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urbanriot
Premium Member
join:2004-10-18
Canada

urbanriot to Mele20

Premium Member

to Mele20

Re: [WIN8] How do I ENABLE taskbar transparency in Win 8?

said by Mele20:

That article title is wrong.

I apologize, you're right. Not enough sleep on Mondays!

I can confirm that my Windows 8 system has a translucent toolbar and I'm not sure why I have it and you don't.

The system I checked is a core i5 so the GPU is built into the chip, less than a $250 video card.
Mele20
Premium Member
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI

Mele20

Premium Member

Maybe I don't have it because I was forced to switch to 120 DPI because I couldn't read that horrible Segoe font? I still can barely read it. I need Verdana for everything. I just read that Microsoft FORCES Segoe on Win 8 because other fonts are INCOMPATIBLE. If that is true, that is simply another nail in Win 8's coffin for me. I must have Verdana for my Windows font. I was planning to buy a new widescreen Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitor but if I can't read Windows 8 font on a 19" 5:4 monitor even at 120 DPI, and high minimum font size, then there is no way I can ever use a big wide screen monitor with Win 8.

I noticed immediately that even when I switched to 120 DPI that I had to heavily increase the minimum font size for Windows on the same monitor that I have for XP Pro. That means Microsoft has given the finger to anyone that doesn't want to get headaches and tearing, burning eyes because of hard to read fonts. I can read tiny fonts (I have 20/20 vision at all ranges with no glasses) but I don't want to have to read them. My eyes are precious to me and I try to take good care of them so tiny, non Verdana fonts are a no-no and evidently that means no Win 8.

plencnerb
Premium Member
join:2000-09-25
53403-1242

plencnerb to urbanriot

Premium Member

to urbanriot
said by urbanriot:

I can confirm that my Windows 8 system has a translucent toolbar and I'm not sure why I have it and you don't.

The same is true with my system.

I do want to point out (not sure if it makes any difference), but I'm not running Windows 8 in any kind of "virtual" setting. Yes, I will admit that I mostly run in Windows 7, and right now, I am in Windows 8. However, I have a separate 80 GB EIDE hard drive that I installed it on. So, when I want to try something out, test something, verify, help someone troubleshoot, etc, I power off my desktop, unplug my 1 TB SATA HD running Windows 7, and plug in my 80 GB EIDE drive running Windows 8. Lot of extra work? Maybe. But, I do know how Windows 8 will run on my system with actual hardware, and not in a VM world, which is what I want to test and verify. So, when I am ready to move to Windows 8, I know how it will work.

Ok, with that out of the way, when I installed Windows 8, I installed 8 Pro x64. I made no changes to the visual settings, screen resolution, etc. I have a 22 inch ViewSonic monitor (model # VA2248). CPU is an AMD X4 635 Processor, with 12 GB of RAM. Video Card is the one I noted above (NVIDIA GeForce GT 220) and is a stand-alone card (not one built-in to the motherboard). My screen resolution is 1920 x 1080, which is the recommended resolution for my monitor. I also left the orientation alone, which is set as Landscape.

Once Windows 8 was installed, I upgraded the driver on that video card, which I got directly from Nvidia.

Once I installed the driver for my video card, and selected one of the built-in themes, the transparency for the taskbar just kicked in. I did not modify or change any setting to get it to do so. I can select any of the three Windows Default Themes and it does work. The three themes that I'm talking about are
• Windows
• Earth
• Flowers

When I select any one of them, and select any of the background images, the color of the windows, and the taskbar will change, depending on what is in the image. Example, one of the images is of this pink flower. When that is my background, all the window borders are PINK! However, in all of this, while the taskbar will also be (in this case, pink in nature), it is still transparent.

As far as that option I showed you? I went and unchecked the box, and what I will call "Aero Peek" from Windows 7 still works with that option off. So, I have no idea what that does. I even loaded a Metro App (the weather one), and went back to desktop mode (thinking that is what they were taking about). If you move the mouse to the far left side of the screen, and leave it there, you can see what metro apps are running. That still works too, even with that button unchecked. So, I have no idea what that check box does.

I did modify the taskbar buttons to have an option of "Never Combine", as I hate that. If I have 6 versions of Firefox open, I want to see 6 windows at the bottom of the screen. Maybe that has something to do with it?

I did some searches to figure out a way to turn off the transparency, and from what I can tell, its just "part of Windows 8".

So, I'm at a loss why its not working for you.

Is it possible for you to undo all the modifications you have done so far? Probably a lot of work I know, but if it is something that should "just work" in Windows 8, I wonder if some modification you did in the registry to try to get something else changed had an adverse reaction to the Windows 8 taskbar, and its ability to be transparent?

--Brian