Classic Shell: Forum

With Big Muscle's Aero Glass package and a Windows 10 installation that does not itself blur the Taskbar, I find it's impossible to get Taskbar blur with Classic Shell version 4.2.2. Not a big deal, but perhaps unintended.

As far as I know, there's no promise yet that Microsoft is actually going to resurrect taskbar blur in the Win 10 release. It's only been rolled out on some Win 10 preview systems to see how people like it, and mine was not one of them.

The missing setting of the blur accent (with Aero Glass for Win 8.x) is thus the only way for me to get blurred translucency on my Win 10 test setup.

-Noel

The latest public build 10130 has support for blur. There are also settings to enable the transparency and to enable the colorization.
I have decided to remove the taskbar settings because the OS already supports it.

And later builds like 10158 definitely have a Start Menu, taskbar, Action Center transparency setting:

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

I don't mean to be picky, but transparency is not the same as translucency, which involves blur. The ability to select transparency is there, but not blur. As I mentioned, not everyone's getting builds that have blur. I believe they're looking to find out which userbase submits happier responses (and of course, we can't possibly have an option - that would be too Windows 7-like).

But hey, no worries, leave it until release time and restore it if Microsoft chooses not to deliver blur.

I keep my colors pretty dark and I can certainly work with a taskbar that has no blur until then.



-Noel

I don't think that's true. Every build for the last 2-3 months I tried has had blur on both the taskbar and the start menu. There isn't any randomness in it. I have seen some glitches where the opacity switches between multiple levels of blur, however it is always there.

You may be having a problem with your video card or driver. Also it is possible that AeroGlass is messing with the taskbar, most likely unintentionally. Try uninstalling it and see if you get the glass effect on the taskbar.

Both transparency and blur can be controlled from the Windows Registry: http://winaero.com/blog/enable-blur-for ... ild-10074/ See the values EnableBlurBehind and EnableTransparency.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

One of you claims the OS provides it and the other shows how you can tweak a secret registry location to achieve it.

EVEN IF everyone could do that, isn't the whole point of Classic Shell to bring back functionality without having to fool with the registry?

That some folks don't see the blur behind the Taskbar just hasn't sunk to you two in yet. There's an ongoing plan by Microsoft here.

But hey, people often base their decisions off what they've seen personally vs. what others tell them, I understand that. You need to try to understand in turn that not everyone who's seeing something different than you doesn't know what they're doing.

See any blur here?



Yes, that was after a reboot with the settings as you see them listed.

Like I said, if/when Microsoft chooses to eliminate blur in the RTM, we can resume this discussion.

-Noel


P.S., regarding evidence of my claim, note the wording near the word "blur" in the following page:

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindow ... available/

Please try not to fall into the Microsoft thought stream of "we know best and everyone else is ignorant". You're better than that.

So
1) All my installations of Windows 10 have functioning blur on the taskbar, since at least version 10130, maybe even going back to 10074. I will eat my hat if it turns out it is some sort of trollish plan by Microsoft to give different builds to different people just to see their reactions
2) How do you expect me to fix a problem that never shows up for me?
3) Have you tried a version of Windows 10 without AeroGlass? I bet that's the source of your problem

Yes, the problem remains without Aero Glass in the system at all. I meant to say that in my last post, since you had asked, but just forgot.

I don't expect you to do or fix anything; I'm just here to try to help. Maybe it's just a bug in Microsoft's code and not worth any worry at all - though I am now seeing reports of it from others as well. I just figured I ought to let you know about it.

If/when Microsoft releases Win 10 without a working blur - and you'd better believe they have all kinds of "trollish plans" (that's putting it nicely) - it might be a Good Thing (as before) if you could restore the functionality that allowed the Taskbar accent to be set, which in turn would make the Aero Glass tool effective at restoring translucency blur. Even if not, life will go on. It's not the worst thing about the disjointed mess that is Windows 10. Not by a long shot.

-Noel

10240 has no blur in the Taskbar, by the way.

-Noel

Don't worry, I've got you covered.

Classic Shell 4.2.3 has new settings to control the color and opacity of the Windows 10 taskbar.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

And it again facilitates translucency when used with Aero Glass. Thanks for that.

-Noel

Good to know that it works with Aero Glass.
Does Run work for you as well?

Sorry to say, nope - Run does not presently seem to do anything at all. I select it but the menu just disappears and no Run box pops up. I've even got the latest Windows Updates as of just a little while ago.

The only thing particularly special about my system is that I'm running it with UAC disabled (EnableLUA = 0 in the registry). It passes SFC /VERIFYONLY.

No Application or System event log entries are being made when I try the Run menu entry. It just doesn't do anything.

Only other odd thing I've noticed is that some windows flash, then briefly disappear, then show again when started. A good example of this is Start - Settings - Programs & Features.

-Noel

OK. Let's try this
In the "HKCU\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings" key create a new DWORD value named "CompatibilityFixes". Set it to 32 (or 20 in hex).
Log out, log in, and try Run again.

Sorry for the delay in responding.

Did what you suggested, and... Success!



-Noel

Please do another test
1) Set CompatibilityFixes to 0
2) Create new DWORD "LogLevel" and set it to 1
3) Log off/log in
4) Use the Run command (make sure it fails)
5) In Explorer go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClassicShell and look for a file StartMenuLog.txt. Send me that file
(do not open the start menu between steps 4 and 5, as it will overwrite the log file)

Here you go:

-Noel

Doesn't look like there are any errors. I will have to try turning off UAC to see if the problem is related.

I'm sorry that wasn't more helpful.

But at least whatever you're doing with that setting is working around the problem. That should help you narrow the reasons down.

Please let me know what else I can test for you.

-Noel

Oh, and P.S., the Windows Start Menu won't even open at all in this configuration.
Edit: Scratch that. I had forgotten I had assigned it to Shift-click, not control-click. It opens just fine.

I tried setting EnableLUA to 0 and I was still unable to reproduce the problem.

Either way, the next version will use the compatibility mode by default. BTW, you should remove the CompatibilityFixes value from the registry. It is applies to specific version of Classic Shell, so the same value in the registry will enable another shim in another version of the software. You don't want that.

Thanks, Ivo. If I uncover anything else about this particular issue that makes my system special somehow I'll be sure to let you know.

I'll be sure and remove the CompatibilityFixes tweak. Thanks for the tip.

-Noel

Run works okay in 4.2.4 without the CompatibilityFixes setting.

-Noel