Various small issues

from Stardock Forums

To start, this seems pretty nice - noticeably lighter-weight than WindowBlinds and with fewer rendering anomalies related to multi-monitor setups and/or other tweak applications.

  • Similar to WindowBlinds (PSM-211-26116), Curtains doesn't seem to support error/intermediate taskbar statuses.
  • Taskbar status overlays render unusually (pictured: Cairo Dark):

    I can't quite figure out if they are rendering with a blend mode or some other issues, but it's generally hard to see the overlays on most themes.
  • The tool could use an application blacklist like WindowBlinds does - e.g. PaintNET renders incorrectly in both

    (due to what I'm assuming is drawing titlebar-colored rectangles over the base window frame UI)
  • Browser hooking doesn't detect Edge Beta / Edge Canary
    (which are about the same thing but with a different executable path)
curtains
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,
I have forward your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top


To start, this seems pretty nice - noticeably lighter-weight than WindowBlinds and with fewer rendering anomalies related to multi-monitor setups and/or other tweak applications.

 

    • Similar to WindowBlinds (PSM-211-26116), Curtains doesn't seem to support error/intermediate taskbar statuses.

 

    • Taskbar status overlays render unusually (pictured: Cairo Dark):

      I can't quite figure out if they are rendering with a blend mode or some other issues, but it's generally hard to see the overlays on most themes.

 

    • The tool could use an application blacklist like WindowBlinds does - e.g. PaintNET renders incorrectly in both

      (due to what I'm assuming is drawing titlebar-colored rectangles over the base window frame UI)

 

    • Browser hooking doesn't detect Edge Beta / Edge Canary
      (which are about the same thing but with a different executable path)

 


With regards to the paint.net issue, unfortunately that is entirely their end.  You are right that for unknown reasons they draw solid coloured boxes over the titlebar.  This is perplexing given on Windows 7 they supported glass frames just fine!

Generally speaking it is not possible to exclude a non UWA application from Curtains.  This is because there is nothing to exclude them as the frames are a global thing.  This isn't the case with universal apps as they have their own fake titlebars usually and Curtains actually disables that.

With MS edge, it shouldn't matter if it is beta or canary and we do not care about the install path.  I have just checked here and both are respecting the settings set in Curtains as of todays latest builds.  It may be how they are being launched thats the issue here?  Are you launching them from a shortcut to the app (not a weblink) in explorer or via some other route?

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 2
With regards to the paint.net issue, unfortunately that is entirely their end.  You are right that for unknown reasons they draw solid coloured boxes over the titlebar.  This is perplexing given on Windows 7 they supported glass frames just fine!

Apparently the developer isn't fond of anything custom theme related.

This can be fixed by modifying a single IL instruction, but doing so is against the program's EULA, so go figure.

Given that Electron applications also tend to peck at ...\DWM\AccentColor key for deciding on their titlebar colors, a semi-reliable solution seems to be to set the accent color to be as close as possible to the titlebar color and then use the second/third color to recolor your elements:



Quoting Neil, reply 2
Generally speaking it is not possible to exclude a non UWA application from Curtains.  This is because there is nothing to exclude them as the frames are a global thing.  This isn't the case with universal apps as they have their own fake titlebars usually and Curtains actually disables that.

I suspected that this was the case, thanks for answering!

Quoting Neil, reply 2
With MS edge, it shouldn't matter if it is beta or canary and we do not care about the install path.  I have just checked here and both are respecting the settings set in Curtains as of todays latest builds.  It may be how they are being launched thats the issue here?  Are you launching them from a shortcut to the app (not a weblink) in explorer or via some other route?

This was apparently caused by

-disable-features=Windows10CustomTitlebar

which I have added while doing something with WindowBlinds and subsequently forgot about.

A new question: had the logic behind window frame drawing ever been documented anywhere? Testing with "fat frames", I can see that the top frame image gets stretched somewhat depending on added border width, but I cannot seem to figure out the exact height of window caption image frame for it to draw normally.