Classic Shell: Forum

Hello.
Time to ask a few questions, that were at the back of my mind.
The Win8.1 taskbar, when transparent, hides icons, folders, and its text behind the taskbar.
It is rather nice.

1.
Is there a way to enable this feature, behind Classic Start Menu, when transparency bitmap is used?
Like, is there magic text to put in skin file to enable?
The only time I like menu transparency, is when there is a nice background picture, without icon clutter in the way:) Have over 100 on desktop!

As Aero blur feature in Win8.1 is not in op system, a skin file with refererence to use glass, or fullglass
makes the opacity a lot darker than alpha, fullalpha of same transparency number/255
Could be 10 to 15 percent darker. Maybe something else happening as well.
Was this intentional by Microsoft or is it done in CSM?
If aero third party, or Win7 is turned on, the darkness goes away.
Easy text switching between alpha/glass does not work too well,
as a separate bitmap for each has to be made.
2.
Is there abracadabra text to put in skin file to defeat the extra darkness?

Better add a screen shot for better understanding.

1. Not possible. It is not that the taskbar hides the icons. You can verify that by making the taskbar auto-hide, and you'll see that then the icons are visible through it. Instead, looks like the icons are simply clipped with the work area rectangle, which excludes the taskbar. Since the start menu doesn't reduce the work rectangle it won't clip the icons.

2. When glass skin is used on Windows 8 without Aero, some modification is done to the transparency to make it more opaque and the text more readable. It is not exact and works better for some colors than others. If you want full control over the transparency you need to use alpha.