GUI Regressions

[SandTechStuff]

Describe the bug

A clear and concise description of what the bug is:

With the transition from MiaoUI Core to MiaoUI Lite, there are many regressions the hinder the appearance and functionality of the GUI:

• Checkbox outlines look incorrect.
• Sliders are laggy.
• Preview does not display blur properly.

There are some additional issues that may be intentional or a limitation of MiaoUI Lite, I am not sure:

• All animations are gone.
• Background blurred transparency is gone.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Open DWMBlurGlass GUI.

Screenshots

If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem:

Checkboxes have strange, inconsistent outlines.

2.2.0 for comparison.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d7d5ac84-cf53-47a2-85ec-3e1479821222

Laggy sliders, with a 2.2.0 comparison. Also displays the lack of animations and blurred background. (Black screen is UAC prompt)

No blur shown in preview titlebar. Default settings.

2.2.0 for comparison, blur is properly displayed. Same settings.

Full 2.3.0 GUI for reference.

Full 2.2.0 GUI for reference.

Additional information (please complete the following information):

OS Version: Windows 11, 23H2, 22631.4460 Software Version: 2.3.0

What other third-party software do you use:

[e.g. windhawk mods xxx]

None

Additional context Add any other context about the problem here.

[Maplespe]

Lite uses Gdiplus/GDI renderer (CPU) while Core uses Direct3D renderer (GPU), so the rendering results and quality may be slightly different.

Considering the performance of the CPU renderer, the animation can't play smoothly So it was removed Including the blurring effect, if you run the Test project of MiaoUILite you'll see it's only around 30-60 fps at the maximum Most of the time, it will drop frames.

The good thing is that the CPU renderer can run on basically all computers, in the past there were a lot of issues that were reported as GUI problems such as freezing, not running, etc. This is all related to the graphics card driver, with the CPU renderer you no longer have these problems.

As for the UI background, it was removed because GDI doesn't support Alpha and Dcomp blending requires a DXGI device so it can't be used directly.

MiaoUILite is designed to make everything easy, it is a basic framework, you can of course write your own rendering backend, but here I chose to use the most basic GDI renderer。Using D3D seems like overqualified.

[SandTechStuff]

I see, most of it is a limitation of MiaoUI Lite. Is there any possibility of some things getting fixed, like the checkbox borders?

Also, as a substitute for having no UI background blurred transparency, maybe make the background a different color that contrasts better with the white sections of the GUI. In my DWMBlurGlassConfigs website in development, I have it use a grey color when transparency is disabled, maybe a color like this would work.

[Maplespe]

The checkbox is an image, and GDI's sampling quality is low so it looks like this. It should be possible to optimize the image a bit to fix it. I'll mark it as “enhancement” and optimize it in the next version.