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nycdunz · Oct 26, 2007, 06:16 AM

I guess this is a good thing for some ppl, but how come my menu bar isn't transparent? is this an option you can turn on/off? I'm on a PPC machine if that makes any difference... can someone on a PPC machine who has a transparent menubar post a screenshot if they have a transparent menubar?

PaperNotes · Oct 26, 2007, 06:23 AM

During beta testing of the last public builds some Mac owners with older GPUs found their cursor slowed down when translucency+blur effects were used at the same time as in the menu bar and sheets. If this was unresolved then Apple has chosen to disable translucency for those with aged graphic cards.

.Neo · Oct 26, 2007, 07:10 AM

Does your Mac support Core Image, as in do you get the ripple effect in Dashboard?

peeb · Oct 26, 2007, 12:31 PM

I think this is a core image issue, not a ppc / intel issue.

Kevin · Oct 26, 2007, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by PaperNotes

During beta testing of the last public builds some Mac owners with older GPUs found their cursor slowed down when translucency+blur effects were used at the same time as in the menu bar and sheets. If this was unresolved then Apple has chosen to disable translucency for those with aged graphic cards.

So instead, you can just hack the alpha channels of said menu image and put it back in yourself.

The real reason Apple does this is to boost hardware sales. Don't let them fool ya.

Originally Posted by peeb

I think this is a core image issue, not a ppc / intel issue.

Try upgrading the graphics card and see if it works. If it doesn't, then it's more than just that.

nycdunz · Oct 26, 2007, 02:19 PM

yes my comp has core image, it has the ripple effect in dashboard

PaperNotes · Oct 26, 2007, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by nycdunz

yes my comp has core image, it has the ripple effect in dashboard

That's only one of many CoreImage effects and your GPU might not be fast enough to handle translucency and blur. What's your Mac?

PaperNotes · Oct 26, 2007, 02:28 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin

So instead, you can just hack the alpha channels of said menu image and put it back in yourself.

But then you won't get the blurring that makes menu bar text and icons readable on some desktop backgrounds.

peeb · Oct 26, 2007, 02:29 PM

OK, then it's not a core image issue... Seems like transparent menu bars kind of suck though anyway.

nycdunz · Oct 26, 2007, 02:34 PM

so you're saying a dual 2.7ghz powermac G5 isn't enough power for transparency and blur? that's really dumb...

TETENAL · Oct 26, 2007, 03:01 PM

I am running Leopard on a dual 1.8 GHz G5 and I have a semi-transparent menubar and blurred menu backgrounds.

nycdunz · Oct 26, 2007, 03:07 PM

tetenal you do? hrmm, can you take a snapshot of your screen and show me please, and also do you have access to those video backdrop effects in ichat/photobooth... cause i don't... hrmm

oh and btw, what video card do you have in your g5?

seanc · Oct 26, 2007, 03:21 PM

I was in the Apple store - Regent Street this morning, playing with Leopard.
Great rows of iMacs, all the same/similar specs. The iMac I was originally using had the reflective dock, the one next to it didn't. It had a strange black dock with a silver/grey edge.

peeb · Oct 26, 2007, 03:22 PM

Sounds like something that might get fixed in a patch.

Chuckit · Oct 26, 2007, 03:27 PM

Originally Posted by seanc

I was in the Apple store - Regent Street this morning, playing with Leopard.
Great rows of iMacs, all the same/similar specs. The iMac I was originally using had the reflective dock, the one next to it didn't. It had a strange black dock with a silver/grey edge.

That's what the Dock looks like on the side.

Judge_Fire · Oct 26, 2007, 03:36 PM

I'm on 1,67 Ghz G4 PPC PowerBook and it renders translucency and blur fine, though I'd love if it wouldn't. There wasn't a defaults.write- option discovered for this yet, was there?

peeb · Oct 26, 2007, 03:37 PM

I'd love to hear your impressions of Leopard on that machine...

seanc · Oct 26, 2007, 03:39 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

That's what the Dock looks like on the side.

The dock was on the bottom. Perhaps it had been rebooted with it on the side and then moved afterwards, hence not updating the background.

dmcnickle · Oct 26, 2007, 03:58 PM

My dock is on the bottom and it has a grey bottom, not transparent like in the photographs and preview video of Leopard.

I had the dock on the side in Tiger and it stayed there after I upgraded to Leopard. I then moved it to the bottom.

Any ideas?

