Classic Shell: Forum

mpu proudly presents:
Metro Glass Skin

thanks to Jcee's AeroGlass-skin,
i've created this skin, which changes color according to Windows-Color-Settings of the taskbar.

Icons made by "dakirby309": http://www.iconarchive.com/show/windows-8-metro-icons-by-dakirby309.html

Get my Startbutton here: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=164


Preview:




How to set up this skin:




Complete new Update:

- Match new skin directives
- New Menu
- You can choose now if highlite is lighter or darker than background
- NOTE: Choose Start Menu Style "Classic with two cols"

Update

- Alternating hilighting

Update

- Fix user image


Started a "Show your desktop thread" here. Show us your dektop!

just an FYI, but with darker colors (particularly black), it seems to light to match.. maybe add a 'dark background color' option (opening your background bitmap, adjusting it to about 20%-40% darker, importing as a new resource, then adding an option that changes Main_bitmap=(number of your new resource))

Heres a pic of how it currently looks with black taskbar

Great job.

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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.

@GauravK: thanks

@Jcee: There seems to a difference between Win7 and Win8 when changing taskbar color:
If i choose black taskbar in win8 (which is senseless in win8 because the title-color of the windows always stays black so you can't read it)
but in win8 it looks like this...

My pic was from a windows 8 pc, although with some tweaks (to change the color of the title-bar text that you mentioned , and a few other things), that may have affected the taskbar color slightly;
also the fact that i have a white window (which stops just above taskbar), and a black background (which is covered just above the taskbar by said white window), makes most of the color difference

asfar as windows 7/8 when it comes to adjusting coloring i think they are exactly the same
alpha on the other hand is where the problem lays... the same start menu will be like twice as transparent in w7 as it would be in w8

and base color (when u drag the color intensity slider down all the way, i think its black in windows 7, ifnot a darker gray), which makes every color darker in w7


though there is still a bit of a color difference (this is disabling all my theme stuff, and moving the window; but not nearly as bad; the best ways to tell is with light grays and dark grays, not blacks and whites

hey, jcee

just updated wanna check again...

thx, mpu

you changed the default, and made the invert colors option your old one, for compatibility you should do it the other way around (so someone who copys/replaces doesnt get a different colored taskbar automatically

also the black has no transparency as far as i can tell, so maybe you forgot to save with alpha channel, or maybe my eyesight is just bad..
also forgot to mention; you have to add a darker version for the submenus to for it to match XD

color wise, it fits better for w7

This is why there needs to be a color tinter, either in classic shell, or as an option for skins; because, otherwise it doesnt and wont always match the taskbar color perfectly, particularlarly in different Operating systems

I love the skin, but with coloring of the windows set to black the highlight of the currently active item is next to impossible to see. Is it possible to differentiate it somehow more?

Looks perfect here thanks!

I have a bug with the submenu. Sometimes it has a thick frame like here. Other times it's not there. Most frekvent is in the Recent documents submenu. Do you have it too?

Ok, in regard of the highlight - for me it looks like that:


if we take into account that LCD view angles are not-so-great than most of the time one has black on black. Increasing contrast (at least as an option) would be awesome

It looks like that for me too most of the times but sometimes it has a thick lighter frame

yeah, but if you use lighter colour then the hightlight is more visible..

I mean i have this bug (about 25% of the times i use the submenus):

I know, but I'm talking about something completely different...

I had fun modding your skin today:D I will release it with your permissions, Mpu, if i can I think i I'll call itt Explorer 8 or something like this

Thanks for your replies!

@wojtek: Ok, will work on more contrast.
@skyli: Cool skin! would be nice if you could share it to the community...


the frame-bug occurs when setting opacity=region
Maybe i will set it to opacity=solid

Thank you so much!

Thanks! I'll try. And also release it. I think i should test it with other colors and options like single column. So the skin will be not only for me:D

I see now, the bug only happens when the opacity is unchecked!

ok, i've added a new version of the skin...

wow what a great work you did...i appreciate you.

Great Skin. The only thing I don't like about it is the large empty border around the menu, sub-menu, flyouts, etc. In this regard can you make your skin look the the Metro skin that comes with CS?

**** Modified it myself with ResHack.

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many thanx! i have searched this skin for looooong time!
but i have removed the GIANT main menu border fo a best look!
thanks again & good work!

