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Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

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Aethrios
Posts: 50
Joined: February 25th, 2014, 1:45 am

Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by Aethrios »

As the title suggests, when (and only when) Rainmeter autostarts with my computer for the first time each day, everything loads in partially transparent (see picture for detail). This persists until I restart rainmeter completely, just loading skins in or out again will not solve the problem.

This whole issue just arose out of the ether about a week ago, and has persisted through an update to r2601.

Overall, the issue is annoying and quality of life issue more than anything else, but given that this doesn't seem to be related to the skins, is there something else at play that I can fix?

EDIT: Fixed through update. Way to go devs!
Attachments
Rainmeter Transparency.png
Dual monitor (3840x1080) setup, hence the duplication. The Minimalist - White text is the background, and shouldn't be present if things load in properly.
Last edited by Aethrios on March 28th, 2016, 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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SilverAzide
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Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 5:26 pm
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Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by SilverAzide »

This sometimes happens for me too, whenever the PC is very busy. "Refresh All" fixes it for me, I don't need to restart Rainmeter but maybe your issue is different. The only way I know to work-around this (short of some Rainmeter change), is to delay the startup of Rainmeter until your machine is not so busy.
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jsmorley
Developer
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by jsmorley »

Or you can have skin that does an automatic refresh of Rainmeter after some number of seconds when Rainmeter is first started.

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
AccurateText=1
DynamicWindowSize=1

[Variables]
SecondsToDelay=15

[MeasureDelayedRefresh]
Measure=Calc
Formula=Counter
IfCondition=MeasureDelayedRefresh = #SecondsToDelay#
IfTrueAction=[!RefreshApp]

[MeterDummy]
Meter=String
The key is that the Counter constant is not reset on a refresh, but only when a skin using it is first loaded.

Play with the number of seconds, the goal being to have it be as soon as possible while still consistently correcting the issue.

You can create this skin and just have it run invisibly in the "background" as it were, or you can just add that measure to an existing skin if you like.
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by jsmorley »

I think we might have found the issue and corrected it.

Can you get and test the latest 4.0 beta r2607 at https://www.rainmeter.net and let us know if it fixes the issue for you?
boistordu
Posts: 4
Joined: March 22nd, 2016, 12:43 pm

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by boistordu »

it seems to work fine now yes. Will you integrate the solution in 3.3.1?
It's not the first time i have this problem with your release, don't forget to comment your code about this problem in particular and why did you write the solution like this ;)
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jsmorley
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Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by jsmorley »

boistordu wrote:it seems to work fine now yes. Will you integrate the solution in 3.3.1?
It's not the first time i have this problem with your release, don't forget to comment your code about this problem in particular and why did you write the solution like this ;)
Thanks for reporting that it corrects the issue. I never had the symptom, so it's good to be sure it does what we think it does.

Not sure if we will incorporate this into another 3.1.x release. We are trying to "park" 3.1 and really want to avoid getting into a cycle of continuing to change it. We would prefer that folks move to 4.0. Not set in concrete though...

The change is commented in the code.

https://github.com/rainmeter/rainmeter/commit/ac55fff924529e2faa6ebe1030b0b6963e4c05ff

The long and the short of it is that Rainmeter "fades in" skins as they are loaded, which is done by sending messages to Windows to fade in the skin from transparent to the final opacity defined for the skin. The issue was that we were sending all the messages and then killing the timer / queue in Windows, but sometimes when Windows was really "busy" at startup, it was unable to complete them all before we in effect told it to stop.We now sorta "watch" that timer / queue to be sure it completes before we kill it.
boistordu
Posts: 4
Joined: March 22nd, 2016, 12:43 pm

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by boistordu »

okey good then, I've had this issue when rainmeter was under 3.0 beta so it was an old one for me but not occuring all the time.
Anyway, I'm upgrading all the computer to 4.0 beta now. not pa problem.
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Aethrios
Posts: 50
Joined: February 25th, 2014, 1:45 am

Re: Total Semi-Transparency on Startup

Post by Aethrios »

Thanks for the follow up ya'll, I do appreciate the attention to detail the devs here have. It looks like this release has fixed my issue, so I'll resolve the thread!
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