Transparent, see through, blurred, GLASS in VISTA BASIC!

By Electrik Jesus
in Tips, Tweaks & Customization

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Grand Master

riahc3

Posted
Posted
This is considered Warez, why? You are trying to circumvent and get access to features that you are not supposed to access! If you want Glass, you should have gotten the correct version.

Discussion of warez on this board is not tolerated. You should be warned and this thread should be closed.

Oh boy. Here comes Neowin's mall security. Watch out...

He is not bothering/attacking you nor is Vista your product so you aren't losing any money. Stop crying like a bitch.

AFAIK, noone has been able to enable Aero on Vista Basic so this would be a Neowin exclusive although I have my doubt on this accually working.

Proficient

Marcel T

Posted
Posted

Thats pretty awesome Diesel, it's a wonder it wasn't noticed earlier. Vista Glazz is obviously so close to having an 'Enable Aero' option for Home Basic users. I don't see this as being a problem cos all they'd be doing is extending the dll patching to accommodate this feature.

So just to get the sequence down (I use Business N so it's not exactly for my benefit), I assume you did all three steps to get to where your system is at in the video? How long does the transparency last, eg. does it stop if you wake it from sleep, etc.

Does look a little buggy I suppose though with the window shading cropped right to the edge of each window and only visible at the corners. Have you tried pumping the window border size up and do you have access to transparency settings, etc? If not, try running the Color Transitions app which has an option (in a round about way) to alter transparency of the borders.

Grand Master

Mike

Posted
Posted
What I mean by "trying to circumvent and get access to features that you are not supposed to access", I mean getting features you haven't paid for that you can get by paying more! Vista Ultimate doesn't give you custom theme support that only DLL patching can do, so that's legal.

so no-cd cracks are legal too? seeing as you cant buy the game without copy protection, you're completely free to edit it so it's no longer there?

Rookie

Lominono

Posted
Posted (edited)
I dont understand what I'm seeing, your saying that theres some sort of bug that causes aero glass to be enabled with dual screens? (with he VistaGlazz patch)

exactly, but it won't work with just any dual screen setup. I tried to 'turn off' and than unplug the external monitor to try and get the bug to work on the external monitor but it doesn't work on that, so it must be something specific within the laptop's turn off screen thingy.

Thats pretty awesome Diesel, it's a wonder it wasn't noticed earlier. Vista Glazz is obviously so close to having an 'Enable Aero' option for Home Basic users. I don't see this as being a problem cos all they'd be doing is extending the dll patching to accommodate this feature.

So just to get the sequence down (I use Business N so it's not exactly for my benefit), I assume you did all three steps to get to where your system is at in the video? How long does the transparency last, eg. does it stop if you wake it from sleep, etc.

Does look a little buggy I suppose though with the window shading cropped right to the edge of each window and only visible at the corners. Have you tried pumping the window border size up and do you have access to transparency settings, etc? If not, try running the Color Transitions app which has an option (in a round about way) to alter transparency of the borders.

the transparency lasts as long as you leave the window alone, It won't allow me to resize the window and If I maximize it'll turn the aero off(i'm not sure about minimizing though, I'll try that later).

and no It doesn't look buggy at all, I have 1gig ram and a onboard video with ram share and it runs perfectly(even with it over video).

but I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to the boarder size? and no I do not have access to transparency settings. but thanks for the link I'll try that out later today after I get home from work.

-------------------------

edit:

Okay I just tried to minimize a window with aero, when I restore it it goes back to maximized state. than if I try to put it back into un-maximized state it goes back to normal vista basic.

Basic has aero, hands down. I think vista glazz is somehow triggering it when a maximized window is forced to be resized by the software.

Edited by Lominono
Proficient

Marcel T

Posted
Posted

Yeah, I see whats happening. The resolution difference between monitors is keeping the "maximised window properties (transparent bar/border thanks to VistaGlazz)" and dimensions of the window when changing to a higher resolution screen (the notebooks) which in turn means the DWM is still able to keep the 'no aero' restriction in place but only after window manipulation by resizing the window.

