Can I get a solid color title bar?

In Vista, one thing that has always annoyed me is the appearance of those
slanted bands of lighter to darker color in the active title bar.

The screenshot at

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsvista/images/Glass-
Colorization.jpg

shows this. You can see that the title bar has slanted lighter and
darker bands of blue -- the area above "Window Color" in the address bar
is somewhat lighter than the rest, for example, and the light area
repeats again above the Search box. At an angle.

When you drag an active window up and down on the screen, those slanted
"bands" of color seem to move too. I thought they were related to
transparency, and I always thought that I was seeing some of the desktop
behind the active window, but NO: even if the titlebar is not transparent
at all -- if you turn off the "enable transparency" checkbox that you
conveniently see in this screenshot -- and even if the desktop is a solid
color, these weird bands of color still appear.

It's as if the active window title bar is channeling some strange
invisible layer of slanted stripes that are in some other dimension that
we mortals can't see.

I don't know what these bands of color are called, but to be honest, they
annoy me a whole lot. Is there any way to turn them off in Windows
Vista, and get a solid color title bar?

Notice, also, in the window border on the left, going down from the top,
the border is medium blue, then gradually gets lighter, then suddenly
gets darker at a spot just to the left of the various colors that are
displayed in the application window. What's that all about? (What's the
terminology for this?)

Can I turn these weird effects off without turning off the "theme" that
gives me the nice rounded corners? Turning off transparency doesn't do
it, but doing away with the theme is TOO old-school; I don't want the OS
to look like Windows 2000.

I'm not at a Vista machine right now, but is there a built-in XP theme in
Vista that doesn't do this, or would I have to install one of the third-
party XP-style themes for Vista? Does this require hacking the operating
system?

I don't think that using the link to "open classic appearance properties
for more color options" has any effect on these slanted bands, since the
colors you select seem to be ignored when a theme is applied. (I have
seen lots of comments on the 'net that recommend people make changes here
that actually have no effect at all due to the theme. It's odd that
people make those recommendations without trying them out.)

Thanks for any comments.


David Walker

 

This is just that - a comment.

I had not noticed the moving diagonal stripes until I read your post and
looked. So - if they begin to annoy me as they do you, we know whom to
blame!

Actually, I kind of like the effect (and of course the above sentence
really should have a smiley).

I can't help you with the actual question, since I have not messed with
colors and themes (except to find a few new desktop backgrounds).

 

Sorry to point this out to you if you hadn't noticed it before! But, I
don't really like the effect. It seems weird to me.


David

 

No problem - I was not serious.

As I said, I kind of like the effect - I just was teasing that once you had
pointed it out, I became aware of it, so now I might go slowly mad. But it
really doesn't bother me - as in "my mileage might vary"

Or do you think the man doth protest too much? Nah.

It should be clear to Microsoft that different people have different
preferences, so there should be some way of turning the effect off for
those who hate the effect.

In truth, they must recognize that to some extent, since they do provide
other themes and so forth. It's a shame that the thing that bothers you
seems to be locked into the Aero Glass effects.

I would Google for a solution, but even now that Google is so much better
than initially, I usually score badly on obscure searches.