title: How to make WPF text on Aero glass background readable?
body: <p>I have a WPF app that draws text on an Aero glass background. The problem is that based on what is displayed <strong>behind</strong> my application, the text drawn on the glass background can become hard-to-read to downright-impossible-to-read.</p>
  
  <p>As you can see in the following screenshot, the <em>Save</em>, <em>Undo</em> and <em>Redo</em> text blocks become hard to read if the window <strong>behind</strong> my application is dark.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/nwL6B.png" alt="alt text">  </p>
  
  <p>Now, Microsoft applications, such as Word, solve this with a kind of blur behind text, as you can see in the next screenshot:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tg6mw.png" alt="alt text"></p>
  
  <p>I've heard there is some kind of Win32 API call I can make to get this to work. However, that is just hearsay to me at this point, I have no facts to back that up. </p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I've tried a few different WPF-specific things to approximate what Word does:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Drop shadows on text</li>
  <li>Transparent images of text with a blur baked in (instead of a <code>TextBlock</code>)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>None of those give me usable results, they all look pretty crummy. Does anyone know of any method, WPF or Win32, that I could use to draw text the way Microsoft does on glass (<em>i.e.</em>, <strong>readable</strong>)?</p>