Issue with text display in Windows 8

[AlexanderLea]

Hi,

Running Windows 8, and the text is difficult to read, especially at a glance (see image).

Otherwise a really good little app :)

[aauren]

Thanks for reporting this! I'm glad to see other people benefiting from the app. Also, thanks for including a screenshot, that always helps.

I don't currently run Windows 8, so it might take me a bit to spin up a VM and track this down. But it may have something to do with the text shadowing for which there is already a ticket ( #17 ) to make that optional.

In the meantime, could you let me know if changing any of the options that are available when right-clicking the system tray icon help?

Finally, if I get enough time to try out some changes to the app, but not enough time to spin up a VM with Windows 8, are you willing to test some different builds for me?

[AlexanderLea]

Not a problem!

I've had a bit of a play with colours, and it seems that it's only an issue with some colour combinations, and I think the shadowing might be to blame.

I'm more than happy to test some builds for you!

[AlexanderLea]

The background has something to do with it, too:

Same settings, with spotify window behind, transparancy=1:

Github behind, transparency=1:

Github behind, transparency=0:

Same settings, with spotify window behind, transparancy=0:

[aauren]

What's interesting is that I'm looking at the stuff in .NET right now and as far as I can see there is no text shadowing turned on, however, there was an interesting choice for text background color that I don't see when I run it. The bad thing, is that I remember running into the album art transparency problem at one point, but I can't remember what caused it. But it feels really familiar to me.

Can you download the following and give it a try? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66079/SpotifyToaster.exe

If it works at all you at all, then the Album and Artist should be better, but the track name and number should have the same bad outline.

[AlexanderLea]

You are correct - that now works!

[aauren]

I feel like I can still see the white shadow in the Album and Artist text in your screenshot. Is that just the screenshot? Or does it still look like that when you look at your screen?

Also, did you make sure to exit the first instance of Spotify Toaster by right-clicking the system try icon and clicking "Exit" before running the version that you just downloaded?

[AlexanderLea]

It's not just the screenshot - looks exactly the same on the screen.

Yeah - I did exit it. Just exited again and re-downloaded to make sure, and it's looking the same - there is still white shadow there.

[AlexanderLea]

Accidentally closed - sorry!

[aauren]

So I was able to track this one down finally. The problem is with ClearType, which is a way that Windows tries to render fonts. Basically, the way ClearType works is that it tries to make your fonts look sharper by blending the edges of the font with the surrounding background pixels. However, if the background is transparent, then it can't figure out the background pixels correctly and it instead fills it with a bad color like white.

Personally, I turned off ClearType a long time ago because it bugged me too much. If you chose to do that as well, it would definitely fix this problem easy for you and my guess is that you won't notice much difference or you may even like the result better.

If you would like to turn off ClearType you can do so by: Hovering your mouse in the upper right corner of the screen > Clicking "Search" > Type and choose "Adjust ClearType text" > Uncheck the "Turn on ClearType" checkbox, move through the rest of the prompts choosing options that look good for your screen.

However, that being said, I can understand why someone wouldn't want to change the way that fonts function on their whole system just for a small app like SpotifyToaster. So I tried to fix it in a build by drawing the fonts onto the toast notification. This solution worked fine on my Windows 7 box, but for some reason when I tested it on a Windows 8 machine the artist and track name fields kept clipping (artist is half there and track name is missing altogether). I've been messing with it for a couple of hours and I'm a little at a loss for why it would clip like this only on my Windows 8 box.

If you want to give it a shot you can download an updated version here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66079/SpotifyToaster.exe and let me know if it works for you. However, I don't know if I could maintain that version going forward or not since I'm guessing that it may not work for some people because of the clipping. So if you're at all amenable to disabling ClearType, that would probably be a better solution.

[aauren]

Sorry, I messed up the instructions before for disabling ClearType. I've revised them above.

[AlexanderLea]

Disabling ClearType fixed the display issue, and I haven't noticed any other difference this morning, so I'll leave it disabled for the time being.

The update from DropBox didn't display any information (see below), so I'll revert back to the official one from here!

Thanks for your help! :)

[aauren]

Yeah. That was the clipping I was afraid of. If I'm able to track that down
later and fix it, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thanks for testing for me and I'm glad we were able to find something
workable for you.
On Nov 8, 2014 3:05 AM, "AlexanderLea" [email protected] wrote:

Disabling ClearType fixed the display issue, and I haven't noticed any
other difference this morning, so I'll leave it disabled for the time being.

The update from DropBox didn't display any information (see below), so
I'll revert back to the official one from here!

Thanks for your help! :)

[image: image]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1569481/4963944/e117d9fe-6736-11e4-9664-643a99d77a5a.png

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#19 (comment)
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[buildist]

Found a simpler fix for this. You're drawing the text on a form with a white background (ToastOverlay), then using TransparencyKey to make all of the white transparent. This makes the antialiasing look weird when a dark color is behind it.

Using black instead of white for the background color and transparency key of the overlay looks a lot better for me:

[ghost]

I really like your program but i don't want to disable ClearType tbh so i'm running with this issue as it is.
I've also made the experience that it has something to do with the Background the Popup is displayed on. If you set transparency to "0" and have a white screen in the background (like this website for example) the Text is displayed just normal. Would be appreciated if you could look into this in the future ;D