DWM & Aero Glass at work

When talking about WPF during the Windows Vista ISV Touchdown training a lot of people were interested in getting aero glass to work on their laptops. My experience learned me that BIOS updates and having the right display drivers are key to get it to work.

In his post "Under the Hood of the Desktop Window Manager" Greg Schechter provides an insight in the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) and its role in Windows Vista.

In a couple of follow-up posts Greg answers comments and tackles user requests. A list of must-read posts on DWM:

• Responding to Comments from "Under the Hood of the DWM"
• DWM's use of DirectX, GPUs, and hardware acceleration
• Responding to Comments from "DWM's use of DirectX, GPUs, and hardware acceleration"
• Desktop Window Manager Index of Post Topics
• The role of the Windows Display Driver Model in the DWM
• Responding to Comments from "The role of the Windows Display Driver Model in the DWM"
• Redirecting GDI, DirectX, and WPF applications

For the Windows Vista Tablet PC users wanting to a have access to Flip 3D when using the laptop in Tablet mode, here's a solution: create a shortcut to

"C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe DwmApi #105"

and add to your desktop. This has the same effect as the Windows + Tab key and enables you to navigate directly to the right window.

Warning: I don't encourage anyone using this undocumented API call as it can corrupt the stack.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista