Transparent windows

[coolsilicon]

Hi!
Since a couple of people talk about "Longhorn" and its "Aero Glass" graphical interface this reminded me to provide a link to an interesting tiny app that lets you define the degree of transparency for your windows. I have no idea though if *this* is actually one of the "Aero Glass" features... Anyway, it's a funny thing that even runs fine on the DX 7-card in my desktop

More info here http://www.chime.tv/products/glass2k.shtml

[slagmi]

I've drove people nuts at work with that. So much so that I don't load it anymore. Too many comments & questions. Plus I was occasionally hitting some hotkey combination on accident that set the transparency to about 10%...

Regarding Longhorn, not exactly. Imagine 3 Windows stacked on top of each other. Then rotate the whole stack about 30 degrees. More like that. Why is this good? I'm not sure yet. Maybe will be the first feature that some users turn off!

[Cavorite]

Transparancies for the GUI have been around for a long time, starting with some window managers for Xfree86 and then moving on to windows with various shell replacements and stand alone products. It's rather funny that windows is just now getting on this tip. They are useful for some things, though people tend to overuse them and ruin their ability to be worthwhile. My favorite use is to have transparent terminals for monitoring my shell environments and overlay the various terms to still be able to watch for activity on one another, or another application running behind them. The 2D transparency stuff is nifty though, especialy if you have enough card to also do transparent video overlays, that can be useful for some things as well.

Not sure how worthwhile MS's finaly built in implimentation will be, they tend to leave out useful features, but we'll see.

-C-

[coolsilicon]

I remember a presentation where - IIRC - an Unix based system had this 3D-feature and it was impressive. It was explained as a new way of organizing windows on your desktop. The windows were rotated, arranged at an angle and such. At least you can "store" more windows on your desktop and play with them in a different way. Don't know how useful this would become in every day work and it'll also be a question of personal preferences. Anyway, having all the windows just overlapping each other can be annoying.

[Kenn]

You were probably talking about Sun's "Project Looking Glass" - it let you move and store windows, and flip them over to write notes and meta data on the back of the "window pane."

For those TP owners with ATI cards, the built-in ATI Hydravision software lets you make windows with custom transparency. Nvidia started doing this a while ago with nView functionality in their drivers. Both apps work pretty well, but I think they're both so full of bloat and hog so many system resources (especially on battery) that I've never found it worth using them.

I THINK "Aero Glass" is just the name of a visual theme for Longhorn. The new 3D presentation system is called Avalon, and will be available separately for an upcoming release of XP. It's supposed to make it easy to integrate true 3D content directly onto the desktop (think Mac OS, with seamless zooming and transition effects of 2D windows), as well as the incorporation of 2D and 3D objects, blends, and effects.

Until we find a real killer apps for it, I'm sure its major benefit will come from its more subtle effects.

[coolsilicon]

kenn,
I think you're rigth. I remember the person taking notes on the back of such a window. I've not played with ATI-HV yet, since I'm not using two or more monitors (which to manage is ATI-HV for, if I got it right). Avalon as an addition/upgrade to XP would be interesting but, as you say, it'll rather come as part of a whole new version of XP in 2005. Maybe this version will also beta-test some of the technics of Longhorn...