-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 8.4k
Commit
This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
- Loading branch information
1 parent
bb14d69
commit a71b8a7
Showing
4 changed files
with
242 additions
and
10 deletions.
There are no files selected for viewing
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
---|---|---|
@@ -0,0 +1,169 @@ | ||
--- | ||
author: Mike Griese @zadjii-msft | ||
created on: 2022-02-15 | ||
last updated: 2022-02-15 | ||
issue id: #10509 | ||
--- | ||
|
||
|
||
# Mica in the Terminal | ||
|
||
## Abstract | ||
|
||
This document serves as a companion doc to the [Theming Spec], rather than a | ||
spec on it's own. The context of broader application-level theming support is | ||
necessary to undertand the big picture of the designs in this discussion. | ||
|
||
|
||
This spec is intended to help understand the problem space of adding [Mica] to | ||
the Windows Terminal. Introduced in Windows 11, Mica is a new type of material | ||
that incorporates theme and desktop wallpaper to paint the background of | ||
windows. The effect results in a blurred, transparency-like effect, quite | ||
similar to [Acrylic]. However, the technical limitations of Mica make it more | ||
complicated to integrate seemlessly with the Terminal experience. | ||
|
||
## Background | ||
|
||
Mica is a material that can only be applied to the root of the UI tree, and | ||
applies to the entire background surface. It's recommended to be used at the | ||
`Page` level, in place of a solid brush like | ||
`ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush`. If the developer wants a surface within | ||
the page to have a Mica background, they need to make sure to have that element | ||
(and all elements behind it up until the `Page`) have a `Transparent` | ||
background, so that Mica will be visible through the elements. | ||
|
||
This is contrasted with something like Acrylic, where the acrylic effect is | ||
specified at the Element layer itself. An element can request having a | ||
`HostBackdrop` brush for its background, and the element will have the Acrylic | ||
effect regardless of the structure of the rest of the elements in the UI tree. | ||
|
||
Another important use case here is "Vintage Transparency" (or "unblurred | ||
transparency"), which is an unblurred transparency effect for the Terminal | ||
window. This is achieved with the `TransparentBackground` API, which enables the | ||
Terminal to disable the emergency backstop of the XAML Island. When that's | ||
enabled, controls that are transparent will be blended, unblurred, with whatever | ||
is visible behind the window. This works because the entire tree of the Terminal | ||
window underneath the `TermControl`s are `Transparent`, all the way up to the | ||
window itself. | ||
|
||
Right now, the Terminal exposes three settings<sup>[[1]](#footnote-1)</sup>: | ||
* Background color | ||
* Background Opacity | ||
* Whether the user would like to enable acrylic or not | ||
|
||
These settings are exposed at the "Profile"<sup>[[2]](#footnote-2)</sup> level. | ||
Properties on a profile are roughly considered to be "what the terminal control | ||
will look like when I run this settings profile". Users can have one profile | ||
with acrylic, one without, and open [Panes] with these profiles side-by-side in | ||
the Terminal. It's entirely possible that a user would have both a pane with and | ||
acrylic background, and one with an unblurred background in the same window. | ||
|
||
|
||
|
||
### User Stories | ||
|
||
* The Terminal should be able to have Mica in the title bar, behind the tabs. | ||
* Users will want Mica in the control area, as well as in the titlebar | ||
* Users may want Mica in the control, but with a solid titlebar, or an accent | ||
colored title bar, or an acrylic one... | ||
* Users will want mica in the titlebar with other effects (acrylic, vintage | ||
transparency) in the control area | ||
|
||
|
||
This is where things get complicated. Given that a control can choose what tyoe | ||
of material it has now, users would likely expect to be able to choose between | ||
acrylic, unblurred transparency, or Mica. However, Mica can only be applied at | ||
the root of the window. It's applied behind everything else in the window. From | ||
an implementation standpoint, Mica is a window-level property, not a control | ||
