WB v10.83 No Longer Paints Firefox Titlebar

https://forums.wincustomize.com/497596/page/1/#3764296

"Afraid it is not going to anytime soon.  Browsers are just changing too much - too often."

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

The default setup for Firefox is unfortunately unskinnable and caused visual glitches.  We therefore had to exclude the firefox window.  Whilst it did not have the same visual glitches when it has a titlebar set, it is not possible for WindowBlinds to detect this early enough to not cause glitches if it doesn't have one set (which is the default).

Neil:  Don't you think we, the consumer, should have the option to exclude Firefox if there are glitches?  Or, at least have the option, as before, of simply turning on the title bar on Firefox to eliminate the glitch?  I just find it ridiculous that Stardock just dumped browsers from Windowblinds, just like I feel the dumping of Windowblinds, Iconpackager and other software from OD 2020 because not as many people are skinning, or customizing their systems.  If that happens, you lose another customer.  I've been nearly at that point for the past couple of years because Stardock gave up on Objectdock.  It's almost as if Stardock doesn't really care about their products anymore because it's "too hard" to work around.

I’m not sure that Stardock has dumped the skinning of all browsers because I’m seeing that the Internet Explorer titlebar is still getting skinned by Windowblinds. Instead, it appears to be “cherry picking” which apps get skinned and which apps are abandoned. While Stardock is able to do this, the consumer is also able to seek skinning solutions elsewhere. I consider this to be a lose-lose scenario for both Stardock and the consumer. It seems like a better solution could be implemented. .

I agree completely!  I wish they would have simply left it as is for Firefox and implemented a "workaround" or note similar to the Chrome workaround.  Sure, not everyone is going to use it; but, for those of us "oldies" that still love customizing our computers, it would have made us a lot happier.  Right now, I'm truly questioning whether I will renew OD next year.  I've already made the switch to Winstep Nexus instead of Objectdock.

Quoting r_pinkard, reply 4

I’m not sure that Stardock has dumped the skinning of all browsers because I’m seeing that the Internet Explorer titlebar is still getting skinned by Windowblinds. Instead, it appears to be “cherry picking” which apps get skinned and which apps are abandoned. While Stardock is able to do this, the consumer is also able to seek skinning solutions elsewhere. I consider this to be a lose-lose scenario for both Stardock and the consumer. It seems like a better solution could be implemented. .

I am afraid we are not cherry picking anything.

Google Chrome opted to paint its own titlebar including background vs painting their tabs over the OS one, at that point they opted out of any sort of OS level skinning.  They do have a command line parameter to disable this, but if this goes away then that will be it for Chrome.  Especially after their recent funny business with blocking every third party app recently.

Firefox has caught a similar disease and I believe have plans to block third party dlls too which will likewise render their entire process unskinnable.  Due to how their non titlebar mode works, we cannot make it look right in the default out of the box look so had to opt for the best new user experience which is for firefox to not skin vs customers thinking WB is broken or complaining on the forums.

Internet Explorer on the other hand is one of the best behaved apps which shows how you are supposed to paint tabs etc in the titlebar.

General rule of thumb is, if the app decides to take over the entire painting of the titlebar rather than using the OS apis to extend the client area into the titlebar to combine content then it will not skin.  Complaints over that would have to go to the developers of those apps as they have chosen to paint something which looks like the OS one but isn't and reinvent the wheel for I suspect 5 seconds better battery life and/or adding in dark mode for their apps (again the wrong way!).

With regards to Firefox, the best we can do is add in a setting to disable the ignoring of the Firefox window which advanced users could enable (as they do for enabling the titlebar in FF in the first place).

A lot of work was put into seeing if we could have a better way to handle FireFox but it was the best we could come up with.

Thanks for the explain Neil.

Perhaps Mozilla needs some feedback. Thanks for the explanation.

However, what was different about Windowblinds v10.82 that enabled it to paint the titlebar of Firefox v70.0.1 while v10.83 does not?  It seems like the change is not with Firefox, but with Windowblinds.

I understand the change, Neil, I do; however, making this change with an update to WB for a Windows 1909 issue seemed a bit odd considering that WB was working just fine with Firefox.  Excluding it would have been a better option IMHO when Firefox finally closes things off entirely for skinning.  I guess, since Stardock appears to be scaling back OD for the future, killing off WB and other software, then it's time for me to move on from renewing OD since I don't see any value.  Thanks for the memories!   

Okey rolling back WB because this just stupid wont  paint skin on firefox at all.

Quoting wscwebyoda, reply 10

I understand the change, Neil, I do; however, making this change with an update to WB for a Windows 1909 issue seemed a bit odd considering that WB was working just fine with Firefox.  Excluding it would have been a better option IMHO when Firefox finally closes things off entirely for skinning.  I guess, since Stardock appears to be scaling back OD for the future, killing off WB and other software, then it's time for me to move on from renewing OD since I don't see any value.  Thanks for the memories!   

I am unsure where you got the idea Stardock was scaling back ObjectDesktop or killing WindowBlinds?

Check out the thread started by Frogboy right here: https://forums.wincustomize.com/497581/page/1  In the original post it says that Iconpackager and Windowblinds are on the bubble.  If they do not receive upgrades, or are left out in the cold like objectdock, then that means that OD would be scaled back.  In fact, most of the OD apps are pretty irrelevant already on Windows 10.  Which means that I am seeing less and less value for the yearly subscription. 

I wouldn't necessarily read into that what you are...

Brad is talking about major updates (as in major new versions AKA v11).  WindowBlinds has literally just had an update for OS compatibility so it works correctly on the 1909 release of Windows 10 and is clearly actively supported and there is a 10.84 sitting ready for QA as we speak.

Brad also mentions new things coming to ODNT in the future.

I would also suggest making your views clear in Brads thread as that is a request for peoples views.  Tell hi what you value, what you don't and what you might like to see in the future product wise.

Me too.

I am not a gamer but been a Stardock subscriber and user of WB for a long time, and I buy some skins. 

As a user of Win 10 Pro, the thought of WB going the way of the Dodo bird is not at all pleasing.  Should I be looking for future options?   Microsoft 10 skins are not at all appealing, especially cause I look at my computer screen much of the day.

I wouldn't worry about WB going anywhere soon.

Thank you Jesus.

So Brad doesn't know what he's talking about in the OD 2020 thread?:

I use Icon Packager all the time.

WindowBlinds is definitely not going away any time soon.  

As Neil explained, the biggest obstacles we have faced in the past several years are:

1. Apps that (wrongly) try to skin their own title bars to look like the OS rather than using what's built into the OS.
2. Apps that are trying to block external DLLs from hooking onto their process.  Hopefully we can work with the major parties to solve this as wblind.dll is no different than say uxtheme.dll in doing this.
3. General false positives from "Security".  This is what effectively killed DesktopX.  It is also what killed the Windows Sidebar.

We'd love to look at doing a WindowBlinds 11 but it's a question of which area to focus on.

Thank you for making the change in Windowblinds to provide painting the titlebar on Firefox.   The many responses in this thread should indicate that OD and Windowblinds has a loyal following that is worth supporting.  We don't want OD (or Windowblinds) to fade away.   Thank you for your quick response.