Help with Active Windows Border and Active Toolbar Colors

[NormanHeyen]

Hi folks,

A couple of questions about Windows XP Home (+SP2 and all hot fixes)
on my Compaq Presario S6900NX with an nVidia 5800 card.

1 - When I go into the Display Properties applet and try to adjust the
colors displayed in the Active Title Bar, the colors I select don't
display. I tried Blue and Red to get a shading across the title bar of
the active window. This shows up in the example in the applet, but
doesn't display that way on the desktop. The color remains a solid
blue. In fact even if I change both colors to Red, the active title
bar remains Blue.

2 - When I go to the Display Properties applet and try to set the
Active Window Border to Red, again it displays correctly in the
example, but not on the desktop.

Yes, I did click OK enough to get back to the desktop and when I go
back and look, the examples are set properly, but the desktop hasn't
changed. It looks like the rest of the fonts and what not are changed,
but not these two.

Is there something that I've changed that prevents this from
happening? Or doesn't the video card support it? Or don't Microsoft
applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, Calculator, etc. follow this?

Thanks!
Norman

 

[Keith Miller]

If you are using XP-style windows & buttons, found under:

Display Properties -> 'Appearance' tab -> 'Windows and buttons'

then those color settings have no effect, as the window components are drawn with bitmaps rather than color fill. You would need to be using Windows Classic style to see those colors in use.

Keith

 

[NormanHeyen]

Oh, that makes perfect sense. Well, sort of in some odd twisted
version of logic...

Thanks! That is something that I would never have thought of. Is this
the point where I start wondering if a Mac is better?

Norman

 

[Keith Miller]

I stopped worrying about logic long ago...

You're welcome. You could wonder if a Mac is better. You could take a look at 3rd party theming options -- StyleXP and WindowBlinds are the two biggies. The free route is more labor-intensive but can be fun. You would need a patched version of uxtheme.dll and a resource editor.

Keith