Curtains - Beta 2 issue report thread (Closed)

Changelog for Beta 2

• Some of the advanced color settings were not saving correctly in the new advanced properties editor
• On app load, on switch of user-editable color section on the styles page, it caused a system-wide theme refresh which was effecting performance on lower-end machines. This no longer happens as it was unintentional.
• Support for custom list preview
• Addition of 'create new' link in UI
• Progressive Web Apps (PWA) running under chromium will now have back buttons again
• Colors page tweaked a bit
• Editor tweaked to have editing margins UI and advanced properties page exposing a number of extra properties
• Added Button.Background, Button.InactiveBackground, Button.CloseBackground and Button.InactiveCloseBackground sections to save effort when replacing the titlebar button backgrounds
• Fixed issue with titlebar button images adding extra edge line
• Clicking the preview on the online tab opens a bigger preview
• Fixed an issue with inactive min button background not painting correctly in some styles

Known issues:

For any issues that are reported, and that can be reproduced \ verified, they will be listed as 'known issues' and itemized here.

With the release of Beta 3:

https://forums.stardock.com/499908/

This thread is now closed. 

Thank you all for your feedback here - it is very much appreciated.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

not a bug but i'd still love to see an icon for it in the systray

Apparently "Apply accent color to title bars and window borders" keeps enabling itself if I close and re-open the app (beta 2). Also, if I go and disable the option, navigating to the Styles tab switches the titlebars to accent color.

Surface Laptop 3, 1909 (build 18363.815).

Steps to reproduce:

1. Disable "Apply accent to titlebars" option in Curtains
2. Open Chromium Edge (or any app that can use accent color for titlebars when the option is enabled)
3. Navigate to Styles tab
4. Edge's titlebar changes color the moment you switch to Styles tab in Curtains, but "Apply accent to titlebars" is still disabled
5. Go to Curtains options, check and uncheck "Apply accent to titlebars" to turn titlebar accents off again
6. Close Curtains and relaunch it, you'll notice it enables the accent to titlebars again, because you're now taken to the Styles tab which apparently triggers the accent change

I can add to this, perhaps shed some light on it, but I don't know what the desired behavior is.  That behavior in the "Options" screen seems to be caused by a theme itself having the following option checked: Colors\"Force enable operating system setting to apply accent color to window title bars".  If a theme does not have that option enabled, the "Options" setting does not keep re-enabling itself.

Ahh that's it! I forgot there was that option there. Apparently it just got re-enabled when updating from beta 1 to 2. Thanks.

It is kind of an odd relationship between those settings, honestly I'm not crazy about it.

Hey, The Microsoft Store Won't open while using curtains.

It should do as curtains currently has no impact at all on apps like the store.

Try rebooting as it may be an unrelated glitch.

Wow, this came way sooner than I was expecting. Window buttons are now displaying perfectly and that advanced property window is really awesome.

Outstanding work.

You guys really kicked this up a level or two or three.    

In the Windows\Advanced properties screen, I'm wondering if "Inactive Text Background Color" and (Text)"Shadow Color" are supposed to have a "More" button on their color pickers:

I'm also wondering if the text background is painting right on the Explorer captions (caption is not centered here):

Love the new "Allow fat borders" setting.   

Thanks.

Quoting DaveRI, reply 12

You guys really kicked this up a level or two or three.    

In the Windows\Advanced properties screen, I'm wondering if "Inactive Text Background Color" and (Text)"Shadow Color" are supposed to have a "More" button on their color pickers:



 

I'm also wondering if the text background is painting right on the Explorer captions (caption is not centered here):



 

Love the new "Allow fat borders" setting.   

Thanks.

Whilst I could say who wants a shadow other than in black or white, that is indeed a bug and it will be fixed for the next update.

Explorer windows which have the extra bits added (the Manage bit) often put the text on the right of those areas automatically.  This is how explorer handles its titlebar as it assumes there may not be sufficient space on the left for it.  There is an argument that the solid background should stop short on the left and then continue under the text rather than stretching to fill the entire width however.

Glad you like it.

I've been also having the weirdest little issue since beta 1: If I apply this one specific wallpaper (Surface Laptop 3), I'll end up with just a black wallpaper.

I don't know how it's even possible for this issue to happen, but it just does. It shows that I have this wallpaper applied in Curtains' UI, but the actual wallpaper is just solid black. I haven't been able to reproduce with any other wall, and I've tried several. Happens if I apply it via Curtains or Windows settings.

The wallpaper in question is from the tech news site Verge's wallpaper collection and I would really appreciate if you could test if it works for you. I've been using this wallpaper occasionally for years with different computers/smartphones, so I know it's not some corrupted file.

It's the one called Hysteresis, it's near the end of the page in Verge wallpapers site

Here's a direct link

That's what I was referring to.  I probably should have gone ahead and given you a shot of it with the text centered too:

It is certainly fun to play with the existing styles, but creating one from scratch seems pretty complex.  Not nearly as complicated as WindowBlinds, though, so that's a plus :)   It looks like it might be possible to build a convincing Windows 95/Classic/Chicago theme with this.