I'd say to get this working properly, you'd need to get into hacking other resources that VistaGlazz isn't involved with currently...

Rookie

Lominono

Posted
Posted
Yeah, I see whats happening. The resolution difference between monitors is keeping the "maximised window properties (transparent bar/border thanks to VistaGlazz)" and dimensions of the window when changing to a higher resolution screen (the notebooks) which in turn means the DWM is still able to keep the 'no aero' restriction in place but only after window manipulation by resizing the window.

I'd say to get this working properly, you'd need to get into hacking other resources that VistaGlazz isn't involved with currently...

yup yup.

and I measured the aero window, exactly at 640x480(the resolution of the external monitor when the laptop's monitor is turned off.

---------------

woops my bad, I opened up my mouth too soon,

with the shadow around the boarder, it's at 652x492. and without the shadow it's at 650x490

Rising Star

Zyphrax

Posted
Posted (edited)

Wow this is unexpected.

What we do in VistaGlazz, is that we patch your UxTheme, ThemeUI and Shsvcs files to allow custom styles. After that when you hit the transparency button, it patches your Aero.msstyle file to enable transparency in a maximized state.

We've never tested the product on Windows Vista Home Basic.

Did the program tell you that your files were corrupt or just unpatched? If they were unpatched, then they are identical to Home Premium and Ultimate. If they were corrupt and you forced a patch, then I guess that could have some effect on the transparency in Home Basic.

One thing that I should note: VistaGlazz was not intended to work, and has not been tested, for the Home Basic version of Windows, only for Windows Vista versions supporting Aero (both in software as in hardware).

But that doesn't make it less cool :)

Edited by Zyphrax
Rookie

Lominono

Posted
Posted
Wow this is unexpected.

What we do in VistaGlazz, is that we patch your UxTheme, ThemeUI and Shsvcs files to allow custom styles. After that when you hit the transparency button, it patches your Aero.msstyle file to enable transparency in a maximized state.

We've never tested the product on Windows Vista Home Basic.

Did the program tell you that your files were corrupt or just unpatched? If they were unpatched, then they are identical to Home Premium and Ultimate. If they were corrupt and you forced a patch, then I guess that could have some effect on the transparency in Home Basic.

One thing that I should note: VistaGlazz was not intended to work, and has not been tested, for the Home Basic version of Windows, only for Windows Vista versions supporting Aero (both in software as in hardware).

But that doesn't make it less cool :)

I think that it said unpatched.

oh I forgot to mention this, I did this process too, I think I did it after doing the glazz thing(and I have it set to vista standard instead of basic, but the aero works in both)

1. Login as a user with Administrative privileges -or- have Administrative

credentials ready (check under the keyboard for a slip of paper).

2. Navigate to %systemroot%\System32

3. Right-click uxtheme.dll and click properties.

4. Take ownership of the file and close dialogs.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for themeui.dll and shsvcs.dll

6. Right-click uxtheme.dll and click properties.

7. Give yourself (or group) Full Control permissions and close dialogs.

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for themeui.dll and shsvcs.dll.

9. Rename uxtheme.dll to uxtheme.old.

10. Rename themeui.dll to themeui.old.

11. Rename shsvcs.dll to shsvcs.old.

12. Copy patched files into %systemroot%\System32

13. Reboot (yes, this is really required)

14. Enjoy!

Rookie

DieseL`

Posted
Posted

Zyphrax: It just says they were unpatched, when you patch them transparency is enabled for maximised windows, so its doing exactly what it does on other versions of Vista. Do you think it's possible to patch the themes to allow complete transparency?

Rising Star

Zyphrax

Posted
Posted

If the msstyle part reported unpatched as well, then that would mean that the msstyle file is exactly the same as on the other Windows editions.