TETENAL · Oct 26, 2007, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by nycdunz

tetenal you do? hrmm, can you take a snapshot of your screen and show me please, and also do you have access to those video backdrop effects in ichat/photobooth... cause i don't... hrmm

oh and btw, what video card do you have in your g5?

Note the star or planet next to the "Verlauf" menu. It's see through and the background behind the menu is blurred. The backdrop in iChat is not supported for PowerPC machines. Effects should work though, but I can't test this.

My G5 has a ATI Radeon 9600 XT.

turnedge762 · Oct 26, 2007, 04:39 PM

Originally Posted by dmcnickle

My dock is on the bottom and it has a grey bottom, not transparent like in the photographs and preview video of Leopard.

I had the dock on the side in Tiger and it stayed there after I upgraded to Leopard. I then moved it to the bottom.

Any ideas?

You must have bought the standard home edition of Mac OS X Leopard. You need the Ultra Premium Edition for that.

( jk

)

imitchellg5 · Oct 26, 2007, 04:49 PM

Mines not see through on my 867 MHz PowerBook, but it is on my iMac and my Power Mac G4.

.Neo · Oct 26, 2007, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Sounds like something that might get fixed in a patch.

You can't magically patch one's GPU card so it's suddenly capable of rendering certain effects.

Windows Vista does the exact same thing on PCs with older non-DirectX 9 GPUs. ...On second thought it's much worse there: The entire hardware-accelerated GUI is being turned off leaving you with the old rendering engine from Windows XP. At least Mac OS X only turns of the most intensive effects.

dmcnickle · Oct 26, 2007, 05:52 PM

My menu bar is transparent on my MacBook Pro but as I stated my dock isn't.

peeb · Oct 26, 2007, 06:19 PM

Originally Posted by .Neo

You can't magically patch one's GPU card so it's suddenly capable of rendering certain effects.

Windows Vista does the exact same thing on PCs with older non-DirectX 9 GPUs. ...On second thought it's much worse there: The entire hardware-accelerated GUI is being turned off leaving you with the old rendering engine from Windows XP. At least Mac OS X only turns of the most intensive effects.

That's not what I meant - it doesn't seem to be directly related to the GPU card, but rather pretty random - I don't think it's detecting GPU speeds.

sc_markt · Oct 26, 2007, 06:26 PM

Has anybody heard of any terminal command that can get rid of the menubar transparency? I know there is one for the 3d dock so I'm hoping there is one for the menubar transparency.

- Mark

Chuckit · Oct 26, 2007, 07:16 PM

I don't think there is any way to kill the menubar's effect at the moment.

.Neo · Oct 26, 2007, 07:42 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

That's not what I meant - it doesn't seem to be directly related to the GPU card, but rather pretty random - I don't think it's detecting GPU speeds.

Seems to me it's the same story as with older Macs not being able to display the Dashboard ripple effect.

Or Apple just disabled it through some service on a set of certain Mac models.

nycdunz · Oct 26, 2007, 08:43 PM

Tetanal ok weird, mine menubar is definetly not transparent... I have a dual 2.7ghz G5 nd ATI Radeon 9650 card, maybe thats why? your card probably is better... this is very strange, however i do see the blur effect when the pull down menus over my screen... strange!

Andrew88088 · Oct 26, 2007, 08:52 PM

Mine is transparent and I'm on a MacBook C2D 2.16.... That's odd.

gradient · Oct 26, 2007, 11:14 PM

Leopard on my Dual 2ghz G5 is opaque black on white - VERY NICE!! The translucent menu bar (and the way it clashed with the drop down menus) was easily my most hated part of the new gui. Me so happy.

Jasoco · Oct 26, 2007, 11:23 PM

bentoon · Oct 27, 2007, 02:06 AM

Originally Posted by turnedge762

You must have bought the standard home edition of Mac OS X Leopard. You need the Ultra Premium Edition for that.

( jk

)

you gotta be kidding me

beez1717 · Oct 27, 2007, 02:37 AM

Originally Posted by turnedge762

You must have bought the standard home edition of Mac OS X Leopard. You need the Ultra Premium Edition for that.

( jk

)

nope that must have been the basic edition.

Judge_Fire · Oct 27, 2007, 04:06 AM

Originally Posted by peeb

I'd love to hear your impressions of Leopard on that machine...

G4 1,67 PowerBook? Snappiest™ Ever - things just keep getting better.

gradient · Oct 27, 2007, 05:01 AM

Well, my iBook G4 has the transparent menu bar, as opposed to my G5 that gets the opaque menu bar...