Here is a list of UI bugs/suggestions:

• Tab order in some of the the [Edit Style] sections is broken.  Go to [Shadows], [Colors], or [Advanced], select a field, hit tab a couple of times, and focus disappears completely.
• Combo box behaviour in the [Edit Style]->[Advanced] section is weird; if this is a custom control, could you switch to using the standard Windows one?  When you click on the style combobox, the currently-selected item is displayed at the very top of the list (instead of being under the mouse pointer) which makes it hard to jump to the next/previous entry in the list.  I know you can do that by hovering over the box and using the scroll wheel, but sometimes I want to see my choices.
• The [Edit Style]->[Colors]->[Select ### Color] interface is weird.  Clicking one of those buttons essentially displays a modal dialog box, but it's not styled to look like one.  Why not just make the box disappear when you click away from it instead of making the user click the [close] button?
• [Styles] section scrollbar acts weird.  No left/right arrows, no hilight on hover, jump scrolling as you click+drag it.  It actually took me a long time to even realize there were more than 9 available styles because I didn't know the list was scrollable.  Could this be converted to a standard Windows control?
• It would be nice if the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons were included in the image previews for the styles, so that you could easily tell which ones had custom buttons.
• There are no tooltips/descriptions for the two icons in the corner of the style preview images.  One is probably "custom background", but not sure what the color wheel means.

Quoting dnelson_1901, reply 17

It is certainly fun to play with the existing styles, but creating one from scratch seems pretty complex.  Not nearly as complicated as WindowBlinds, though, so that's a plus    It looks like it might be possible to build a convincing Windows 95/Classic/Chicago theme with this.

Here is a list of UI bugs/suggestions:

 

• Tab order in some of the the [Edit Style] sections is broken.  Go to [Shadows], [Colors], or [Advanced], select a field, hit tab a couple of times, and focus disappears completely.

 

• Combo box behaviour in the [Edit Style]->[Advanced] section is weird; if this is a custom control, could you switch to using the standard Windows one?  When you click on the style combobox, the currently-selected item is displayed at the very top of the list (instead of being under the mouse pointer) which makes it hard to jump to the next/previous entry in the list.  I know you can do that by hovering over the box and using the scroll wheel, but sometimes I want to see my choices.

 

• The [Edit Style]->[Colors]->[Select ### Color] interface is weird.  Clicking one of those buttons essentially displays a modal dialog box, but it's not styled to look like one.  Why not just make the box disappear when you click away from it instead of making the user click the [close] button?

 

• [Styles] section scrollbar acts weird.  No left/right arrows, no hilight on hover, jump scrolling as you click+drag it.  It actually took me a long time to even realize there were more than 9 available styles because I didn't know the list was scrollable.  Could this be converted to a standard Windows control?

 

• It would be nice if the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons were included in the image previews for the styles, so that you could easily tell which ones had custom buttons.

 

• There are no tooltips/descriptions for the two icons in the corner of the style preview images.  One is probably "custom background", but not sure what the color wheel means.

 

 

We will check the tab order, it is still in flux so tab ordering has not been set fully yet.

The combo box is a standard control.  The box will show the currently selected item at the top of the list and this will typically appear under the control (unless there is no room).  Standard combo boxes do not show the selected item directly under the mouse.  As the list is very large, if you do not have room under the box then the list would appear above which might be the issue you are seeing here?

If you click away from the select ### colour box it does indeed close automatically.  The close button is there as a convenience.

The scrollbars in app do not have a mouseover state that is true.  The default OS scrollbar is unfortunately not a good fit UI wise which is why we have our own.  I will see what we can do to tweak it.

Agree on the min/max/close buttons.  Styles can now include their own mini preview so they can do what they wish with them (Arrow on the online tab uses one once installed).

The first icon is indeed custom background, the second is recolourable.

You're right, regular combo boxes do behave the same.  I tried with a font name combo box in another program.  When it can't display the list below the box, it's displayed above the box, and if the list is taller than the available space above the box, it will overlap the box.  I guess this is the first time I've seen it happen.

Odd, it definitely doesn't close for me.  Maybe I've got another tweak running that's affecting it.

I'd like to know, how/where does one access the title bar buttons, or any buttons, for that matter?

Need to turn on/select "Show advance sections in the style editor" (in Option/cogwheel icon).

Thank you,

Basj
Stardock Community Assistant.

Win10 v1909 build18363.778

Don't know if you can do anything about it, but this is one you will probably be hearing about down the road.

Open up 3 Explorer windows. (It doesn't really need to be Explorer windows.)  MInimize 1 of them.  Mouse over the taskbar preview popups, the 2 open windows leave big blank areas on the screen.  Once it gets into that "mode", it seems to do the same thing with only 1 window active.  Usually minimizing all the windows and then just having one window active will stop the blank areas.

I realize it mind sound like I'm grumbling about the software but I'm not, I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing - driving it to see what I think might be squeaking.   

Thanks.

Quoting DaveRI, reply 22

Win10 v1909 build18363.778

Don't know if you can do anything about it, but this is one you will probably be hearing about down the road.

Open up 3 Explorer windows. (It doesn't really need to be Explorer windows.)  MInimize 1 of them.  Mouse over the taskbar preview popups, the 2 open windows leave big blank areas on the screen.  Once it gets into that "mode", it seems to do the same thing with only 1 window active.  Usually minimizing all the windows and then just having one window active will stop the blank areas.



 



I realize it mind sound like I'm grumbling about the software but I'm not, I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing - driving it to see what I think might be squeaking.   

Thanks.

I think thats the normal window peek feature in the OS?

Sort of, but much more pronounced, it's pretty eye-catching.  This is the default;

Somehow WB manages to avoid it completely; 

Accent color not applied after a reboot. 

Using Cairo Dark. On the image I have Edge, File Explorer, Outlook (PWA) and Snip & Sketch opened.  Focus on Snip & Sketch.

Even if in Curtains there is a accent color.

I have to manually click on the skin to re-apply the skin with accent color.