Classic Shell: Forum

Hey everyone! I'm currently skinning Windows 7 to look like 95 for whatever reason (I'd have to guess boredom XD), and I ran across a pretty glaring difference recently that I can't seem to alter to my tastes. Rather than try to explain it to ya, here's a picture detailing what I mean:



The one on the top is what I have so far (doing this comparison actually revealed a colour difference I just now noticed), and the one on the bottom is legit Windows 95. As you can tell from the title of the thread, I'm specifically talking about the outline of the window borders: around Windows 2000, they were changed to be lighter and darker shades of the colour chosen, while in Windows 95 and I think 98, they were white and black respectively.

What I'm asking here is, is there any possible way to change this? Registry edit? Carefully tweaking shell32 or shellstyle or whatever .dll stores this information? Something else? Much help would be appreciated!

For the Classic theme, you can tweak the active window border and inactive window borders by opening the Appearance Control Panel.

On Windows 7, you can open it by running:
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl,,5

On Vista, this command works: rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl,,2
And then click the Advanced button.

On Windows 8, the Classic theme is removed so it may not be possible.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about. I myself thought that might've been it, but I quickly realized that it wasn't as soon as I noticed the active border was something else entirely from the border / window frame outline

Thanks for the suggestion either way!

Oh I see you mean very thin outline of the border, I don't know any way to tweak that.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

You can edit the registry to change this. Check in HKCU\Control Panel\Colors for the color data. I might post up a .reg file that will give you Windows 95 colors/metrics if I have time later.

If anyone's still interested, the easiest way to tweak that border is by changing the ButtonShadow, ButtonDkShadow, ButtonLight, and ButtonHilight values in the theme file. To get the theme file, save the tweaked theme and navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes.

Open the theme file in a text editor and find the [Control Panel\Colors] section.
You can make it easy for yourself and replace the whole section with this:



If I remember correctly, I pulled these values directly from Windows 95 a few years ago.

After that, open the Personalize dialog (close then reopen if it was already open), switch to the default "Windows Classic" theme, then switch back to the Windows 95 theme.

I've attached a screenshot of what the theme looks like and a working .theme file (remove the .txt extension); just save and double-click to apply. Be warned, though, that if you choose to use my theme file, any changes you've made to the desktop icons, sounds, wallpapers, and screensaver will be lost. Simply replacing the Colors section as outlined above will preserve your changes.

does it work on windows 10 ?
i cant find it on windows 8.1 and 10
is any 3rd party software make windows borders 3d like windows 98 in windows 10
i tired to search about it on the web and the all of answers is change theme to high contrast but i don't want it i exactly want classic theme like windows 98 the dark blue softly change to light blue in active title bar and borders are 3d in high contrast borders doesn't exist