This is a subset of my “Glass” bookmarks folder, the result of a lot of research / searching on this topic. I’ve found all of these useful for learning about glass and solving various problems drawing on it. Most of these include Delphi code, but I’ve noted where it’s for another language.
Plain Glass links
- Using translucent windows with Delphi: good introduction (from the very basics) for using Glass in Delphi forms
- Custom drawing on glass: covers how to draw a bitmap or other image on a glass area of the window. Covers alpha channels etc too, good overview
- Using glass in a VC++ project: covers turning glass on, drawing text, handling notifications etc – a good general introduction to how it works. A lot of the underlying details are handled by the VCL (eg the GlassFrame property and TForm internals look after a lot of this) but it’s very useful to understand the basics of how it’s implemented at an API level anyway
- How to draw on the non-client area: this shows how to draw something like Office’s toolbar in the title bar. .Net code, but translatable
- Setting up a custom title bar: very detailed article about non-client-area drawing (in Delphi, so Delphi code). Followed up by part 2, which demonstrates completely taking over the entire window and mimicking the standard title bar yourself. These two articles will let you mimic Office and Chrome as you requested in the question
- How to set up various VCL controls to work best on a glass area: the VCL does not support glass very well. You’ll often get artifacts, or controls simply not drawing properly at all, no matter what you do to try and solve it. This article lists the basic VCL visual components (labels, buttons, progress bars, etc) and what to set up for each so they draw perfectly, or at least ‘as well as possible’ when they’re placed on a glass area
Advanced, or tangentially related:
- How desktop composition works, with GDI and DirectX surfaces
- List of desktop manager APIs (only some of which are Aero-related)