How to have the same theme customization freedom as with XP?

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I’m trying to get rid of the blinding white backgrounds and making them a darker color with brighter text. I refuse to use the nauseating classic theme or the high contrast black or the depressing custom black themes found online.

How do I get to this screen? http://www.pallareviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/advanced-appearance-settings-windows-8_1307F/Advanced_apperance_settings_in_Windows_7.png Clicking Windows Color on Personalize instead gives me http://www.pallareviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/advanced-appearance-settings-windows-8_1307F/Window_Color_and_Appearance_Windows_7_2012-08-20_04-41-40.png which doesn’t do anything.

Using 7 Ultimate.

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In picture one, do you see the drop down arrow for color mixer, click on that and then select your color(s).

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I can’t get to picture one, clicking Window Colors brings me picture two without showing me picture one at all.

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To get to picture one, click on the start orb, type color, then click on “change windows glass colors” in the search results.

Jerry

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To get to picture one, click on the start orb, type color, then click on “change windows glass colors” in the search results.

Jerry

Huh?

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Regardless other than in Classic theme, I don’t think there are many options for substantial theme changes. Windowblinds is the only thing I found that approximated the flexibility of XP themes and it’s gotten better over time to the point where I think it’s every bit as good now.

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Looks like you don’t meet the requirements for Aero Glass. Screen one only shows up on Windows 7 PCs running Aero Glass. Aero is not included in Windows 7 Home Basic or Windows 7 Starter. It also has hardware requirements.

See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/what-is-the-aero-desktop-experience for details.

Jerry

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I’m using 7 Ultimate.

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What is your system rating for desktop graphics? Anything 3 and above should allow aero glass colors.

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See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/understanding-windows-vista-aero-glass-requirements/ for detailed hardware requirements.

Jerry

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Running the WEI thing fails with an error. I’m running 7 in a VM with an i7 processor, 2GB of RAM.

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Does :
http://www.redmondpie.com/enable-aero-glass-in-windows-virtual-pc/
help?

Jerry

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That helped me get to that Window Color panel finally, yes. Thank you. But as I feared this offers nothing in terms of proper customization, all it did was offer changing the color of the dialog boxes.
WEI still fails with an error though.

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Ya I don’t think you’ll find much satisfaction there with what’s built in, you can’t even replace the blue shading for highlighting and non-aero glass sub bars unless the classic theme is used or one of the preset high contrast themes, which for the most part I find every bit as bad as the rigidity of the default over time.

Using VBox or VMWare Player would probably yield better results in overall performance and function of your VM.

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Hi guys, I’ve been using Windows Style Builder as instructed by sevenforums to customize 7 even better than XP offers. Is anyone familiar with this software? Anyone know how to change the text color of Tree View?
This guide http://virtualcustoms.net/showthread//28810-Complete-Guide-to-Theme-Building/page7 didn’t cover it or the value didn’t work.

Before we continue though, I must note that I was banned from sevenforums because apparently I’m using a cracked version of WSB. All I did was download the first link I found on google and ran a patch to make it Windows 7 compatible. If y’all object to this, please ban me from here too so I can move on. 🙂

EDIT: I figured out how to edit TreeView text color. You have to ADD PROPERTY under Explorer & Shell > Explorer > TreeView and add the color. This was not mentioned in the VirtualCustoms WSB guide and it took me forever to find this.

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Wow I can’t log in now unless I go safe mode. Anyone have pointers what I should review in the .msstyles that might’ve caused this?

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No, I dunno, but what is your time worth on this matter, not to mention loss of productivity? If it’s at or near zero, no problemo, it can be fun to tinker but if you wan’t to get the job done dependably over time and without time consuming customizations, pony up for WB.

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It’s worth it because I’m migrating to 7 and one of the preconditions is alleviating all the new problems it creates, one of them being having to stare at blinding white backgrounds. But the other custom black themes are seriously depressing and just as bad, so I figured there’s no way out except to tune it myself.

I made a little bit of headway though, even if I don’t change anyhting but save the .msstyle with WSB it will re-order the numbers of the bitmaps inside it. #500 to #10000, 501 to 10001 etc. It seems this is what’s causing the login problem. I can still log in in safe mode.

without time consuming customizations,

That it’s time consuming is not the issue, that it failed in the end is the issue.

pony up for WB.

What?

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pony up for WB.

Windowblinds from Stardock, example given earlier. I’ve used it for years and years now, a couple programs (mostly Corel Wordperfect) have issues but for the most part in and of itself, highly customizable and straight grade A for stability now. It would get an A+ from me if it was compatible with Wordperfect and was configurable from Remote Desktop (it is with XP but not Win 7).

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Oh, can this edit .msstyle files? I spent hours and hours on end editing the .msstyle with that WSB that ended up not working in the end. It worked fine at first and everything looked good. Then I rebooted…

Upon quick search I get the impression that Windows relies on the program Windowblinds itself to run in the background otherwise the custom theme doesn’t kick in. I prefer that my customizations are harbored internally by Windows so it doesn’t depend on external applications to run. Is this accurate?

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Sure, a third party program is a third party program. Question is how reliable and how easy on resources is it? I find it very acceptable. I use SSDs now also so I don’t notice what little loading time there may be for a theme. Also, I’m addicted to the custom backgrounds I can produce and use as Windows explorer window backgrounds.

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I don’t wanna need to have yet another stupid background service when the alternate is possible.
I installed the WB program. Is there a way to edit .msstyle files with it?

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