This might seem a stupid question, but how did you add all those icons? Surely you didn't do them one by one, so how?

Also, awesome skin!

if its not the icon a program comes with, sadly 1 by 1 is the only way to actually do it.., unless you're asking where he got them?

No, I wondered if there was any way to sort of mass-apply icons to short cuts. Thought maybe there were some freeware out there I hadn't heard of which could do so. Anyway I discovered I didn't have so many programs installed yet so I applied them manually anyway.

Damn mpu those icons are awsome :O are does the standard windows 8 icons or did you made those yourselfs? :O

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Webdesign | Website bouwen

Get them here: Metro UI Icon Set - 725 Icons by ~dAKirby309 on deviantART

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@mpu, the transparency option doesn't seem to be working at all? Also, the skin needs to be updated for the newest version of Classic Shell because elements such as split buttons, highlighting etc are missing.

_________________
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.

Hi
GauravK,

transparency feature works, but transparency is very slightly (5%), Looks better.
I have now running CS v3.6.8 and all works fine for me, all item are visible.
Do you mean in the beta version?

MPU

Yes I mean the beta. Items with jumplists and the Shutdown button in classic style don't display properly because they are split buttons. Also, there won't be any highlighting of new programs. See this announcement: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1148

_________________
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.

Hi,
Great skin indeed. Nice job, good ideas.
I think I'll adopt it.
However, the transparency is too low. 5% and nothing, the difference is subtle. It depends on the background. Maybe you should think in 0%, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 and... 100%?
Split buttons (in particular jumplists and shut down) are not highlighted unless your mouse flies a few pixels on the right or on the left.
But I like this one. I'll keep it for a while!
Cheers,
V

Higher transparencies affect readability, and If blurring is used, the window cannot go below about 40% transparent (with exception to 100% transparent)
Though the readability can always be countered by simply adding a text border (unfortunately whether you can use a border on text or not is arbitrarily decided by your windows theme)
But I think it would still look reasonable at 10-15% transparency rather than the current 5

Hi Jcee,
True.
True!
But:
Don't we appreciate jumplists?

Ok folks,

just updated the skin...


Why did you split skins into .skin and skin7 ????

The following bugs occured:

#1 Submenu_separator=[RESOURCE] does not work (image is not shown)

#2 If using same resource in Submenu_selection and Submenu_split_selection one of them is missing

#3 When changing Icons (ico files) in two column mode they are lost in single column mode

#4 Heavy increased file size of skin

.skin7 has different requirements than a regular .skin file (not just more but some entirely different ones)

Started a "Show your desktop thread" here. Show us your dektop!

ciao
thanx for apreciating my icon set! so i have changed (with many patience) the icons manually, and i've used handmade and pre-made icons from this beautiful png set! (used toycoon to convert)
bye
http://rocketdock.com/addon/icons/34628

I've tried .skin7 but it doesn't seem to work well:
- duplicate user avatar
- 'all programs' have white caption on white background
- seraching - entering single letter cause menu to close

Hi,
what do you mean
Metro Glass has no skin7. Just select "classic multicolumn"

From the sound of it he tried re-naming the .skin file to .skin7 which will technically run, however it will cause a bunch of bugs

I tried using this theme but this is what I get,

Help please

There are 2 versions of the skin: one for Classic Shell 3.9.0 and later and another for Classic Shell releases before that. Make sure you download the correct version.

_________________
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.

I really love this skin. Well made and very appealing. I have one question though. Is there a way to make the colors of the menu match your chosen theme colors in windows 8. I have chosen black (main) and green (secondary) as my theme colors. I have made my menu color black and i wanted to know if there was a way to change the color of the highlight. Any help would be appreciated.

Windows 8 skin (included with Classic Shell) has an option called "Reduce glass color".
Could you add this option to your skin too please?
I really like it!

Attachment Download link not workhng help please.

It works for me. Just tried. Note that you must save the skin to some directory first such as Desktop and then move it to C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\Skins. Directly saving/downloading it from the browser to the Skins directory won't work because of UAC protection.

_________________
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.

Would it be possible to add an additional column? I would like to add several things but there's just not enough room.

hi
they look great
but do they work under classic shell 4.2.5 ?
i haven't in the list , even i copied in the folder C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\Skins

The skin here is for the Classic style. You won't see it in the list of skins if you are currently using the Windows 7 style. Change the style from the "Start Menu Style" tab in the settings.