I'm not that much of a msstyle guru, more a C#/WPF coder :)

I'm not sure which part of the patching process caused the transparency effect in Vista Home Basic...

Contributor

Electrik Jesus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Great Find!!!

I knew this would progress with out me. (I have been using Ubuntu lately).

UPDATE: I have singled out the line of code for maximized glass, I think it also contains the settings for the non-maximized state. since I have the whole thing commented out, it acts as it should. I will look for the same color settings in the rest of the file to signify the color/transparency settings for a non-maximized window. I hope.

later.

  • 2 weeks later...
Proficient

Marcel T

Posted
Posted

I found another way to generate the Aero windows (translucent window borders) in Vista Home Basic using the tweak utilities Vista Glazz and Pitaschio. This is a very impractical method to get window transparency working on Home Basic in a usable form, it's more of a POC or whatever.

Anyway, first you need to have done both steps in Vista Glazz. With an explorer or similar window open that isn't maximized or minimized, launch Pitaschio and click the "Manage windows" button near the right hand corner. Select an active window from the list and then just click the "Maximize" button from the group of buttons below, then "Change size". This maximizes the window then Pitaschio improperly resizes it back down with the "maximized-mode" borders still in effect.

Download Vista Glazz (220 KB)

Download Pitaschio (55 KB)

Rookie

DieseL`

Posted
Posted

Another thing I can tell you, there is absolutley no way to enable glass from within the msstyles, just isn't possible. Enabling maximised glassed is more of a glitch, whatever Microsoft did to disable glass in basic they didn't bother to apply it to maxmised state windows because from there point of view it shouldn't have been visible anyway.

I've got a feeling they did something inside DWM, anyone bothered to check the DWM in Home Basic against the one in Premium?

Grand Master

Malisk

Posted
Posted (edited)
Just registered to post this...

This is the google gadget menu in vista basic. Not only is it transparent in the central area but even the window frame has become transparent. So google know how to do it. Anyone here work for google? ;)

Looking at the text underneath and beyond the JPEG compression artifacts, it doesn't look very blurred, as I can actually still read the text, like the "showtopic=" part. That would be impossible if it actually was Glass at the text size and JPEG compression. Hence, Google is most likely using the traditional transparency support first introduced in Windows 2000. I also know that transparency applies to the window frame/border as well.

Neowinian

tikaboo

Posted
Posted (edited)
Looking at the text underneath and beyond the JPEG compression artifacts, it doesn't look very blurred, as I can actually still read the text, like the "showtopic=" part. That would be impossible if it actually was Glass at the text size and JPEG compression. Hence, Google is most likely using the traditional transparency support first introduced in Windows 2000. I also know that transparency applies to the window frame/border as well.

Ah right. Thanks for that.

Still, I'd prefer clear glass to smudgy smoked blurry glass. Anyone know whether there any themes that utilise this feature that we can slap into vista basic?

Grand Master

Danrarbc

Posted
Posted
Ah right. Thanks for that.

Still, I'd prefer clear glass to smudgy smoked blurry glass. Anyone know whether there any themes that utilise this feature that we can slap into vista basic?

No, because basic's styles aren't much more capable than those in XP.

Contributor

Electrik Jesus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I think all is going well in this matter. and this way doesn't infringe on anything that Microsoft has built in. this uses a function that they overlooked.

Here is a screen shot for all of you that still doubt Vista Basic Home can't do transparency.

All we have to do now is build a sidebar widget that maximizes and then changes the maximized size to the windows original size. We need to make this an automated process. that takes every new window and performs this trick. without you having to set it manually.

CHEERS!!

post-165061-1182194805_thumb.jpg

Neowinian

jesus_verga

Posted
Posted
..Here is a screen shot for all of you that still doubt Vista Basic Home can't do transparency.

@Electrik Jesus- how did you get a completely transparent task bar..yours really looks great. did you use a custom msstyle. please let me know. i GOTTTA mhave this . THX in advance.

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