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[Feature] Skin window shadow

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Jax
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[Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Jax »

Pretty much what the subject says. A shadow for the skin window. I imagine that windows wouldn't recongnize the alpha of the objects in the skin, so it would just be a rectangular shadow around the entire skin window, which is fine in my opinion
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Yincognito
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Yincognito »

Isn't this already doable via using an image with shadows at its margins, or a full skin Shape meter where you draw the shadow using some gradients, or partially by tweaking the Bevel and BevelColor accordingly?
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Active Colors
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Active Colors »

Yincognito wrote: July 27th, 2022, 7:53 am Isn't this already doable via using an image with shadows at its margins, or a full skin Shape meter where you draw the shadow using some gradients, or partially by tweaking the Bevel and BevelColor accordingly?
He asks to have another layer that will draw the shadow/outline outside of the skin's canvas. So, the layer would fundamentally draw custom shadow/outline beyond XY=0
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Yincognito
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Yincognito »

Active Colors wrote: July 27th, 2022, 9:24 am He asks to have another layer that will draw the shadow/outline outside of the skin's canvas. So, the layer would fundamentally draw custom shadow/outline beyond XY=0
Ah, really? Well, then, another skin could do it, if the base skin and this one's positions are correlated accordingly. That being said, I fail to see what advantage would an outside skin shadow give, compared to an inside one, after all one can treat the "unshadowed" part of the canvas like the whole skin anyway via positioning formulas, if the shadow is drawn "inside" of the skin's area. Not to mention that the OP has another suggestion where he mentions snapping to other skins, and drawing the shadow inside would make the snapping automatic as well, in the most simple way I can think of. Basically it would solve two of the issues he has raised, as far as I'm aware of.

Maybe I'm missing something though? Feel free to correct me or point out the disadvantages of the above approach, even if I don't currently see any... ;-)
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Active Colors »

Yincognito wrote: July 27th, 2022, 11:35 am That being said, I fail to see what advantage would an outside skin shadow give, compared to an inside one, after all one can treat the "unshadowed" part of the canvas like the whole skin anyway via positioning formulas, if the shadow is drawn "inside" of the skin's area.
Maybe I'm missing something though? Feel free to correct me or point out the disadvantages of the above approach, even if I don't currently see any... ;-)
1. This:
ezgif-1-bf51ca7027.gif
2. The skins would snap by shadow, and not by the "logical" border.
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Yincognito
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Yincognito »

Active Colors wrote: July 27th, 2022, 7:27 pm 1. This:
ezgif-1-bf51ca7027.gif

2. The skins would snap by shadow, and not by the "logical" border.
Oh, I see what you mean now ... although if one wants shadows on his skins, it could also be considered "logical" for that shadow to not be overlapped by another skin when snapping, as it can yield some not so pretty or consistent effects (e.g. shadow down, but not to the right, where another skin overlaps it due to snapping on the fully opaque border, or viceversa on other variations of this) - somewhat similar to having a bevel overlapped by another skin or window. I know you emphasized what you meant by making the shadow quite large and "blurred" in the preview, but usually it's smaller and having a faster transition from opaque to transparent than that, and this proportionally alleviates the snapping issue on the screen margins.

Anyway, now that I understood where is the issue, maybe I'll think of something later on... :???:
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Jax
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Jax »

Sorry, but what you guys have mentioned isn't really what I am looking for :(
Untitled.png
Green highlights what a normal shadow for a window looks like, white highlights what a normal skin window's border look like

The change is subtle, but the effect is noticable when you have multiple windows overlapping each other. If you can't really see the effect in the screenshot, un-maximize your browser window and you'll see a subtle shadow next to all of it's sides. This effect is created by Windows for a normal Window, and what I wanted is to have an option for the skin to have this effect at the sides of the skin window.
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Yincognito
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Yincognito »

Jax wrote: July 29th, 2022, 3:37 pm Sorry, but what you guys have mentioned isn't really what I am looking for :(

Untitled.png
Green highlights what a normal shadow for a window looks like, white highlights what a normal skin window's border look like

The change is subtle, but the effect is noticable when you have multiple windows overlapping each other. If you can't really see the effect in the screenshot, un-maximize your browser window and you'll see a subtle shadow next to all of it's sides. This effect is created by Windows for a normal Window, and what I wanted is to have an option for the skin to have this effect at the sides of the skin window.
Right, fair enough, but I don't see how this isn't reproducible via images or gradients. Sure, they'd have to be very "thin" and subtle like you said, but apart from the snapping issue that Active Colors mentioned, it's trivial to implement.

That being said, skins are not exactly "windows", I'm sure you know that. Granted, they have a window behind as a base (which you can see with any window spy program), but everything on top of that is drawn by Rainmeter within the - dynamic or not - "skin image" area. This is why, unless you hack it somehow using a 2nd skin or whatever, the shadow must be an integral part of the skin's area (hence, subject to snapping on it). I'm just saying this in the (improbable, of course) case where one would expect Rainmeter to have exactly what Windows has, just because skins are after all, "just windows".

EDIT: And since I mentioned it, you can very well combine the trick of having a 2nd skin behind the main one to achieve both the shadow and the resizing thing in your other suggestion, if you make that 2nd skin a basic frame (aka border) with a shadow around it. Snapping will still happen on the main skin on user mouse dragging, but since the 2nd skin will be moved and redimensioned to "follow" the main skin (some Z order tweaking might be required) programatically, it won't be subject to snapping on the shadow edges. At least that's what I imagine it would behave like.

Note: This is by no means to disregard your suggestions, as they are valid and all that - I'm just trying to offer either alternative or temporary solutions, at least until the devs will have their say on this. ;-)
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death.crafter
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by death.crafter »

Why not just use Khan's FrostedGlass? It got shadows... At least in Win 11.
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Yincognito
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Re: [Feature] Skin window shadow

Post by Yincognito »

death.crafter wrote: August 2nd, 2022, 1:20 pm Why not just use Khan's FrostedGlass? It got shadows... At least in Win 11.
Unless they are one and the same (which I doubt), the developer of the FrostedGlass plugin is TheAzack9 and not Khanhas.

As for the shadows, I thought about suggesting the same earlier, but I'm not sure if the limited (according to the initial post description, might be mistaken on that) shadow capabilities of FrostedGlass are enough for Jax:
theAzack9 wrote: April 9th, 2016, 10:33 pm
Border;;Default: None;;Valid values are All, None, Left, Right, Top and Bottom.
In order to mix and match the borders can you select a few of the sides by piping them together. e.g Border=Left | Right will create a border on only the left and right side of the skin and not on the top and bottom.

Note: The sides with a border will gain a small shadow.
Note 2: The border exists one pixel outside the skin on the relevant sides and cannot be inside the skin.
Other than that, of course, only trying and testing can say if it's suited for the OP's purpose or not. I admit I did not (or if I did, it was only briefly, while focusing on other stuff), for this plugin. ;-)
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