Vista Purdiness



  •  I just been upgraded to a Vista machine at work.

    That glassy window border is lovely, and I could get used to it,

    BUT

    Someone at the department of "Hey let's have the interns finish the style" fucked up, and the result is that the normal toolbars are this godawful hideous shade of purple, which clashes with just about every color perceivable by the human brain.

    Any tips on how to kill it?

    Also, maximized title bars are nearly black. Any tips on that?

    plz halp.



  • Stardock's WindowBlinds is one way.  I use it.



  • @dhromed said:

    Also, maximized title bars are nearly black. Any tips on that?

    plz halp.

     

    The glass effect goes away when you maximize a window for performance reasons.  It's one of the advantages of maximizing, the system only needs to worry about painting a single window.



  •  I use special software for this. It's called Windows XP.



  • @DOA said:

    I use special software for this. It's called Windows XP.

     


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @DOA said:
    I use special software for this. It's called Windows XP.



  • @tster said:

    @dhromed said:

    Also, maximized title bars are nearly black. Any tips on that?

    plz halp.


    The glass effect goes away when you maximize a window for performance reasons.  It's one of the advantages of maximizing, the system only needs to worry about painting a single window.

     

    Not that it matters, but I don't think this was done for performance reasons at all, and they've gotten rid of the behaviour in Windows 7 anyway.

    An issue we've heard (as recently as the comments on the taskbar post!) with maximize in Vista is that the customized glass color isn’t very visible, because the windows and taskbar become dark when a window is maximized. (In Vista you can customize the glass window color – and in 29% of sessions a custom color has been set).  The darker look was used to help make it clear that the window is in the special maximized state.  This was important because if you don’t notice that a window is maximized and then try to move it, nothing will happen - and that can be frustrating or confusing.  For Windows 7 we’re looking at a different approach so that the customized color can be shown even when a window is maximized.

    Also, if you must have glass when a window is maximized, VistaGlazz will supposedly do it for you.  I haven't tried it myself, but be warned that it needs to patch system files to do its dirty work.


  • @CodeSimian said:

    @tster said:

    @dhromed said:

    Also, maximized title bars are nearly black. Any tips on that?

    plz halp.


    The glass effect goes away when you maximize a window for performance reasons.  It's one of the advantages of maximizing, the system only needs to worry about painting a single window.

     

    Not that it matters, but I don't think this was done for performance reasons at all, and they've gotten rid of the behaviour in Windows 7 anyway.

    An issue we've heard (as recently as the comments on the taskbar post!) with maximize in Vista is that the customized glass color isn’t very visible, because the windows and taskbar become dark when a window is maximized. (In Vista you can customize the glass window color – and in 29% of sessions a custom color has been set).  The darker look was used to help make it clear that the window is in the special maximized state.  This was important because if you don’t notice that a window is maximized and then try to move it, nothing will happen - and that can be frustrating or confusing.  For Windows 7 we’re looking at a different approach so that the customized color can be shown even when a window is maximized.

    Also, if you must have glass when a window is maximized, VistaGlazz will supposedly do it for you.  I haven't tried it myself, but be warned that it needs to patch system files to do its dirty work.

     

    Hmm, that could be.  But it's not the dark color that is really different, it's that the window becomes completely opaque.  


  • Garbage Person

    @dhromed said:

    Someone at the department of "Hey let's have the interns finish the style" fucked up, and the result is that the normal toolbars are this godawful hideous shade of purple, which clashes with just about every color perceivable by the human brain.

    Any tips on how to kill it?

    Mine are a kind of blue-green, not purple... But I've noticed that certain types of LCD monitors (particularly TN panels) don't cope well with it and this may be where your purple is coming from. And yes, it does clash with fucking everything and I hate it. Unfortunately you can't change that part. Eventually you learn to tune it out.

    And you might be interested in kicking over to the Black color scheme if you haven't already. It's dead sexy.



  • @Weng said:

    Mine are a kind of blue-green, not purple... But I've noticed that certain types of LCD monitors (particularly TN panels) don't cope well with it and this may be where your purple is coming from.
     