MartiNZ · Oct 27, 2007, 06:40 AM

12" G4 1.5GHz PowerBook opaque; 1.66GHz Mac mini transluscent ... I can't help feeling that's somehow backwards, integrated graphics wins

.

Kevin · Oct 27, 2007, 07:00 AM

Lame, lame, and more lame.

PaperNotes · Oct 27, 2007, 07:36 AM

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

12" G4 1.5GHz PowerBook opaque; 1.66GHz Mac mini transluscent ... I can't help feeling that's somehow backwards, integrated graphics wins

.

Look on the bright side. So many want to kill this feature.

Nai no Kami · Oct 27, 2007, 08:27 AM

I really don't understand it. My PowerBook 12 1.5GHz has a reflective, translucent dock; pulling menues effectively do the blur+transparency effect, even over playing movies; the dashboard ripple effect is obviously present. This transparency issue can't be related to performance issues...
Ironically, whereas many crave an opaque menubar, I want it translucent.

Jasoco · Oct 27, 2007, 08:58 AM

Someone email Steve.

Kevin · Oct 27, 2007, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by PaperNotes

Look on the bright side. So many want to kill this feature.

Yeah the more I see it...

Chuckit · Oct 27, 2007, 12:23 PM

Just to check, you know that it's only the desktop that shows through the menubar, right? Icons, windows and other detritus just kind of disappear. If you don't have a pattern with lots of contrast at the top of your picture, it can be hard to tell the bar is translucent. I thought mine wasn't at first, but this I noticed some bright dots in the upper-left showing through. (Not that you're necessarily as dense as I am, but I thought it was worth nothing.)

gradient · Oct 27, 2007, 01:45 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Just to check, you know that it's only the desktop that shows through the menubar, right? Icons, windows and other detritus just kind of disappear. If you don't have a pattern with lots of contrast at the top of your picture, it can be hard to tell the bar is translucent. I thought mine wasn't at first, but this I noticed some bright dots in the upper-left showing through. (Not that you're necessarily as dense as I am, but I thought it was worth nothing.)

Here are examples of my two machines with the same desktop pic, definitely a big difference...

mdc · Oct 27, 2007, 01:56 PM

Many Tricks � Displaperture

Rounded menu bar

Jasoco · Oct 27, 2007, 02:01 PM

Funny. It doesn't ignore Exposé. So they disappear when you activate it.

Kees · Oct 27, 2007, 03:08 PM

The menu bar's transparency is gone here too (PowerBook 1.33 12"), which is a pleasant surprise. It is also strange however, because I had a few dev builds on this exact same machine, and it was working fine with no apparent slow-downs before.
I hope someone finds some terminal commands to enable/disable some of these effects at will. I for one really dislike the new menu blur. It looks ugly too me + it kills the only conceivable functionality for the transparency.

megatronbomb · Oct 27, 2007, 04:20 PM

My menubar was transparent, but my right click menus weren't. For some reason I kept thinking that it was supposed to be a Leopard "feature" but it didn't really matter to me because it didn't affect use.

Anyhow, this morning I realized I still hadn't calibrated my screen in system preferences, after doing that the right click menus are translucent. So I think the color setting affect whether some people don't see the translucent menu bar.

fisherKing · Oct 27, 2007, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by Nai no Kami

I really don't understand it. My PowerBook 12 1.5GHz has a reflective, translucent dock; pulling menues effectively do the blur+transparency effect, even over playing movies; the dashboard ripple effect is obviously present. This transparency issue can't be related to performance issues...
Ironically, whereas many crave an opaque menubar, I want it translucent.

same for me (same powerbook). annoying! (had a translucent menu bar in 10.4 with shapeshifter...)

J-a-x · Oct 27, 2007, 04:40 PM

I just wanted to add that I don't have a transparent menu bar either.

I'm running a clean (formatted drive) install of Leopard on a 12" G4 Powerbook 1.5 Ghz. I see transparencies when I click on the menu, but the bar is 100% opaque and gray. I don't mind it so much, but I'd like to know how to enable the transparency just to see how it looks.

I see transparencies fine in other places (menus, the dock, etc), and I see the ripple effect in Dashboard. I also see the reflections in the "3D" dock, so I don't think it's a graphics card issue. I was thinking that it was disabled on all G4 powerbooks but somebody said he has a transparency on an iBook so that leads me to believe that it's not the case.

Please let me know if anybody figures out how to enable the transparent menu bar. I'd like to see how it looks!