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[Hendrik]

The only relevant option Windows exposes are "On" and "Small Radius", both of which I have exposed to the skin in the next build. Its only for the main frame right now, but I can probably apply it to other top-level windows as well.

[Awesome Donkey]

You have Glass enabled in that skin, which gives me somewhat of a transparent look with the background blur. The image seems excessively transparent for normal use (I guess it was testing), but its certainly working. Is that not what I should be seeing?

There's a lot of transparency because it wasn't working for me in testing so I kept upping the transparency amount to see if there was any difference. There may be a little transparency shown, but it's certain not enough transparency (and that's the issue) hence why transparency levels kept getting boosted in the images. This is what I see when using that test version...



Ignore the bottom part of the frame, it's using the old, working semi-transparent part as I was focused on the top. But it does show the differences in transparency between the bottom and top. Now the question is, why doesn't MC display the amount of transparency at those ridiculous amounts (or even half of those amounts)? That's really what has stonewalled me in trying to replicate Mica and MicaAlt with a MC skin, because I can't get it transparent enough (with noise and a gaussian blur in the image).

[EnglishTiger]

Sounds OK to me and if that new version is available by the weekend I'll locate the relevant instructions in one of the ModernCards skins and add them into test versions of all of the other Stock and Site Skins currently on my PC to see if there are any restrictions that mean they can't be applied certain types/categories of skin to so that I can add a fairly comprehensive  "Rounding Corners on The Windows Platform" section to the JRiver Standard View Skinning Guide, along with providing you any feedback on how successful, or otherwise, your making it all possible for us has been. Including if, for reasons probably known only to MS, it tries to round the corners on skins that don't have square corners.

[Awesome Donkey]

I did some more testing with maximizing and all that, and going to ship this in the next build for the Modern Card skins. Give it a try once its here.

I assume this is only going to work with Windows 11? Because those still using Windows 10 may complain if their corners suddenly become rounded.

It works fine as long as the image does not use transparency itself (as Windows stops the rounding then to avoid clashing)

Ooooof, bummer. While you're adding new skin options, I don't suppose there's some chance that adding support to display Mica material for, at least for the main four MainFrame sections? Maybe if the option is enabled it doesn't load the MainFrame images anymore instead loading Mica material overlayed with other images and fonts and whatnot? Or a way to get it to work with a third-party app like MicaForEveryone, which of course doesn't work at all with MC? It could be a nice replacement for the glass support, honestly. And it would eliminate my need to chase transparency levels to replicate Mica, which I already know I can't fully reproduce in image form.

It's a pipe dream, I know, but still, gotta ask.

[EnglishTiger]

AD - If you click on the link in the OP on the right hand side of the page there is a a link to an article on using Mica/Mica alt in Win 11
If the Explorer Header Bar, which is what that using Mica article covers, is anything to go by it looks like you can combine Round Corners and Mica.

[Awesome Donkey]

Indeed.

[Hendrik]

There's a lot of transparency because it wasn't working for me in testing so I kept upping the transparency amount to see if there was any difference. There may be a little transparency shown, but it's certain not enough transparency (and that's the issue) hence why transparency levels kept getting boosted in the images. This is what I see when using that test version...

Thats not at all how it looks for me, its very transparent ... except, I can't screenshot it. As soon as I try it turns solid white. Must be some DWM weirdness.

[Awesome Donkey]

Maybe a Windows thing or GPU thing? I'm using the latest Windows 11 24H2 with all the latest patches with an AMD 7800 XT GPU (also an AMD 580 a couple years ago when I first did that test skin), and it's always that white.

[Hendrik]

I'm on 24H2 as well except nvidia

[Awesome Donkey]

Was afraid of that, it could be a AMD vs. Nvidia thing.

EDIT: Tested with my Intel N305 NUC with Intel integrated graphics and it's just white there too, hmmm.

[markf2748]

As for the original topic of round corners, what if I just tell Windows to round the corners? Could make it a skin setting like Glass?
I guess that is what markf2748 was aiming for, in part?

Example of Modern Cards Dark on a darkish and light background. It works fine as long as the image does not use transparency itself (as Windows stops the rounding then to avoid clashing)
The skin is entirely unmodified here (for testing i'm just always applying it, ultimately it would get a simple condition in the skin)

(1) Based on your 2 screenshots in this post, which display anti-aliasing transparency pixels "outside adjacent" to the round corners, I would expect this to work nicely. Presumably, as you say, the new skin setting could be easily applied to any skin that itself does not draw round corners and does not invoke MC Transparency via GLASS::Data:Enabled.  Potentially a really nice option which addresses the Subject Title of this thread and should satisfy a lot of people.  Looking forward to trying it. 

I hope this solution will leave the Window control buttons fully customizable in the skin, as now. Note that I have seen several third party Win11 apps which appear to be using MS rounded corners but have nice small window control buttons.  Is that also a Microsoft setting?

(2) This thread also evolved to reflect my interest in having anti-aliasing pixels when the MC skin controls the corner rounding radius, without the special Microsoft settings and constraints for (1).   Since @ET has shown that GLASS::Data:Enabled applies to both top and bottom borders (i.e. includes all 4 main window corners), it would be beneficial to have MC transparency without blur.  With that, and using rounded corner opaque artwork for those regions, we can then have a graphics drawing program (such as Inkscape, Gimp, or others) automatically add the anti-aliasing transparency pixels into a png file. Those transparency pixels will presumably be rendered correctly by the skin and should provide smooth round corners in the absence of blur.  Not exactly intuitive, but I would expect it to work for the general rounded corner problem, adding design flexibility.

Even better would be full control of blur on an Entry by Entry basis for each bitmap, which is effective when the bitmap has transparency, i.e. a new Attribute. 

Thanks.