    My S-IPS shows it purple; my previous CRT monitor with a hypergreen error due to considerable age shows it purple. I shun TN because ofits completely unreliable colour reproduction. :)

    Just to make it clear, I put some text on an image I googled:

    Or more accurately, toolbars are painted a range of blues near the pure hue (i.e. the hue of #0000ff), namely #d3daed. Light pure blues look purple. I don't know why. Maybe it's my own vision.

    I've set the glass to a mild sea-green tint so it's match the other, unchangeable other parts better.

    On a side note,
    common words and colours like pink/purple/blue/mint/green seem to have the greatest variance as to what people actually perceive. I suppose if the words magenta (some people call the color pink, some purple) and cyan (often called blue or green) were in the common vocabulary, there would be less confusion.

    Also, in that image, notice the almost pure cyan right pixel edge of the window (#2dd3fe). I'm not sure how any organism with colour vision comparable to ours could have let that slide.



  •  Oh, and thanks for the responses to my QQ nitpicking request, folks. Appreciatin'. :)



  • @dhromed said:

    Or more accurately, toolbars are painted a range of blues near the pure hue (i.e. the hue of #0000ff), namely #d3daed. Light pure blues look purple. I don't know why. Maybe it's my own vision.

    It looks blueish-gray to me.

     

    @dhromed said:

    Also, in that image, notice the almost pure cyan right pixel edge of the window (#2dd3fe). I'm not sure how any organism with colour vision comparable to ours could have let that slide.

    It's on the bottom of windows, too.  I almost only use maximized windows, though, so I don't notice it normally.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It looks blueish-gray to me.
     

    Me too. Am I the only one who thinks of <font color="#29006b">something like this</font> when told the color is "purple"?

    @dhromed said:

    colour vision comparable to ours

    Funny you should put it that way. Color blindness does disproportionately affect males, though...  :)



  • @sootzoo said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    It looks blueish-gray to me.
     

    Me too. Am I the only one who thinks of <font color="#29006b">something like this</font> when told the color is "purple"?

    That's pretty good, but still looks a bit indigo.  Try this on for size:

     

    Now that's purple!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Now that's purple!
     

    That would be magenta, in fact.



  • @dhromed said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Now that's purple!
     

    That would be magenta, in fact.

     

    Homo.


  • Garbage Person

     Ah, THAT color.When I bitch about that one I call it "Blue silver" because that's obviously the effect they were going for... and failed at.

    Yes, I hate that one EVEN MORE than the blue-green one I was talking about (which upon further analysis, only Windows itself uses for its toolbars). The thing that REALLY pisses me off about it is that Firefox DIDN'T have that color on it until I updated it like 2 days ago (and I only did that because the version I already had actually ceased to function). I *IMMEDIATELY* had to go forth and seek a theme that didn't have it. However, every single theme using system colors came out like that - I don't know where the fuck my Firefox was getting its colors previously, but it certainly wasn't that disgusting - so now I'm using an okay-looking black theme and had to take all the fucking buttons off the toolbar because they were hideously poorly done.

     

    And the cyan pixel edges make me want to murder. Fortunately on my Vista box I use mostly maximized windows on 22" CRTs with resolutions so huge that it's actually tough to notice single pixel lines (<3 not having physical pixels)



  • @sootzoo said:

    Homo.
     

    Naw, just handy with the eyedropper in P'shop.

     Also,

    *cuntslap*



  • @Weng said:

    Yes, I hate that one EVEN MORE than the blue-green one I was talking about
     

    There's an experimental addon for FFX that glassies the whole thing. I've not tested it, but it might be for you.

     


  • Garbage Person

     It didn't glassify the whole thing, but after that excellent start and some OCD CSS hacking, I AM VICTORIOUS.

    My Firefox integrates better visually with Windows Vista than fucking IE7 does. I hereby dub it "Aerofox"



  • @Weng said:

    My Firefox integrates better visually with Windows Vista than fucking IE7 does. I hereby dub it "Aerofox"

    Pics or it didn't happen.


  • Garbage Person

     k.

