Vista Aero

[stevew]

I just wanted to mention that in the new version 7 it is unfortunate that the sales pitch says:

Vista Aero Experience: Only InstallAware 7 allows you to build software installers which contain custom Glass regions. Impress your end-users right from the start - jazz up your dialogs with Glass and Flash animations!

but after installing 7 I find the feature is still in beta. I just wanted to let people know to try it out before blindly upgrading like me...

From the manual after installing it says:

A new VistaGlass component is now available, letting you design your custom glass surfaces in setup wizards on Windows Vista. Please note that Vista Glass support is currently in the beta stage. Adding Vista Glass support to your setup wizards will not affect the reliability or performance of your setup in any way, but may introduce harmless visual artifacts.

[SteveDude]

I'm still waiting on a good sample for real world use. I was hoping that since it is pitched quite a bit in 7 that there would be at least one sample dialog set using it.

[stevew]

i'm sure there will be instruction when ready. If i were you i won't wait around for something that wasn't promised. If it is anything like where i work, the sales guys are often a step ahead of the developers. Just give the poor ol' developers a chance to get caught up ...

i did try to see if i could make something work. I see the Glass control on the win32 tab of the dialog editor ... but i don't see result. Maybe my video card doesn't support it i don't know. I am just assuming that "glass" means that gradient type background where the top half is lighter than the bottom half ... like the Vista task bar on the bottom.

[H4nd0]

The glass control is also present in 6.6 in beta. It doesn't do much except allow you to specify the border widths or turn a dialog into an entire sheet of glass. I haven't examined the v7 control.

The control is only relevant in v6.6 if you want to modify border widths. If your machine has enough herbs to render glass, DWM will do that for you.

[SteveDude]

I've got it to work on a Vista Ultimate box and a Vista Home Basic machine after doing some registry tweaks, but I have got some inconsistant results. The regions don't seem to follow the coordinates I entered.

I think you get some cool effects if you could specify a region and then have a clipped area within not containing the effect, similar to a semi-transparent box with an opaque one in the middle.

Code: Select all

Get glass to work on computers that by all rights shouldn't be able to run it...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\DWM]
"EnableMachineCheck"=dword:00000000
"Glass"=dword:00000001
"Blur"=dword:00000001
"UseAlternateButtons"=dword:00000000
"Animations"=dword:00000001
"AnimationsShiftKey"=dword:00000001

'EnableMachineCheck' – 0 will disable the hardware checking, 1 will enable it.
'Glass' - 1 enables the Aero Glass, 0 changes it to the Aero.
'Blur' - 1 will enable blur, 0 changes it back to transparent.
UseAlternateButtons – 0 elongates the buttons, 1 makes them square.
'Animations’ – 0 disables animations, 1 enables animations.
'AnimationsShiftKey' – 0 will disable the slow animations with shift key, 1 will enable it.

Not working?

Try this...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\DWM]
"UseMachineCheck"=dword:00000000
"Glass"=dword:00000001
"Blur"=dword:00000001
"UseAlternateButtons"=dword:00000000
"Animations"=dword:00000001
"AnimationsShiftKey"=dword:00000001

Notice the HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it must be a current user setting now, not a machine setting.



[stevew]

SteveDude, clearly you should be the one making the example ...