Direct Win32 API, Weird-Shaped Windows, and Why They Mostly Disappeared
20 points by technetium
20 points by technetium
Yeah, for a while there were a lot of funky interfaces, in all kinds of shapes and with controls that weren't part of the standard Win32 set. Even more so than what browser-based UI people come up with…
One industry where you still find a lot of custom controls, with all the procedure that comes with it, is music production. Given that some of the virtual instruments try to recreate some actual funky hardware from the 70s to now, and the audio workstations themselves often are quite funky, there's not exactly a tradition of standard interfaces, skeuomorphism and new interface patterns as a draw (there's only so much compression/reverb/etc. algorithms you can think of) are the law of the land.
On the other hand, the original synths, pedals and rack modules also tend to be quite rectangular and those VSTs sell cross-platform, so I rarely if ever see shaped windows there.
In the Linux world, you can achieve the same result with the SHAPE extension to X11. It works pretty much the same way as described here - you can define a region out of a bunch of rectangles or a bitmap. I'm pretty sure the similarities are not coincidence; xshape came out shortly after Windows XP and probably cloned the functionality and most the design.
The only program I have that actually uses it is xeyes lol. I can imagine some other uses in theory but it just isn't often worth the work.
From what I remember, AwesomeWM utilises this. You can make windows appear as e.g. star-shaped but compositors hard-code shadows as default rectangles 🤷.
I used this, maybe 15 years ago now, to create a yellow outline that I moved around to highlight items in the UI while reading them aloud as a custom accessibility hack as my father's eyesight was failing. There are certainly some specific use-cases for non-rectangular windows, but using them as your main application window is an abomination in my books.
Very refreshing to see someone advocate for something I totally despise. I will seriously consider the application which is not providing me with a single rectangular window with a perfectly standard UI only when I am quite certain that no other options exist.