     

     Firefox: http://s5.tinypic.com/246m3yd.jpg (Note the sexy black trim stolen from Windows Media Player. And yes, it does go to glass if I un-maximize. But why the fuck would I do that?)

     IE7: http://s5.tinypic.com/iz73fa.jpg (Note the hideous silver-blue-purple-shit)



  • @Weng said:

     IE7: http://s5.tinypic.com/iz73fa.jpg (Note the hideous silver-blue-purple-shit)

     

    Uhh... the only thing I see coming close to "purple" on that screen is the icon for "Buddy List".  Where is the "purple" supposedly there? The tabs and status bar on IE I'd call more in the turquoise range than purple to be honest.

    I think the highlights in the FF screenshot are actually more in the "purple" range than the IE screenshot.



  •  That's funny.

     Those maximized titlebars are completely black.

    Mine are just a very dark version of the slanted blurry bars on the glass bits.


  • Garbage Person

     It's like that on all my windows. It's because I have the "color intensity" slider all the way up. If I knock it down I get what you're talking about - I much prefer the black.



  • My taskbar is not completely black.  It's like black Aero glass and you can see my wallpaper through it. 

    Bumptop confused Windows at one point and the taskbar was completely removed.  I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL and brought up the task manager a the taskbar came back, but in the aforementioned black Aero config.



  •  The story ends with me turning off Aero and going back to neutral grey because that fadey shit and all the taskbar hovers, and especially the HCI-challenged* alt-tab-menu* got real annoying.

    Also, the difference between active/inactive window titlebars is so goddamn subtle in Aero [Glass], that I lost a bit of work in PS because I (Ctrl+F4->N)'d the wrong document.

     

     *) explanation: the alt-tab menu, with its window thumbnails, seems like a great idea. In practice, however, most windows look largely the same (eg. design in PS and website in FFX; Explorer and Sourcesafe), and the bottom-right icon (actually its most distinct feature) gets lost in the noise of the window thumb. Also, for the thumbs to work, they must be relatively huge, and therefore much eye movement is needed to locate the right window. With just icons, the whole package fits within the corners of my vision.



  • @dhromed said:

    the alt-tab menu, with its window thumbnails, seems like a great idea. In practice, however, most windows look largely the same (eg. design in PS and website in FFX; Explorer and Sourcesafe), and the bottom-right icon (actually its most distinct feature) gets lost in the noise of the window thumb. Also, for the thumbs to work, they must be relatively huge, and therefore much eye movement is needed to locate the right window. With just icons, the whole package fits within the corners of my vision.
    Have you tried the new Winkey-tab hotness?



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Have you tried the new Winkey-tab hotness?
    Not everyone's keyboard has a Windows key, you insensitive bastard!



  •  @Welbog said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Have you tried the new Winkey-tab hotness?
    Not everyone's keyboard has a Windows key, you insensitive bastard!

    Are you using a keyboard built in 1982?  Sure I haven't seen all of the keyboards out there, but I haven't seen one in the last 10 years that didn't have a windows key.  Stop using that Mac keyboard with your Windows box, it's against the EULA!!  Then again, all of the computers I have a designed to run windows, and come with windows installed so... </shrug>  


  • Garbage Person

     I used to use IBM Model M's on all my home boxes. I still do on all the Unix ones, but I've become dependent on the Windows key for so much of my productivity in Windows. Thus my main Windows machine has a Das Keyboard mk2 and I've searched LONG AND HARD for the elusive black+winkey Model M's and found almost enough to tie one to each of my other Windows boxes. The remainders have crappy spongey normal keyboards.



  • @amischiefr said:

    Are you using a keyboard built in 1982?  Sure I haven't seen all of the keyboards out there, but I haven't seen one in the last 10 years that didn't have a windows key.
    Windows key? My keyboard doesn't even have your fancy-pants lock LEDs. Every time I press a button on my numpad I have a 50% chance to insert a number and a 50% chance to change the cursor position. It's an exciting game. Your sissy modern keyboard doesn't even have the mass to crush a skull nor the structural integrity to remain in tact after crushing said skull.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Have you tried the new Winkey-tab hotness?
     

