Classic Shell: Forum

Is it possible to reimplemented Classic XP style text before cleartype was introduced?

It doesn't matter if i have cleartype on/off or run through the tuner it just doesn't look as good as the old solid typewriter type text that XP had.

Do you mean for the Classic Start Menu or system-wide? For Classic Start Menu, go to Menu Look tab in settings and change the "Font smoothing" to what you want. If you are familiar with Resource Hacker, you can edit any Classic Shell skin to customize features like the font it uses to some other font which is not anti-aliased. Open the .skin file from C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\Skins in an elevated instance of Resource Hacker (running as admin), make the changes to fonts and save the skin.

By default, Windows Vista and later systems unfortunately use Segoe UI which is heavily anti-aliased and ClearType-optimized. ClearType cannot be turned off entirely for the Windows Shell and Windows Explorer. Parts of the user interface which Classic Shell does not replace still use ClearType regardless of setting. (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009 ... ows-7.aspx). You can change the Segoe UI font to Tahoma or other from the registry (search on the internet how) but MS says then the layout of dialog boxes and buttons may be skewed.

You could try the powertoy version of ClearType Tuner: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx which offers more manual control. Ignore the unsupported warnings and choose to run it anyway.

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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.

BAH!

I meant system-wide and i didn't think it would be that easy.

Thanks for the links and the info but i've already been down that road with the tuner and reg tweaks and even unofficial ones that allow tuning via sliders but all i can do is make it look better but it's still nothing like the old crisp clear text and it seems to have got progressively worse with each release from vista, 7 and now 8.

This guy seems to have had pretty good success with keeping Tahoma font the correct size and without most of the skins going skewed.

http://www.sevenforums.com/customizatio ... -font.html

With the amount of people that hate cleartype and Segoe UI i'm guessing classic shell would get even more users if Ivo could add it.

beg,beg,beg x 1 trillion begs.

as stated before, the font used is determined by the skin not the program

if you would like I could change the font in the skin for you. First i need to know what skin that is though (if its included in the software just give me the name, if its somewhere online give me a link), and what font you want

It's not about any one particular skin

It's about the global removal of Cleartype and Segoe UI at the system level and changes to Anti-aliasing

And then the reintroduction of the original Tahoma Font at system level globally making sure it uses 8pt and the Exceptions such as Title Bar font was changed to Trebuchet MS at 10pt to make sure it is not screwed.

Well, Classic Shell is about original functionality coded from scratch. It won't include registry tweaks which you can do yourself and whose behavior Microsoft can change in any version. That guy's tweak also involves patching system files, so no.

_________________
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.

it would be nice for a global solution sure, but whats wrong with a local one, at least your start menu would look pretty... (which is why i was asking for the specific skin you use), but if you would prefer holding out for a total solution, i wish you the best of luck in finding it

I seem to be totally missing the classic shell philosophy.

I wrongly assumed that classic text would have gone hand in hand with classic menu.

Thanks for the reply's , i'll have to wait for that guy to code the Win 8 version and then see what gets broken when i install classicshell on it.

yea, sadly it doesnt fix everything, but its better to do a few things right than do everything poorly