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Thread: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

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    Question how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    I find Vista's selection highlight way too light/faint, when using Aero. In XP it's very clear. Any way of customising this?

    I know you could customise every element of the XP interface, but Vista seems less flexible......or I'm not looking in the right place.

    Thanks

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    Right click, personalize, windows color and appearance.
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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    nope, that doesn't work if using Aero


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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    It does but you have to go into the advanced options if I remember correctly. Anyway, the screen looks just like the one in XP for selecting colours for different elements. I had this same problem, especially using a laptop with high reflective glass (why is this a selling point for laptops?!) but I found the option to change it relatively easily.

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    just had another look. Says that changes applied only affect a Windows Classic color scheme. tried making change for the SELECTED ITEMS under the advanced settings - but experienced no change once applied.

    i.e. no advanced option for Aero on my vista64 business


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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    hmm strange... I'll take a look when I get home. I use Vista Ultimate which is meant to incorporate all of the business and home premium features - but I can't imagine why they would have omitted this from the business version. Maybe it's just in some obscure menu which I can't remember off the top of my head... I'll let you know later.

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    I dont think business has Aero in it...I was talking about the ultimate...
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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    nope, Business has the stuff that Home has (bar a few media bits like DVD burning software etc) so Aero is part of the package

    It's only Vista Basic that doesn't have it, IIRC

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    i'm using business right now... business has aero...

    try personalisation / window color and appearance? maybe that ought to do the trick...

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    fuddam, I've had a scout about on google and it seems that it's actually not possible to change the highlight colour if you're using Aero unless you use a 3rd party program. I could've sworn otherwise, but I guess I was wrong. Sucks tbh, you'd think they'd let you change basic stuff like that...

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    Maybe we'll see a more customized Aero in Windows 7. Then again...the Ui is supposed to be different again, too. ^_^

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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    I dont know what are you guys talking about..but ive taken pics of my options:



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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    have visited them places plenty of times, but your choices under Adv Appearance only effect windows Classic. Go the 'Selected Item' option in the dropdown, try change the colour to something darker than it already is - doesn't help. no change in Aero.


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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    I just changed the color to red for you:



    and this was in aero, just selected the red color, applied, and walla...
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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    Quote Originally Posted by 2Cold Scorpio View Post
    Maybe we'll see a more customized Aero in Windows 7. Then again...the Ui is supposed to be different again, too. ^_^
    I was surprised MS locked down themes again in Vista - it's even more of a pain to hack the signing than XP was (I had to write code to do it programmatically for one of our products) as it's not just a single DLL. There are (like XP) third party tools to unlock it but when i checked a couple of weeks back they hadn't been updated for SP1.
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    Re: how to customise Vista Aero? esp the highlight colour

    Quote Originally Posted by dangel View Post
    I was surprised MS locked down themes again in Vista - it's even more of a pain to hack the signing than XP was (I had to write code to do it programmatically for one of our products) as it's not just a single DLL. There are (like XP) third party tools to unlock it but when i checked a couple of weeks back they hadn't been updated for SP1.
    And the bad thing about the XP theme patchers is that most seemed to cost money (esopecially after SP2 when it seemed most of them that were free were out of date. I went several years with having to use Luna for that reason (and I still do miss my black/silver/blue wood Luna I had years back, but I could no longer find it. Thank goodness nLite features a built-in uxTheme Patcher if you want to use it. When I was slipstreaming in SP2 with my XP Pro disk last fall with nLite, you can bet I activated that puppy, along with a number of other tweaks. Saved me the time of doing them manually. Truly a great tool; I'll never use a vanilla XP install disk again. I even had it install WMP11 and IE7 instead of the older programs XP typically installed.

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