    It's unusable because it doesn't flip to the previous active window when you tap the combination. Alt-Tab does.

    It's also unusable because of the same  field-of-view issue I mentioned with the thumbnailed alt-tab menu.

    I've found another Aero mishap: it changes the rules of focus for modal dialogs. To wit:

    • in classic, alt-tabbing to a window would focus a modal dialog that happened to be active within it. 
    • in Aero, the main window is focused, and the keyboard cannot restore focus to the dialog. This is useless.

    Final note:

     Turn off Aero and you'll hardly even notice you've got Vista!



  • @dhromed said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    Have you tried the new Winkey-tab hotness?
     

    It's unusable because it doesn't flip to the previous active window when you tap the combination. Alt-Tab does.

    It's also unusable because of the same  field-of-view issue I mentioned with the thumbnailed alt-tab menu.

    I've found another Aero mishap: it changes the rules of focus for modal dialogs. To wit:

    • in classic, alt-tabbing to a window would focus a modal dialog that happened to be active within it. 
    • in Aero, the main window is focused, and the keyboard cannot restore focus to the dialog. This is useless.

    Final note:

     Turn off Aero and you'll hardly even notice you've got Vista!

     

    Only if you change a lot of other settings.  For instance, the new Start menu is totally different, and completely rocks.  

    I mean, windows key + type the beginning of whatever you want ==> hit enter and your program is open.  

    Another thing that has changed is all the built in games now have save and have a completely new look (obviously not part of the operating system, but never the less, a pretty nice bonus).

     



  • Haven't used Vista much yet -the place I'm interning at are keeping it at arm's length until the next few updates- but the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the new look was, "Very smart. But will it help me get more work done?" Considering that my home machine's graphics chipset would really struggle with the transparency effects, the answer is a resounding no.

    Got to admit it's an improvement on XP's hideous Fisher-Price colour scheme though.



  • @Weng said:

     I used to use IBM Model M's on all my home boxes. I still do on all the Unix ones, but I've become dependent on the Windows key for so much of my productivity in Windows. Thus my main Windows machine has a Das Keyboard mk2 and I've searched LONG AND HARD for the elusive black+winkey Model M's and found almost enough to tie one to each of my other Windows boxes. The remainders have crappy spongey normal keyboards.

    If you have another key you're not using, you can remap it to be a Windows key. I have an IBM Thinkpad laptop (one of the last branded IBM instead of Lenovo), and it has no Windows key. I realized that I never use the right Alt key, so I remapped it to be a Windows key. I also disabled Num Lock (which I never use, and was sick of switching off after it turned my text into number-filled gibberish) and Caps Lock (I DON'T FEEL THE NEED TO SHOUT ALL THAT OFTEN).

    The procedure for remapping keys is relatively easy, involving creating a registry value with the scancode map. However, if you don't feel like diddling about with scan codes and the translation necessary to fit it into a REG_BINARY, you can use this program:

    SharpKeys

    Which will handle generating the registry value for you.


  • Garbage Person

     I use every key on the keyboard. EVERY KEY. They put them all there for a reason, you know.



  • @Weng said:

     I use every key on the keyboard. EVERY KEY.

    Does this mean you know what the Scoll Lock key does?


  • @Jake Grey said:

    @Weng said:
     I use every key on the keyboard. EVERY KEY.
    Does this mean you know what the Scoll Lock key does?
    Who the hell doesn't? (Actually, I have my scrolllock key rebound to temporarily enable/disable Synergy when playing games.) The only keys I don't use are capslock and numlock (other than to turn numlock on when the OS decides to turn it off, and to turn capslock off if I accidentally turn it on). When the hell are those every truly useful?



  • @Weng said:

     I use every key on the keyboard. EVERY KEY.

    Where's the EVERY key?



