OpenGlass Themecpl Extension

[ALTaleX531]

1. COM hijack {84CCE1D2-97AD-4448-AF0F-A79164073A60} to extend themecpl.dll
2. Restore controls deleted since Windows 8 to DirectUI UIFILE
3. Implement controls such as the color intensity slider to adjust OpenGlass settings.

Just an idea, I probably won't have time to implement it.

[AllieTheFox]

Interesting concept, perhaps I may look into it someday, I already have a fairly decent experience with control panel pages while working on my fork on Rectify11CPL that is based on various real control panel page implementations that I reverse engineered as a reference. It might actually be easier to create a new page from scratch rather than hooking the existing themecpl page

[ivan-the-bio-lover-42]

1. COM hijack {84CCE1D2-97AD-4448-AF0F-A79164073A60} to extend themecpl.dll
2. Restore controls deleted since Windows 8 to DirectUI UIFILE
3. Implement controls such as the color intensity slider to adjust OpenGlass settings.

Just an idea, I probably won't have time to implement it.

This is a great idea. As you clarified to me in a recent issue I brought up, openglass colors are currently controllable through themecpl thanks to the accent color sync Windhawk mod. There is a lot of lag when using the sliders though so I wonder if direct integration of OpenGlass with themecpl would speed this up. It'd also eliminate the need for accent color sync which would address the transparency setting problem.

The problem with said mod is it doesn't appear to change the colorization/alpha mixing defined by the transparency setting. As in, it appears opaque glass has its own mixing logic separate from that of transparent glass, and the mod does not appear to check if Windows has window transparency enabled. Instead it just uses a present boolean that is always active irregardless of transparency settings. If line 1003 of the mod that you highlighted (settings.boolTransparency = TRUE;) is set to FALSE, then transparent glass color will look off (less transparent than usual) because it is in fact forced to use opaque coloring.

Currently, OpenGlass does respond instantly to the EnableTransparency value found under HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize. I don't think this value was in Windows 7, but OpenGlass does respond instantly to it in the same session without needing a dwm restart. It is possible to restore the enable transparency checkbox from Windows 7 into the glass color swatch page of modern themecpl by adding the following lines to the themecpl.dll.mun UIFILE (which UIFILE or whether it has more than one currently escapes me). Here are said lines for anyone who'd like tk try restoring the checkbox themselves, just replace [ ] with < >; i had to use brackets because of GitHub formatting shenanigans:

[CCCheckBox id="atom(EnableGlassCheckBox)" layoutpos="top" background="themeable(dtb(CONTROLPANEL,2,0),window)" content="resstr(1119)" accdesc="resstr(1120)" accdefaction="resstr(1121)" shortcut="auto"/]

[element id="atom(ColorSwatchLabel)" class="ColorSwatchLabel" layoutpos="top" content="resstr(1118)"/]

[element id="atom(ColorSwatchLabelName)" layoutpos="top" foreground="themeable(graytext,windowtext)" content="resstr(130)"/]

However, the resulting checkbox is not functional because it doesn't appear to be linked to anything. If it could be linked to and made aware of the EnableTransparency registry value, this could perhaps be another means of controlling OpenGlass through the themecpl frontend.

As always thank you for your work on this wonderful software. Cheers!

[LateAutumn-bilibili]

Currently, OpenGlass does respond instantly to the EnableTransparency value found under HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize. I don't think this value was in Windows 7, but OpenGlass does respond instantly to it in the same session without needing a dwm restart.

This is for "Transparency Effects" in UWP Colors setting. And on windows 10 og can respond to changes in value. But on windows 11, og fails to respond immediately and needs to restart explorer

[ALTaleX531]

This is a great idea. As you clarified to me in a recent issue I brought up, openglass colors are currently controllable through themecpl thanks to the accent color sync Windhawk mod. There is a lot of lag when using the sliders though so I wonder if direct integration of OpenGlass with themecpl would speed this up. It'd also eliminate the need for accent color sync which would address the transparency setting problem.

Absolutely, with the correct implementation, OpenGlass can apply settings seamlessly and smoothly.

This is for "Transparency Effects" in UWP Colors setting. And on windows 10 og can respond to changes in value. But on windows 11, og fails to respond immediately and needs to restart explorer

Changing OpenGlass settings without sending a refresh message to DWM is not a proper practice. On Windows 10, the Shell component forwards changes to this registry item as a message to DWM, which is why OpenGlass can respond immediately. However, on Windows 11, this behavior does not appear to exist.