Since Microsoft revealed back in 2012 that Aero Glass would not be part of Windows 8, many enthusiasts took upon themselves to come up with clever solutions for the now gone feature that was introduced in Vista and it lasted until Windows 7.
This is the case of Aero Glass for Win8, which is a new program that basically recreates the aero glass effect (transparency and blur) in the Windows 8 desktop. “bigmuscle”, the username for the developer on MSFN forums, said that the program still in the early stages even though this is the second version; it should be treated as such, meaning that it might not work correctly for some users. Download and install at your own risk. However, so far many users are using the tool without any complications.
bigmuscle also talks a bit about its product works:
Details: The program do not require installation, just extract the compressed files to a new folder (C:\DWM) and run the DWMLoader.exe. For more information and to download Aero Glass for Win8 visit the source link below.
“I have developed DLL library in C++ which is injected into dwm.exe process (no system files replacement is required). Then, the functions used for window border drawing are hooked with my own implementation. This ensures that anytime DWM wants to draw the window border, the code is redirected into my library where I can change the parameters of vertex buffer, blend state and other stuff. Then I redirect back to the original drawing function. Transparent window border is drawn!”
Source MSFN
