[Banghazi]

OK..

ShapeShifter 2 is here and fully capable of transparency in the menubar.

*HOORAY!*, right? Not quite.

A few problems arise when using complete transparency in the menubar.

1. You must click on the text in the menubar to activate menus, meaning, to do fast efficient work wit your mouse, you must be a mouse-click sniper. If your mouse pointer is one pixel to the right of some text in the bar, the click will click through to the desktop, activating the finder. (A way keep this from happening is to use an app called DeskShade, which can intercept clicks to the desktop and nullifies them.) This also occurs in transparent contextual menus.

2. "No dark desktop backgrounds, please!" -- Yup, you guessed it.. using a black or semi-dark desktop makes the menubar virtually inexistent. (The text in most themes is usually black.) This would be easily worked around if you gave a dark theme a transparent menubar. Then you would be able to use a black desktop background. But then problems would arise on the other end of the spectrum; you wouldnt be able to use white or very light backgrounds..

3. The apple menu is GONE, I repeat, GONE. While it technically may be there, it is completely inaccessible as far as I'm concerned. The place in the menubar where the apple used to be.. is empty!, because the menubar is COMPLETELY transparent, and that apple is not considered text. It's something else altogether..



So besides all that, a transparent menubar is about as pretty as you can make your desktop look, and it can really showcase a well-done desktop background.

Feel free to discuss any workarounds for any of these or other problems regarding transparency in the menubar, because I could certainly use the insight.

(Or perhaps the one transparent menubar guikit I got my hands on could use perfecting?)

[MacMan4000]

to make the clicks that miss the text not go to the finder just make the menubar 99% transparent... then its not completely gone, but its so close to gone you wont notice...

[acronym16]

Just set it to 10% opacity, useing aeroesque theme which has semi transparent menu bars, and its all fine

[Banghazi]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
to make the clicks that miss the text not go to the finder just make the menubar 99% transparent... then its not completely gone, but its so close to gone you wont notice...

I have no idea how to do this, but thanks for the obvious answer! I'm relieved there's an simple workaround.

[ZXspectrum]

Originally posted by Banghazi:
OK..

ShapeShifter 2 is here and fully capable of transparency in the menubar.

*HOORAY!*, right? Not quite.

A few problems arise when using complete transparency in the menubar.

1. You must click on the text in the menubar to activate menus, meaning, to do fast efficient work wit your mouse, you must be a mouse-click sniper. If your mouse pointer is one pixel to the right of some text in the bar, the click will click through to the desktop, activating the finder. (A way keep this from happening is to use an app called DeskShade, which can intercept clicks to the desktop and nullifies them.) This also occurs in transparent contextual menus.

2. "No dark desktop backgrounds, please!" -- Yup, you guessed it.. using a black or semi-dark desktop makes the menubar virtually inexistent. (The text in most themes is usually black.) This would be easily worked around if you gave a dark theme a transparent menubar. Then you would be able to use a black desktop background. But then problems would arise on the other end of the spectrum; you wouldnt be able to use white or very light backgrounds..

3. The apple menu is GONE, I repeat, GONE. While it technically may be there, it is completely inaccessible as far as I'm concerned. The place in the menubar where the apple used to be.. is empty!, because the menubar is COMPLETELY transparent, and that apple is not considered text. It's something else altogether..



So besides all that, a transparent menubar is about as pretty as you can make your desktop look, and it can really showcase a well-done desktop background.

Feel free to discuss any workarounds for any of these or other problems regarding transparency in the menubar, because I could certainly use the insight.

(Or perhaps the one transparent menubar guikit I got my hands on could use perfecting?)

Hi,

Where did you get this amazing wallpaper?

ZX
DK

[Banghazi]

Originally posted by ZXspectrum:
Hi,

Where did you get this amazing wallpaper?

ZX
DK

http://www.droppod.com/

or, if that site has changed, you can grab the desktop here.

[wingchuner]

Originally posted by Banghazi:
OK..

ShapeShifter 2 is here and fully capable of transparency in the menubar.

*HOORAY!*, right? Not quite.

A few problems arise when using complete transparency in the menubar.

1. You must click on the text in the menubar to activate menus, meaning, to do fast efficient work wit your mouse, you must be a mouse-click sniper. If your mouse pointer is one pixel to the right of some text in the bar, the click will click through to the desktop, activating the finder. (A way keep this from happening is to use an app called DeskShade, which can intercept clicks to the desktop and nullifies them.) This also occurs in transparent contextual menus.

2. "No dark desktop backgrounds, please!" -- Yup, you guessed it.. using a black or semi-dark desktop makes the menubar virtually inexistent. (The text in most themes is usually black.) This would be easily worked around if you gave a dark theme a transparent menubar. Then you would be able to use a black desktop background. But then problems would arise on the other end of the spectrum; you wouldnt be able to use white or very light backgrounds..

3. The apple menu is GONE, I repeat, GONE. While it technically may be there, it is completely inaccessible as far as I'm concerned. The place in the menubar where the apple used to be.. is empty!, because the menubar is COMPLETELY transparent, and that apple is not considered text. It's something else altogether..



So besides all that, a transparent menubar is about as pretty as you can make your desktop look, and it can really showcase a well-done desktop background.

Feel free to discuss any workarounds for any of these or other problems regarding transparency in the menubar, because I could certainly use the insight.

(Or perhaps the one transparent menubar guikit I got my hands on could use perfecting?)

OK first thing is you can enable full keyboard access and set up a hot key to have a drop down menu ( i usually use option+1) second thing is the transparency through the apple..take a look at my two screen shots, one shows the apple and the other does not...it is the mask used i believe, plus one theme is still only for SS 1.5 and the other is a mod from SS 2.0

http://home.comcast.net/~wingchuner/screenshot_01.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~wingchuner/screenshot_03.jpg

[smeger]

1) No problem, just use about 95% transparency instead of 100%. Aqua (correctly) decides that a 100% transparent window should be transparent to mouse clicks. If you make it "nearly" transparent, it will still register mouse clicks.

2) No problem - use a theme that changes the menu text colors, or mod your theme to change 'em yourself.

3) Apple menu shouldn't be gone - it's a graphic, so it should be whatever the graphic is set to.

[grayware]

Maybe I'm a dope, but how do you set transparency in SS?

[pyn]

make a transparent menu bar...

[burgessa23]

wingchuner, what theme is the one with the green windows?

thanks,
Andrew

[wingchuner]

Originally posted by burgessa23:
wingchuner, what theme is the one with the green windows?

thanks,
Andrew

It's the two green soapsky themes modded together by me

[burgessa23]

do you want to share your mod?, I really like the menubar!!

-Andrew

edit:
if you need webspace to put it on, I can host it.