Classic Shell: Forum

Hi, let me just say I've been waiting for years for black taskbar in Windows 7. Light gray is killing me dead - under some circustances white text over light gray is barely visible. And don't even start about screen contrast - my contrast is fine.

Please make opaque taskbar work with basic theme? While having an option to disable it for glass theme, preferably - I don't have a problem reading text from glass toolbar. If I could enable it just for basic theme, I'd be extremely grateful.

But the taskbar is already opaque in the Basic theme. That's why Classic Shell doesn't affect it.
If you want to change the color you need to edit the theme file.

I think I remember how to edit theme file. I edited it to remove the "Organize" bar from windows. Could you please tell me what to edit to change the color to black?

Sorry, I don't know. You need to look at the bitmaps in the theme file and find the one that looks like a taskbar. I think there are multiple, depending on the position of the taskbar.

the "organize" bar is actually the command bar, and i dont think its part of the theme file (although the color and shape of its buttons are)


so you want a black taskbar?, cant you go to the personalization menu and change the color to black? This should affect the taskbar, and titlebar colors (titlebar for MOST programs, but not ones with hard coded titlebars) there should be a button to toggle transparency there (assuming your on windows 7?)


if you actually want to edit a "*.msstyles" it can get quite complicated, and the only software (i know of) to do it isnt free, but heres the link:
http://vistastylebuilder.com/

@ Jcee

It doesn't get complicated for me, I'm a programmer-beginner. I edited msstyles with a simple resource editor. It all works except for one thing - Classic Shell has an issue with that. I made a second basic theme (didn't want to overwrite the original) and when I switch between two basic themes, Classic Shell changes start menu color. o_O That happens if I don't have "reduce glass color" option enabled.

EDIT:

No, lett me clarify: color gets messed up if it involved third theme. If I switch between two basic, and, for example, classic theme. Then Start Menu doesn't have a static color.

hmm, your talking about this: Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization\Color and Appearance

classic shell pulls the color from that field (which is set by a theme) to make the start menu match the color of the taskbar, and window frames
If you want classic shell to stay a specific color, your gonna need to edit the .skin file in your classic shell folder, ( open with a resource editor, like reshacker export the .bmp, and change its color in a photo manipulation program like gimp)

If you mean something else, or the color of the menu doesn't match the color of your taskbar with the 'reduce glass color' item unchecked, maybe you can post a screenshot to better explain

Correct, the Basic skin will try to match the glass color. However when you are using the Basic theme the glass color selector is inaccessible. You can do 2 things:
* Select "reduce glass color" (I may make that the default)
* Switch to Aero temporarily to change the glass color

I just installed the updated ibmpad classic theme mod for windows 10 http://bertrand.deo.free.fr/TEMP/w8classic.zip it fucked up the taskbar can a classic taskbar be added back to windows?