I know I'm probably way in the minority on this but I actually love the new translucent menubar. I was using an app called MenuShade in Tiger that basically did the same thing, only allowed one to set the level of transparency.
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Got the solid menu bar back in Leopard!
- Thread starter Mitthrawnuruodo
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That's fine, and I don't mind Apple making the menu bar translucent for those who like and want that... what I'm p***ed off at Apple for is not making a pref pane option to set the level of opacity (or at least on/off for translucency and maybe even a white <-> grey slider for those who prefer it solid).
What color was the menu bar in Tiger? I don't even remember.... Was it a pure white? Or was it slightly grey as well?
Someone over at macosxhints posted the numerical value you need to enter to get the same menubar appearance as an older PPC machine running Leopard
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0.62
I tried it out and it's great – looks just like on our 12" PowerBook. This is exactly what I've been waiting for.
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0.62
I tried it out and it's great – looks just like on our 12" PowerBook. This is exactly what I've been waiting for.
decoder ring not included
Wow, with the transparentness of the windows perhaps there are secretes to be found. all we need a red window screen and some cracker jack
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personally i don't like the transparentness. It seems like it doesn't provide functionality. Ha, i two years people will say " vista copied leopard with the transparent thing, wow apple is cool". Lame.
Wow, with the transparentness of the windows perhaps there are secretes to be found. all we need a red window screen and some cracker jack
.personally i don't like the transparentness. It seems like it doesn't provide functionality. Ha, i two years people will say " vista copied leopard with the transparent thing, wow apple is cool". Lame
.
I actually like the transparent menu bar but I'm glad someone found a way to do this for the people who didn't like it.
be careful when you're messing with this file, your computer may become unbootable if you change the file's permission.
I honestly don't see what's wrong with the transparent menubar. I think you guys just need to try it out for a while. That's what I did, and i love it now. That stupid white thing was so 2001....
The only thing that might be nice for Apple to add would be a system preference setting for opacity. Some backgrounds it looks better a little less transparent, and some a little more. But it should be transparent. it looks good.
Here's what mine looks like right now --->
The only thing that might be nice for Apple to add would be a system preference setting for opacity. Some backgrounds it looks better a little less transparent, and some a little more. But it should be transparent. it looks good.
Here's what mine looks like right now --->
Attachments
Menu Bar Tint.
For those wanting to make the solid white menu bar grey with tint (or any other color for that matter).
But beware:
For those wanting to make the solid white menu bar grey with tint (or any other color for that matter).
But beware:
What I'd like is to do the opposite of what you all seem to want. I love the menu bar transparency (translucency really) on my wife's MB. Is there an app to make it transparent?
Unfortunately, we can't look forward to an official fix. I might've raised your hopes a little, when I posted a couple weeks ago that an AppleCare rep told me that the GFX 5200 should render the translucent menu bar, and 10.5.1 would remedy the problem. She did tell me that, but was mistaken.
The determinant for rendering the translucent menu bar is Quartz GL support. The fall back path renders an opaque menu bar on cards that do not support Quartz GL. And the GFX 5200 does not offer Quartz GL support in Leopard. My understanding is that the graphics card is technically capable of it, for it is programmable and supports pixel/-vertex-2.0 shaders/ARB fragment program. For a reason I do not know, Quartz GL has been disabled. Maybe others who know more can help better.
There are no 3rd party solutions right now. I'm as bummed as you are. My $2700 2.5- year- old machine can't do something a $1300 3.5-year-old one can. This is coupled with a complete lack of information on requirements for people who actually thought of a translucent menu bar as a selling point (all three of us). This has been mishandled by Apple to be sure.
you might wanna give this command a try
basically what it does is to enable QuartzGL on your mac. Just FYI, QuartzGL is disabled by default on my Macbook, yet my menubar is transparent
Code:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver QuartzGLEnabled -boolean YESbasically what it does is to enable QuartzGL on your mac. Just FYI, QuartzGL is disabled by default on my Macbook, yet my menubar is transparent
Personally I don't buy the Apple answer since we get translucent contextual menus (right click). Bad coding or a driver bug? Is Apple to lazy to fix this problem or is the menu bar using different calls than the contextual menu (stupid if you ask me)? Also, why was the menu bar translucent in the dev builds and not in final for 12" users?
