Quppa.net

Category: Windows

  • Retrieving Windows 8 Theme Colours

    See also: Windows 8 Theme Colours Reference. Windows 8 doesn’t offer developers access to system theme colours, unlike its cousin, Windows Phone. Even for a version 1 product, this seems like a strange omission. Then again, we still don’t have a working public API for retrieving the Aero glass colour (or whatever we call it…

  • FastPictureViewer Codec Pack, Windows 8 and WPF don’t play nicely together

    Update (2012-09-06): After some trial and error, it seems the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) component is causing the issue. If you’re experiencing the same problem, try removing this component. Update (2012-09-05): The FastPictureViewer support team was unable to reproduce the issue, but suggested it might have something to do with the JPEG Auto-Rotate feature.…

  • Office 2013: Further Evidence of the Demise of ClearType?

    Poking around the Office 2013 Customer Preview, one thing that caught my eye immediately was the lack of ClearType font smoothing. Nearly all user interface elements use ‘greyscale’ font smoothing (as opposed to ClearType’s sub-pixel smoothing). I’ve highlighted the parts of Word 2013 that still use ClearType: The text in cells in Excel 2013 still…

  • Windows 8 Release Preview Updates

    I’ve belatedly updated my Windows System Colours Reference and post about Segoe UI to reflect changes in the Windows 8 Release Preview.

  • WPF: Using System Colours in Animations

    WPF provides access to the Windows system colours through the System.Windows.SystemColors class. As the MSDN documentation indicates, it’s possible to bind to these colours dynamically using the *Key resources, so when the system colours change, so will the appearance of your application. This code will set the colour of a TextBlock to the ‘GrayText’ system…

  • More on Segoe UI in Windows 8

    Note: the following is based on the Windows 8 Release Preview (build 8400) and may not accurately reflect the final version of Windows 8. I’ll update this post if there are changes in future builds. Updated: The fonts have been updated in the public beta (Windows Consumer Preview) and release candidate (Windows Release Preview) and…

  • Segoe UI Light Improvements in Windows 8

    Windows 7 comes with Segoe UI Light version 5.00/0.90. Windows 8 (as of the Windows Consumer Preview) comes with version 5.15, which has been hinted at various sizes. This comes as a very welcome change, especially with Microsoft using Segoe UI Light all over the place in its latest webpage designs. I recommend grabbing the…

  • Windows System Colours Reference

    I’ve put together a reference of Windows system colours from Windows XP to the Windows Developer Preview (and I’ll update it when the Windows Consumer Preview is released in the near future). Check it out here.

  • When should a program’s UI animations be disabled?

    Modern frameworks like the Windows Presentation Foundation, its relative Silverlight and the upcoming Windows Runtime make it easy to add animations to a program’s graphical user interface. When implemented well, animations subtly improve the user experience and can demonstrate a high level of polish in your application. The Zune client software and Windows Live Messenger…

  • Theming & Visual Styles in Windows 8

    The following is based on the Windows Developer Preview and might not accurately represent the final version of Windows 8. A significant change in Windows 8 is the removal of support for Windows classic theming. In the Windows Developer Preview, there is no Windows Classic theme, and all themes (including Windows Basic and the four…