Quest for a nicer desktop II - Transparency

So I wanted to jazz up the look of my windows and I wanted to stick with Windows XP. I was thinking transparency and shadows. Transparency has been supported since Windows 2000, but you don't see alot of that in Windows applications; my guess: cause it's only good for look, other than chewing up cycles.

Anyway, to make it translucent, I use layered window, give it about 78% opacity (0xc8):

LONG_PTR lStyle = GetWindowLongPtr(GetSafeHwnd(), GWL_EXSTYLE);
SetWindowLongPtr(GetSafeHwnd(), GWL_EXSTYLE,
                 lStyle WS_EX_LAYERED);
SetLayeredWindowAttributes(GetSafeHwnd(), RGB(0x0, 0x0, 0x0),
                           0xc8, LWA_ALPHA);

Voi la, I get my translucent window:



But just as I have predicted, transparency is trouble. Some of the text is obscure, the buttons become see through and muxed up. It did more bad than good. Then I remember Aero in Vista, where only the so called non-client area is see through, I need to do that. I can think of 2 ways: per pixel transparency in layered windows, or literally layering windows. I will go ahead and do the latter - detaching widgets like buttons and make them toplevel windows so that they won't be affected by the parent window's opacity - which will take up more resources but is easier to code.

I make my window widgets, such as the list box, the buttons and the minimize and close window manager buttons top level windows. The minimize and close buttons are round, so I need to clip them to a round region. It works, sort of. Notice that Windows' region is a path of pixel, hence these buttons appear with a zig-zag edge.

It's all about look so I need to solve this. The solution is to first paint color rings right where the buttons are supposed to be, before overlaying buttons on them. They are painted anti-alias and will be see through because they are on the parent window, but that's barely noticable and the result is satifying.



Next stop, shadows...