Application window frame reverting to compatibility mode in Windows 10

Woodsy · Jun 01, 2017#12017-06-01T09:37+00:00

As-per title; The application window frame looks normal until the main window renders menus and whatnot, then it reverts to the old non-aero style.

See UE compared to Notepad in screen cap.

Switching to ribbon mode has the added bonus of rendering a black title bar and making the min/max/close buttons inoperable.
Yes I realize that I have DisplayFusion loaded and hooked to display extra menu items in the screenshot. (See testing below)

Testing included:
Rebooting a multitude of times during the tests below.
All themes and layouts
Non/compact ribbon and Classic etc.
Clearing all configs in %APPDATA%
Reinstalled 32 and 64 variant
Testing all the cleartype settings
Compatibility modes Win7/8 (note: setting to 256 color mode forces the issue)
Playing with lots of strange options in the nvidia control panel and nvidia inspector (especially ones relating to font rendering).
Changing fonts to Non/TT/Fixed within the application.
Exempting anything that potentially hooks the application/window and rebooting: (DisplayFusion, XMouseButtonControl, RivaTunerStatisticsServer, ESET AV, etc.)
Disabling CPU Integrated Intel display adapter (only used for HW Encoding)
Disabling 2nd 970.

The window frame loading normally then 'reverting' leads me to believe there is some sort of element (probably related to the ribbon) that is doing some strange hardware acceleration failure and causing it to switch back. (I even searched application strings for some sort of -disableHWAccell flag)

From PCIe Slaved VM's to Blender3D to Photoshop CC to Old broken Java/python Apps
This is literally the only application that I have used on this PC that has this issue.

Running Windows 10 CU Version 10.0.15063
i7-4790k 32G-RAM 2xGTX970 1TB-SSD

Please assist.

Mofi · Jun 08, 2017#22017-06-08T05:51+00:00

I'm not really sure what you mean which is the reason for the delayed reply, but I think you wrote about title bar and window frame of main application window which is controlled completely by Windows and not by UltraEdit.

I'm using Windows 7 and therefore all written below is what I have seen on computers running Windows 8 and 10 without verification by myself.

Windows Notepad is like Microsoft Edge since Windows 8 a Windows app (formerly named Metro apps) which have their own design guidelines and settings and being available only on Windows 8 and later versions of Windows. UltraEdit is like Internet Explorer a Windows desktop application being available also for Windows 7, Windows Vista and perhaps even former versions of Windows.

The design settings in Windows Control Panel define the look of the title bar and the window frame of main application window of Windows desktop applications which can be Aero style (introduced with Windows Vista), Windows XP style, or Windows Classic style (Windows 2000 and former versions of Windows) which is my favorite as being the fastest and the easiest for human brains to process. The Windows Classic style with additionally having the color fading in active and inactive title bar disabled (Windows 95 look) is very similar to design of Windows apps whereby Windows apps are even more puristic than Windows Classic style in Windows 95 look.

For me it was interesting to watch that Microsoft promoted Windows Vista with Aero style as a must have for customers. I thought from the beginning that transparency as used by Aero by mixing two images and all the other visual effects are a very bad idea because this makes it very hard for human brains to filter out the background image and visual effects to get the information of interest like the file name in title bar. Therefore one of the first actions I made on using Windows 7 computer the first time was selecting Windows Classic style, disabling the color fading of active and inactive title bar and finally disabled also the Aero service completely as not further used to have the same puristic and fast drawn look as in Windows 95, 98 and XP and get fast window refreshes. And a few years later also Microsoft has recognized that the Aero style is not good for people because a puristic look is simply better to process for human brains and for applications regarding drawing speed and for example on making a screenshot and saving it as PNG file with best and lossless compression. So Microsoft has changed the design by 180° from a stylish look with round corners, color shading and fading and with transparency using lots of GPU power to a puristic look not really needing any GPU power for Windows aps as used also on smartphones because of being better for people.

My recommendations for you is to use UltraEdit and all other Windows desktop applications with a puristic look like Windows apps have by design.

Open Design settings in Windows Control Panel and select Windows Classic.
Additionally customize the Windows Classic desktop theme and select as second color for active title bar exactly the same color as for first color of active title bar. And select for second color of inactive title bar exactly the same color as for first color of inactive title bar. This additional customization disables the color fading in title bar of Windows desktop applications.
Save the modified Windows classic desktop theme as named theme.
Next open System from Windows Control Panel, open advanced system settings and on tab Advanced click on button to change the system settings for visual effects, performance, ... Select the option for optimal performance for visual effects which simply turns off all the visual effects features not really needed and just making window refreshes slower.
Last you could select in UltraEdit the Classic theme to use inside UltraEdit's main application window also a puristic look.

I have additionally saved the UltraEdit Classic theme as Mofi theme and modified in the theme file the Look value to ID_VIEW_APPLOOK_WIN_2000 which is one of 11 application looks defined by Microsoft in Windows Ribbon Framework used by UltraEdit for Windows since v23.00 which is not further customizable by a user.