Forum Discussion
Acrylic title bar
Hi SOI_7, thank you. We have heard that many people want us to extend our Fluent design, including Acrylic, to the preview channels of our browser. We are still working on our user experience, and are trying to be very careful with the performance impact of these changes.
- Personally, I think a better way to go would be not a transparent title bar but rather a design like Safari on macOS where the entire top browser chrome shows part of the website underneath (the Microsoft Store app also does this). The problem with transparent title bars is that they can get ugly depending on what's underneath (I'm looking at you, OneNote under old Edge).
Is that true (no acrylic for win32) Elliot Kirk ? Can you answer that? It's not that these forums are flooded with comments for you to miss (ignore?) these.
Hi chivoyage, we are very aware of the ask for Acrylic touches on the window chrome. So far we have been focusing on all of the controls that show up in the browser, updating them to match our current Fluent design specifications. Many of these changes are subtle, but they add up. I believe that Drew1903 has posted some side by side screenshots that make the changes that we have made more obvious. We are still continuing the work to update the user interface. I don't have a timeline for Acrylic changes. Thanks - Elliot
Elliot Kirk Do "current Fluent Design specifications" call for Acrylic panes and title bars, or is Microsoft design moving back towards opacity? Can WinAPI apps incorporate Acrylic at all? What about the Reveal effects, which are not seen in the new Edge either?
Elliot Kirk "We are still working on our user experience, and are trying to be very careful with the performance impact of these changes."
So long as transparency and other visual effects can be turned off (e.g. Control Panel, System and Security, System, Advanced system settings, Advanced tab, Performance, which is what I use along with turning off transparency to eliminate the visual effects that affect performance/battery) it makes sense for Edge Chromium to be consistent with Fluid Design principles.
I like the idea of a toggle (Fluid Design versus Performance Design, for example) switch in W10 Settings that would change design/performance settings across Windows 10.
Acrylic isn't possible in Win32 apps, and so the Edge team are trying to just hide / bury this fact under various excuses. Acrylic will never come to Edge Chromium until Windows itself supports acrylic in Win32, which it probably never will either.
FileTrekker Wrong, XAML Islands added Fluent Design support to Win32 apps as well, and you can already see this in the new Xbox Beta app, which is made in Electron and has acrylic effects as well
Elliot Kirk Addressing that is as simple as a toggle.
I understand the concern for performance impact. Keep in mind that many of us are still using this on full-fledged desktop computers. One possibility is to make "transparency effects" in Edge an option under Appearance in Settings, with the default off. This way, the power users who really want this can go turn it on.
On the other hand, acrylic in the Edge title bar could be toggled by the larger Windows 10 transparency option. Why would these effects be a concern for Edge only, if not for all other places and apps where it occurs? Windows 8's Metro design language eliminated all transparency for concerns about lowering battery life in portable devices. But if Fluent Design reintroduces transparency (and acrylic is probably the most attractive implementation of transparency I've ever seen, even on par or better than what we see in today's MacOS), this must have reflected a decision by Windows engineers that such performance concerns are not worth giving up on transparency effects altogether. If Microsoft's own apps don't implement acrylic, why would anyone else, and why did Microsoft invent Fluent Design in the first place?