  • @Jake Grey said:

    Got to admit it's an improvement on XP's hideous Fisher-Price colour scheme though.
    God, I flipped that back to win95/98/2k style as soon as I installed XP.  Actually, the machines at work here arrive with Windows set to "Classic Style."  I only know one person that likes that rounded corners fisher price crap.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    God, I flipped that back to win95/98/2k style as soon as I installed XP.
    I actually went one further and put the Start menu back the way it was, too; if you're wondering why, feel free to try navigating it with just the keyboard.



  • @Jake Grey said:

    @belgariontheking said:
    God, I flipped that back to win95/98/2k style as soon as I installed XP.
    I actually went one further and put the Start menu back the way it was, too; if you're wondering why, feel free to try navigating it with just the keyboard.
    Same here.  I forgot about the Start Menu.  The Start Menu in Vista does pwn though.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @Jake Grey said:
    @belgariontheking said:
    God, I flipped that back to win95/98/2k style as soon as I installed XP.
    I actually went one further and put the Start menu back the way it was, too; if you're wondering why, feel free to try navigating it with just the keyboard.
    Same here.  I forgot about the Start Menu.  The Start Menu in Vista does pwn though.
    I've never had a problem with the XP start menu. I turned off the blue rounded crap, sure, but the start menu was a huge step forward. The recent programs list is fantastic and I don't really know why you would want to work without it. I've never had any issues navigating the start menu by keyboard (which I do often), but then again I keep my taskbar at the top of the screen instead of the bottom so maybe whatever you find annoying about it I never encounter. What specifically is wrong with the menu, you two?



  • @Welbog said:

    The only keys I don't use are capslock and numlock (other than to turn numlock on when the OS decides to turn it off, and to turn capslock off if I accidentally turn it on). When the hell are those every truly useful?

    CAPSLOCK ARE SURELY USEFUL ON INTERNET FORUMS!!!11!



  • @Welbog said:

    What specifically is wrong with the menu, you two?

    I wouldn't call it wrong as such, more a question of personal taste and acclimitisation (is that a word?); I'm so used to hitting up and down to navigate and left to open a sub-menu -I've been doing it since my alma mater's large population of chavs discovered that mouse balls make good projectiles- that the XP method takes me twice as long to work with. I daresay I'd have gotten used to it after a while, but when I could have it back the way I prefer with all of four clicks, why bother?


  • @Welbog said:

    What specifically is wrong with the menu, you two?
    Having not really used it (except for the few seconds it takes to say "OMG THIS IS DIFFERENT CHANGE IT BACK"), I can't say.  On a new installation of XP, I always switch it back.  I put frequently used programs in the quick start menu, I don't use recent documents or my documents, and everything else there ends up in my quick start. 



  • @Welbog said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    @Jake Grey said:
    @belgariontheking said:
    God, I flipped that back to win95/98/2k style as soon as I installed XP.
    I actually went one further and put the Start menu back the way it was, too; if you're wondering why, feel free to try navigating it with just the keyboard.
    Same here.  I forgot about the Start Menu.  The Start Menu in Vista does pwn though.
    I've never had a problem with the XP start menu. I turned off the blue rounded crap, sure, but the start menu was a huge step forward. The recent programs list is fantastic and I don't really know why you would want to work without it. I've never had any issues navigating the start menu by keyboard (which I do often), but then again I keep my taskbar at the top of the screen instead of the bottom so maybe whatever you find annoying about it I never encounter. What specifically is wrong with the menu, you two?

    In Linux, I don't even use "Start" type menus, I just set up keyboard shortcuts to launch my most frequently-used programs.  Every other app I just launch from the command line. 


  • Garbage Person

    @Jake Grey said:

    @Weng said:

     I use every key on the keyboard. EVERY KEY.

    Does this mean you know what the Scoll Lock key does?

    Scroll lock on = Excel is tolerable for reading, but not editing.

    Scroll lock off = Excel is tolerable for editing, but not reading.


  • Garbage Person

     @morbiuswilters said:

    In Linux, I don't even use "Start" type menus, I just set up keyboard shortcuts to launch my most frequently-used programs.  Every other app I just launch from the command line. 

    Same. I don't use it in Windows, even. It frightens me that the quicklaunch has apparently left us in Windows 7, though.



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