I doubt it makes much, if any, difference at all.
That said, I must be one of the few who likes the transparent menu bar. I don't like change for the sake of change as much as the next guy, but I don't mind changes that are subtle and look cool.
LenVegas in another thread said it better than I ever could: "Leopard still uses simple resources (small transparent PNGs) to build the actual menus then applies a subtle blur effect. The menu 'bar' no longer has a "resource", it is now built from scratch by the newesh 'CoreUI' layer and is more of a rendered surface, allowing for future support for resolution independence and possibly other fancy stuff (animated movement, animated icons etc.) yet to come. The 'translucence' which is actually done by sampling the wall paper and applying several techniques to it, including some subtle pseudo-3D real-time shading (the 'curved' looking surface), isn't really just "transparency and blur". At all."
In earlier builds, the menu bar was not generated like it is now, not even needing Core Image capable cards for the effect (it worked on the Radeon 9200 for instance). I think all it required was Quartz Extreme, for the blur.
I'm still puzzled that the initial support document said that all Core Image-supported cards would render the translucent menu bar and now it's been changed to specifically exclude the GFX 5200. And maybe I'm looking way too into this, but I get a kick out of the wording of the current support document: The GFX 5200 "may" not have the necessary OpenGL capabilities to render the effect. What is "may"? Whatever Apple feels like doing?
Hrmm... I'm kindof curious as to why this isn't working on my system. I have a 10.5.1 install and typing the sudo command doesn't do anything after a restart.
Perhaps it is because I don't actually have a password for my computer? It seems to accept it when I just hit enter, but I'm not quite sure if it's doing anything...
Perhaps it is because I don't actually have a password for my computer? It seems to accept it when I just hit enter, but I'm not quite sure if it's doing anything...
That actually makes sense to me.
Exactly what I was thinking actually. They need to make it black and white. Either it does support it or it doesn't. From what I've read in other forums and blogs, it seems that Apple hasn't put much research into it and is actually assuming it won't work.I'm still puzzled that the initial support document said that all Core Image-supported cards would render the translucent menu bar and now it's been changed to specifically exclude the GFX 5200. And maybe I'm looking way too into this, but I get a kick out of the wording of the current support document: The GFX 5200 "may" not have the necessary OpenGL capabilities to render the effect. What is "may"? Whatever Apple feels like doing?
be careful when you're messing with this file, your computer may become unbootable if you change the file's permission.
I don't know if thats my problem or not, but I doubt it. I tried the white menu bar, and then decided I wanted to go back to translucent. I tried editing the file with Text Edit, but it said I didn't have permissions, so I tried changing them, and it still wouldn't work. So I used Time Machine to restore a previous copy of the file, and I thought all was well. I reebooted, and it just sat there at the grey screen for a long time, and then rebooted again, and repeats the process over and over in an endless loop. I don't think it is a permission problem though since I restored the file with Time Machine.
The strange part is if I boot into Single User Mode, and do an LS on /System/Library/LaunchDaemons there are no files there. Even an LS -all reveals nothing. I think I deleted all the files in my LaunchDaemons directory. Is there any way to get them back with Time Machine without restoring the entire system? If not could someone please zip them up and send them to me (assuming their not huge)?
Help!
If it's white to grey, then expanding on apple_iBoy's response should produce satisfactory results. And Menu Bar Tint is then not even required (thank god). Any value between 0 and 1 will determine the level of grey -- setting the value to 0 is the same as placing a black bar at the top of a wallpaper with the transparent menubar.
So...
Code:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0Produces...
But what I don't understand is WHY?!? At this stage, couldn't OS X just take a look at the background and quickly generate a "skin" to paste onto the menubar? Like a winamp skin, circa 1996?? It's not like it has to have "real" transparency and blurring, since things aren't supposed to slide underneath it. It seems like a big to-do about very, very little. An over-engineered solution to a non-existent problem (at least in this version of OS X, where advanced features you mention aren't really a factor).
I can appreciate that some people like their translucent dock, but it just really made my eyes itch. I'm glad someone out there came up with a way to tweak the effect for those of us who care to.
This is how mine looks now:
Using:
Code:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1Lacks the subtle shadow/grading, but looks good enough for me...
From what I understand it used to be just transparent and very hard to look at. They decided a slight blur was the way to go to make it easier to see and use.