Windows 8.1 Title bar colour text on black theme


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Hey guys, I wondered if anyone knows why Microsoft didn't add the feature of title bar colour changing? It can only be black text colour on any colour background. It just doesn't make sense. I ask as I prefer a black windows theme (rather than bright pink, orange, purple, white and what not). I know you can patch windows, but that just isn't an option.

 

Anyone know why Microsoft doesn't want its customers to change title bar colours?

 

Chris

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No idea... you'd at least thought they'd make the text visible on dark colour schemes. 

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Hey guys, I wondered if anyone knows why Microsoft didn't add the feature of title bar colour changing? It can only be black text colour on any colour background. It just doesn't make sense. I ask as I prefer a black windows theme (rather than bright pink, orange, purple, white and what not). I know you can patch windows, but that just isn't an option.

 

Anyone know why Microsoft doesn't want its customers to change title bar colours?

 

Chris

 

 

It seems very stupid, if they didn't want us to change it to black they'd have removed that option. Tried asking on the Windows Support forum but the "Microsoft Engineers" are giving generic replies about performing clean installs and they "can't replicate the issue". Now the "engineers" have stopped replying to threads about that problem completely, any brand new thread complaining about dark grey text on black bars is deleted.

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that bug drives me crazy!  :angry:  :argh:

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I don't think it's a bug, because the title bar text does appear to change color, from pure black (on anything other than black) to a just barely visible gray. It seems it was intentionally set that color, rather than going to a pure white like it should. Previous versions of Windows that used Aero didn't have this problem because the title bar text was always shadowed.

 

Hopefully it's changed to just become white colored text... Or let the users set the color, like you've always been able to do in the Windows Classic themes.

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Yea, it is annoying.

 

I also wish they would allow more manipulation of the theme, like toggle taskbar transperancy & choose seperate colors for title bar & taskbar. Stuff like that.

 

 

I don't think it's a bug, because the title bar text does appear to change color, from pure black (on anything other than black) to a just barely visible gray. It seems it was intentionally set that color, rather than going to a pure white like it should. Previous versions of Windows that used Aero didn't have this problem because the title bar text was always shadowed.

 

Hopefully it's changed to just become white colored text... Or let the users set the color, like you've always been able to do in the Windows Classic themes.

 

hmm, as far as I an tell it doesn't change, it's always a dark gray

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Yea, it is annoying.

 

I also wish they would allow more manipulation of the theme, like toggle taskbar transperancy & choose seperate colors for title bar & taskbar. Stuff like that.

 

 

 

hmm, as far as I an tell it doesn't change, it's always a dark gray

It's possible it doesn't and it could be just my eyes. But it does appear the text goes from pure black on any other color to a slightly lighter gray. Even going into the accessibility options, which otherwise lets you modify some options you normally couldn't, won't let you change the title bar text color.

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I never understood why Microsoft didn't code in something to flip text colours to white if the average RGB value falls below 128. Personally I think the colour choices offered by Windows 8 look horrible against black text - only light colours look decent. It was okay when glass was around since it had a white blur to soften the contrast. With colours such as 10 and 13 (red and green) you can barely make out the titlebar text.

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It's possible it doesn't and it could be just my eyes. But it does appear the text goes from pure black on any other color to a slightly lighter gray. Even going into the accessibility options, which otherwise lets you modify some options you normally couldn't, won't let you change the title bar text color.

 

The colour Microsoft uses for the text isn't pure black (0,0,0). It's (40,40,40). Which means if you get the colour sliders to be just right, it looks like this:

 

post-99705-0-95680100-1397002802.png

 

That being said, putting (40,40,40) text on a completely dark background - you can't see it at all. So you're correct that there's an intentional lightening up of the text. It's still possible to mess it up as shown above though.

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  • 8 months later...

When I move the slider to have completely black taskbars, as someone else mentioned, the text goes almost white. But say if you want dark grey, its possible to make both the same colour which is a stupid!

 

I hope they correct this issue, or at least give the option to change the text colour.

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