level one. If we want to have Mica under one control, we need to enable it for | ||
the _whole window_. If we enable Mica for the whole window, that would | ||
simultaneously prevent Vintage Transparency from working as expected. This is | ||
because the semi-transparent controls would no longer have a fully transparent | ||
window background to sit on top of - they'd be blended instead with the Mica | ||
background behind the window. | ||
|
||
## Solution design | ||
|
||
### Mica for `TermControl`s | ||
If we make enabling Mica for the control a per-profile setting, I believe that | ||
will lead to greater user confusion. It would result in "spooky action at a | ||
distance", where creating any pane with Mica would force the entire window to | ||
have a Mica background. This would change the appearance of any other unburred | ||
transparent panes in the window, causing them to also be subjected to the Mica | ||
treatment as well. | ||
|
||
**Proposal**: create a window-level theme property `window.useMica` (or | ||
similar), which will enable Mica for the entire window. When enabled, users can | ||
use a fully transparent, unblurred background for their profile to acheive the | ||
Mica effect within the control. When enabled, users **won't** be able to see | ||
through to the desktop with any vintage opacity settings. | ||
|
||
I believe this is the most acceptable way to expose Mica to our users without | ||
"spooky action at a distance". | ||
|
||
An example of what mica in the control area might look like: | ||
|
||
![Mica in the TermControl](./mica-in-control-000.png) | ||
|
||
### Mica in the titlebar | ||
|
||
To achieve Mica in the titlebar, we'll similarly need to allow users to set the | ||
titlebar area to totally transparent, to allow the mica behind the window to be | ||
visible. A simple theme to achieve that might look like: | ||
|
||
```jsonc | ||
{ | ||
"theme": "My Mica Titlebar Theme", | ||
"themes": [ | ||
{ | ||
"name": "My Mica Titlebar Theme", | ||
"window.useMica": true, // Use mica behind the window | ||
"tabRow.background": "#00000000", // Make the TabView Transparent | ||
} | ||
] | ||
} | ||
``` | ||
|
||
## Considered implementations | ||
|
||
* We experimented with a new DWM API in SV2 which should enable us to set the | ||
background of our window to Mica. This did seem to work for the root window. | ||
It however, did not seem to work for the "drag window", the child HWND which | ||
we use to intercept nonclient messages in our titlebar area. Apparently, that | ||
API does not work at all for `WS_CHILD` windows, by design. This unfortunately | ||
prevents us from allowing Mica only in the titlebar area, without also | ||
applying it to the rest of the main window. | ||
|
||
## Potential Issues | ||
|
||
This is not a particularly ergonomic design. From a UX perspective, the user | ||
needs to enable one setting in the UI to enable Mica, and then go to profile | ||
settings to set the profile to _transparent_ for each of the profiles they want | ||
with Mica. That's not very intuitive by any means. | ||
|
||
|
||
|
||
## Future considerations | ||
|
||
|
||
## Resources | ||
|
||
|
||
### Footnotes | ||
|
||
<a name="footnote-1"><a>[1]: For simplicity of the spec, I'm ignoring the | ||
background image settings. I'm also ignoring the small quirk where (at the time | ||
of writing), vintage opacity doesn't work on Windows 10. That creates some weird | ||
quirks where acrylic is always enabled if the user wants transparency on Windows | ||
10. A full discussion of this would only serve to complicate what is | ||
fundamentally a Windows 11-centric discussion. | ||
|
||
<a name="footnote-2"><a>[2]: We're also gonna leave out a discussion of focused | ||
& unfocused "appearance" setting objects, again for brevity. | ||
|
||
[Theming Spec]: ./%233327%20-%20Application%20Theming.md | ||
[Mica]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/style/mica | ||
[Acrylic]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/style/acrylic | ||
[Panes]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/panes | ||
[#3327]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/3327 | ||
[#10509]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10509 |
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.
Binary file added
BIN
+1.96 MB
doc/specs/#3327 - Application Theming/whole-window-background-000.png
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.