<html><head></head><body><div>Hello everyone. First post!</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you for the amazing work that everyone is doing on the KDE apps and Plasma.</div><div><br></div><div>I've come across a potentially novel strategy for simulating a global blurred transparency effect (similar to macOS Finder etc.) for the entire desktop and all windows. The implementation is resource-efficient, requiring minimal GPU usage and trivial coding effort.</div><div><br></div><div>It's so simple that someone MUST have thought of it before. Yet, I cannot find any references online.</div><div><br></div><div>Screenshot:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://seven.systems/global-transparency.png">https://seven.systems/global-transparency.png</a></div><div><br></div><div>It works like this:</div><div><br></div><div>- Draw the wallpaper as normal, with alpha = 1, as the bottom layer</div><div>- Draw the desktop and all windows as usual</div><div>- Draw a pre-rendered, blurred version of the wallpaper on top of everything else, with alpha = desired_window_transparency (say, 0.15).</div><div>- Done!</div><div><br></div><div>This creates a convincing ILLUSION of individually blurred transparent windows, without the need for dynamic blur or extensive code changes.</div><div><br></div><div>Drawbacks:</div><div><br></div><div>- Slight reduction of overall window contrast</div><div>- Individual areas of windows cannot be excluded</div><div>- Excluding individual windows from blurred transparency would require changing z-order (drawing them on top of the blurred wallpaper copy)</div><div><br></div><div>Despite these trade-offs, it's incredibly effective and lightweight, and probably "good enough" for the majority of real-world use cases (I've been using this for years and have not come across any "showstoppers" in practice).</div><div><br></div><div>Just wanted to drop this into the wild and capable hands that could potentially make good use of it!</div><div><br></div><div>Hope this is the right place.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks!</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards</div><div><br></div><div><span><pre>-- <br></pre><pre>Alexander Ewering
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