WB5 Taskbar Transparency

Saturday, November 5, 2005 by smest | Discussion: WindowBlinds

Right now, the taskbar seems not to realize there are applications underneath it, I'm guessing that's a problem with the whole false transparency issue that's been mentioned earlier, but there are plenty of other programs (including WindowFX) that do taskbar transparencies properly, I'm just not seeing why WB5 should have a problem with it.


I have a screenshot, but I can't get it onto my website for some reason.
Neil Banfield
Reply #1 Saturday, November 5, 2005 11:17 AM

WindowFX and all those other apps do constant transparency.  The entire taskbar has one transparency level.  If you set this to say 10% then the entire bar is 10% visible and the text would be unreadable. 

The WindowBlinds 5 feature is per pixel.  This gives the skin author so much more control and the text, icons etc can remain fully visible.  The side effect is it is not aware of windows under it.

smest
Reply #2 Saturday, November 5, 2005 3:22 PM
I did get that, but why??

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
MarkMcQ
Reply #3 Saturday, November 5, 2005 4:34 PM
Performance. If it had to constantly redraw every single semi trans pixel so it displayed the content underneath, it would probably cause a noticable jerkiness when moving a window that goes behind the taskbar.
smest
Reply #4 Sunday, November 6, 2005 3:49 PM
You mean the same amount of redraw that semi-transparent window borders have when "drag entire window" is turned on, and have no jerkiness?

What if you take the transparency functions of WinFX to make the taskbar fully transparent and then overlay the more opaque bits on top of that? obviously doing it exactly like that might be a litle hefty performance-wise, but isn't there some way of doing it efficiently?


Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

  • Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
  • Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
  • Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
  • It's simple, and FREE!



web-wc01