Several of you expressed interest in FastAero the last time I wrote about it, so here is an update on the progress. A new version was just released today that has pretty much been rewritten, and boasts some performance updates which appears to help quite a bit!
XP users continue to get closer and closer to having a Vista-like transparent border around their windows that also supports blurring. FastAero still has a lot of bugs in it, especially with certain applications, but hopefully the developer will continue to squash those as future updates are released.
And I’m sure you’re probably also wondering about the FastAero window that you must keep open in order to run it…no, that hasn’t been removed yet. It would be nice if the developer just made a System Tray icon because I’m sure most users who really want the blurring effect would suffer through the bugs that FastAero has. Maybe you can use TrayDevil to put that window in the System Tray and out of the way?
Let us know in the comments how well it works for you.
Note: This software is only for Windows XP, and does not require any installation to try it out.
It looks great! This release features great improvements, but still has many bugs and speed is bad for me. It also disables the right-click on minimize/maximize/exit functions I get from DM2. I tried hiding the FastAero window using DM2 but no luck. Jeez, with this, QTAddressBar, VTP, myfirefox theme, and personal menu, I’m constantly improving my vista replication.
I just realized, the transparency goes by the desktop, so if you have a window on top of another window it looks pretty odd. Also, in Fx it’s making the window title the wrong tab.
Ahh, you’re right. I didn’t notice that before.
I did notice that bug in Firefox though when I was playing around with it, which is “one of the applications” I was inadvertantly referring to.
The latest update (0751) is much more stable, fast, and many bugs have been fixed. The real showstopper now is that the program freezes windows when returning from standby. The only fix is ending the process.
I did see that he released this version, but I was holding out on writing about it again until version 0800 is released. Did you see that the developer said that would probably be the last version? I was extremely said to hear that.
Oh God, I hope not! This thing is cool but it definitely needs work (stability, bugs [dragging a maximized window, crashing after standby]).
Yep, I’m afraid it is true. Checkout this post he made:
[fastaero.wordpress.com]
Here is what he said:
Oh man! WinBlinds costs money
. I don’t pay money for things 
dis is crazy. vystal and fastaero are so buggy. build 0700didnt work wid me coz everytime i closed a window, it messed up. 0751 worked 4 2wks 4 me and then froze. i have vtp6 coz vtp 7 didnt work wid me. hope on 0800 there is no bugs.
Man, it sounds like you’re just having all kinds of problems.