79 replies to this topic 3 votes

[Nazmus Shakib Khandaker]

Umm..windows 8 doesn't have a visual start button on the task bar. I thought we all went over that in January.

[Aethec]

Win8 includes a software DWM that is used when the GPU is not powerful enough, that's all.

It's obviously not as good as dedicated hardware, but it does the job.

[Detection]

remixedcat, on 10 May 2012 - 22:36, said:

why would vmware do that to you???

It hates me

I gave up lastnight, all I can think is I need to install 8 when 3D Accelerate is already checked, I`ll have another play around tonight

[Dot Matrix]

I'm telling you guys, you can't. No one is listening though.

[Simon-]

I have been using High Contrast theme. Not because I am blind but because I find the Aero themes are too bright when using my laptop at night (My screen's brightness is still pretty bright on the lowest setting) and also to save battery power from the display.
It is pretty annoying some of the High Contrast colours are Butt Ugly and even in Aero if I change the border colour to be completely black, the title bar is also black (black on black)
High Contrast is not perfect either with the Run/Save/Cancel popup in IE being white text on light yellow so you can't read it.

From what I can tell from the Registry, everything is locked in the msstyles file and even High Contrast is a variation on this.

[Nazmus Shakib Khandaker]

Dot Matrix, on 11 May 2012 - 14:54, said:

I'm telling you guys, you can't. No one is listening though.

I am listening! You did make valid points. It makes sense that the code itself is removed. However, the Windows Basic theme's code is still somewhat present on Windows 8. In the screenshot below, you can see that the MDI window in visual studio is drawn using Windows Basic theme. So, the code must be there in some form. What do you think?

[JonathanMarston]

What if you do something that forces Aero off in Windows 7 like run an old Java VM, or share a single application in Lync? If you connect through RDP with composition turned off, what does it do?

[Simon-]

I did some more testing and it looks like everything is handled in msstyles, Aero Basic and High Constrast go through AeroLite.msstyle.

Good news is that the colours can be changed in .theme files.
Helpful link: http://msdn.microsof...0(v=vs.85).aspx

Here is a test file I made to bring Windows Classic colour scheme to Windows 8. You can play with the .theme file to change colours
Just double click the .theme file to install

Some tricks:
Set HighContrast=0 to turn it into an Aero theme to have a Windows Classic coloured Aero theme.
Change Window=255 255 255 to another colour to change the Metro background colour
Change Transparency=0 to turn transparency on or off

Attached Files

•  Windows Classic for Windows 8.zip   770bytes   88 downloads

[Xerax]

Nazmus Shakib Khandaker, on 10 May 2012 - 19:10, said:

So, Microsoft's claim that Aero has to run on advanced graphics hardware during the vista days was a lie? Sinofsky has disproven Vista dev team.

It's a new system they are using to render graphics.. I believe it's because Windows 8 is now running Hardware Acceleration at Native level. No need for advanced graphic drivers for Animations/Aero etc.

[+remixedcat]

Detection, on 11 May 2012 - 14:50, said:

It hates me

I gave up lastnight, all I can think is I need to install 8 when 3D Accelerate is already checked, I`ll have another play around tonight

I'll see if I can get Vmware to make up with you... they don't hate you though but apparently didn't like something..I'll look into it.

[Panda X]

Dot Matrix, on 10 May 2012 - 21:41, said:

I said this above: NO. The code for it is literally gone. Impossible to trigger something that's not there anymore.

The code is still there, if you break the msstyles in a specific way it'll drop back to Classic (Still composited though). I even got it to drop back into Aero Basic. Though only half the windows were in Basic the other were in Aero. I can't explain what happened but it did.

[Dot Matrix]

Panda X, on 11 May 2012 - 20:38, said:

The code is still there, if you break the msstyles in a specific way it'll drop back to Classic (Still composited though). I even got it to drop back into Aero Basic. Though only half the windows were in Basic the other were in Aero. I can't explain what happened but it did.

That code is still there, but if you're talking about the old, gray bars and blue titlebars from Windows 95, those are gone. There's no getting that on Windows 8.

[Detection]

Dot Matrix, on 11 May 2012 - 21:03, said:

That code is still there, but if you're talking about the old, gray bars and blue titlebars from Windows 95, those are gone. There's no getting that on Windows 8.

I think the point of this is not to get the old classic explorer back, but to disable the fancy transitions and live thumbnails etc that aero creates, disabling aero in 7 results in the old solid explorer that does not fade in and out and no smooth transitions etc, just solid either there or not there windows etc

[Nazmus Shakib Khandaker]

JonathanMarston, on 11 May 2012 - 16:20, said:

What if you do something that forces Aero off in Windows 7 like run an old Java VM, or share a single application in Lync? If you connect through RDP with composition turned off, what does it do?

Short answer: It still keeps Aero running on Windows 8.

As I stated on the main thread, in Windows 7, running certain old apps or games forces Aero to be off. However, this is not the case with Windows 8. Aero remains enabled.

[htcz]

Aero is not anything you said it was in your first post. Those are just features, features that by third party have been emulated on older OSs (like XP) thru software rendering which is what Windows 8 problably does with all these feature: Software renders them.