The antialiasing in Beta 11 has gone bad again, compared to previous betas. Creates a shadow effect -- looks like it detected the wrong background color? See attached screenshot (Win taskbar at top, DF taskbar at bottom).

Repro environment: Fresh install of Displayfusion on a fresh install of Windows 7 RTM amd64, South African theme.

The workaround is interesting: Change the theme. As soon as you change the theme, the DF taskbar begins rendering antialiasing properly again. Even if you change the theme back to the original, it still renders correctly. This suggests that the background color is not getting detected properly on a fresh install of Displayfusion, but does get detected properly with on-the-fly change notifications.

You're right -- this has nothing to do with reading the background color incorrectly.

Rather, there's some interaction between the color and the wallpaper that causes this shadow effect. The problem is only noticeable with a light wallpaper (namely, the penguins on the beach in the South African theme). Changing the theme changed the wallpaper and caused the issue to be masked.

The Windows 7 taskbar seems immune, no matter what the wallpaper.

Sorry, the antialiasing sure seems like a Sisyphean task. No matter what you do, there's always another edge case ...