Fast Alpha-Blending In Your GUI

visnu writes: "I've been waiting for this for 2 years now -- a REAL glass-like windowing system. And yes, it's Microsoft to do it. Ever since W2k came out, and they included alpha-blending in the GDI, I was tempted to write a little tool to turn on any window's transparency, but of course I'm way too lazy to do that. These guys weren't though: glass2k runs in the systray and handles turning on any window's transparency. yes, here's a screenshot. I'm not too sure about the speed in W2k, but in XP w/ the newest Nvidia drivers and a somewhat recent video card, it's hardware accelerated, and yes, you should be drooling." Update: 11/26 19:00 GMT by T : Links updated, so hopefully you'll be able to actually get to the content again :)

Thanks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I need to stack *10* maximized windows in front of my porn when mom comes. If I put just one like I'm doing now she would see through.

it's vaguely interesting.

[matthayes]

Athough I can't really think of any practical reason for it - when I'm working / concentrating I usually minimise all but a couple of windows anyway.

And I think it could be a little dangerous while surfing at work. You know, the boss comes around and you swiftly alt-tab to your work window...to find that it is 90% transparent.

Does look nice, though.

Just a thought,
Matt.

Re:Drool? Hardly.

[fredrik70]

yes, I must admit my productivity increased by several magnitudes since that nifty swadow on the mouse pointer got there....

Re:It's nice and all that...

[Bakajin]

And its almost as annoying as the menu on the linked page.

Shiny!

[fhwang]

I think I'll design a desktop theme called "The Bedazzler". And basically what it will do, is it'll show the same windows and widgets that we've all been stuck with for twenty fucking years, only they'll be covered in rhinestones and glitter! You'll be able to customize your own rhinestone patterns, to say things like "Groovy!" and "Fan-tastic!"

And this is how we'll enter the brave new era of computing: Not by actually designing and using tools to make our lives more productive, convenient, and satisfying, but by slumping in our chairs and staring at useless eye-candy while we touch ourselves. I can't wait for the future.

Re:Been There...

[gazbo]

...any slashdotter who is a Windows developer, and had the idea in the first place. For the rest of us, we need somebody else to do it and then post a link to the download.

If only there were some site that allowed links like this to be posted to the interested geek masses. It'd really be appropriate on a site like that.

Re:Thanks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot interface gave me a choice of reply to this or parent. Tempting. }:>

Re:Been There...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wrote an app that did the same work about 6 months ago .... I submitted it to download.com, but of course, they rejected it." Yeah, and I wrote the Star Wars triology, only someone lost my submission and now I've got no proof to show people that I'm not a lying toss-piece. Visit here [microsoft.com] to see my new multi-tasking operating system that I wrote all by myself. I'm wonderful.

Re:Drool? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whaddaya know? I run win2k on a box at work and I never noticed the shadow before. I guess I must be one of the few that doesn't give a rats ass.

Screensaver

[pacc]

If you don't use a screensaver, eventually your windows desktop will be burnt into your monitor with disastrous results [chime.tv]

Re:It's nice and all that...

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm, looks like my old laptop with its passive dstn screen.... complete with burn in

Re:i don't think this is real

[Alan Partridge]

no, but you should be able to see anyone who's sitting on the other side of your monitor.

You got a problem with euro democoders ?

[kazzuya]

Come out of the bar and fight like a nerd !

bau

Re:Great for always on top windows

[mrfiddlehead]

It would be even better if one could press one's mouse button really really hard to click on a window underneath the topmost window.

And the mouse should kind of make a bloop sound as it passes through the layers of windows while leaving a wake in its trail.

That should be the next change to the desktop idiom, IMHO.

The only useful application of alpha blending...

[Herman Thrust]

...is to can make a window larger than your desktop, 100% transparent, and always on top.

Pop-ups

[Ratbert42]

Maybe they could fix it so it makes all those porn/X10 popups transparent.

Re:Old hat - rubbish 'news' story

[dattaway]

Old? It doesn't matter that every precollege teen has tinkered with transparency windowing systems; I'm sure someone has been issued a patent for it and is about to IPO. Someone wants to own this now. Expect lawyers to follow.

Re:Been There...

[mprinkey]

Not to bust your bubble or anything, but the "transparent" terminal hack is old. It is not done with per-window alpha transparency. It just maps the root background to the terminal background with an appropriate offset and darkening. This is obvious if you look at the screenshot. The lower portion of the ./sftp window does not show through into the terminal.

It is a clever, fast hack and probably more useful than honest-to-goodness alpha transparency. Careful choice of background image and foreground text color can keep the term actually legible, which is not necessarily the case with full transparency. Having said all of that, it has been in rxvt, aterm, and countless others for a long time.

Re:Glass windowing on Linux

[A_Non_Moose]

OOOooo, now that is the reason to have transparent windows!!!

Laetitia Casta should *never, ever* be obscured, IMO.

And now I need to go rest my eyes...

[leibnitz27]

Its bad enough spending 10 hours a day in front of a monitor without having to look at that sort of stuff! I had eyeache within seconds of looking at the screenshot. Lovely idea, but pointless eye candy :)

Went to the optician complaining about eyeache the other day - she said "stop using computers so much". Hmm - and how did she expect I was going to pay her?

Re:Pop-ups

[Sax Maniac]

Yeh, 100% transparent would be best.

Awesome! Does it support 100% transparency?

[Mustang Matt]

We can finally make pop up adds truly disappear!

how about

[sewagemaster]

... blue screen transparency? :)