Classic Shell: Forum

First, I love the fact that Classic Start Menu is now the easiest (and cheapest!) way to customize the colors of the taskbar.

But, I use the "Windows 7 Basic" desktop theme on Windows 7, and if I choose to "Customize Taskbar", but pick the exact same colors as the theme gives me, I noticed that I lose the 3-D effect at the top of the taskbar.

If you could add an option to pick a color to use for the 3-D effect, that would be awesome, but even just not painting that part of the taskbar in the custom color would be great.

You can use textures which get stretched so for the 3D look create an appropriate texture with a gradient that gives a 3D look instead of a solid color.

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

It never worked for me, so was about to make a post saying he can't do that with basic themes. But I decided to try it myself again. It does work with Windows Basic and third party themes--but not with Windows Classic for some reason. Why not?

Because the Classic Shell Taskbar skinning functionality requires the Visual Styling engine to be active or something, which is not the case when the Classic Theme is in use.

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Ah. That's a bummer. I like the way you can customize the classic theme in different titlebar colors and everything, which is not the case if I use any third-party style besides an Aero one. And I'd rather not have Aero on lots of the time to save battery life.

Any chance of making this work with the classic theme (probably not since Windows 7 users are sadly in the minority now.…)? Or, can someone make a visual style that looks and works exactly like Windows Classic? Would that make this work?

It requires Visual Styles, but nobody said it requires DWM...
(Hint: Using a Basic theme won't kill your battery AFAIK, and will still let you use the Taskbar Skinning Functionality)




Actually the OS is irrelevant, though 8.1 and 10 may require a second fix for Classic Theme with DWM...



Classic AE would do it, but you'd lose the colorization options because...well...it's a Visual Style .-.

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Right, but the classic theme is the only non-DWM visual style that I know of that lets you change colors for the titlebar and stuff. If I use any other visual style, I have the skinned taskbar with a completely different--even different color--titlebar and such.


Again, true; I have Windows 7 and it works with every theme but classic. But doing this fix to make it work with the classic theme would only benefit Windows 7 users. And Ivo has said before that Windows 7 users are the minority among CS users. (He said that about adding in support for on-the-fly gradients so that a .skin can match the titlebar, which eventually got added in sooo....)

Not to mention it would still drain my battery. And it looks ugly.

Did you actually just say that?

The Classic Theme isn't a Visual Style, it's a complete lack thereof. That's why it doesn't allow Taskbar skinning


My point remains - some people use the Classic Theme on Windows 8.1 and I wouldn't be surprised if a tiny portion do even on 10... >.>
(FYI I mean the Classic Theme, not some replica of it such as Classic AE or those horrifying Aerolite colour schemes)

And yeah, Classic AE isn't as pretty as it could be...also idk if Classic AE supports Basic, but if it does, using it as a Basic Style wouldn't drain your battery. So there's that.

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