Sizing margins aren't used when the image is set to tile. And it'd still tile the border of the image as well making it look odd.

I have always used tile for that image and tile does work with sizing margins, that is the only way to use a pattern there, plus the margins settings I gave him means the inside will tile and the bottom, not the border, also that particular image has always been a problem and never abides by the rules when it comes to margins and image dimensions, it will always try to cut off the left side of the image and using tile and the margins I mentioned is the only way I have manged to work around that.

Thanks for that, I wanted to change that as well, Line 443 I changed it to bordercolor="gtc(CONTROLPANELSTYLE,17,0,3821)" so now it will work with any theme

Yeah I have tried it as well and it does not end well lol

You will need to set the image to tile and set the sizing margin to 0, 145, 350, 0 and see what happens, adjust the margins till the image is tiled corectly

Did you change the theme while that window was open, I tried this and found only when switching from a light theme to a dark theme I got the same result but if I have the dark theme already applied and then open that window it works fine.

Yeah for sure mate I agree 100% but for the average user that will use our themes this way is a better solution and will result in less questions and less user error.

I have just been using this to disable the ribbon and Paint and Wordpad still work fine http://winaero.com/download.php?view.18

There is no way to make the windows transparent, sadly MS have removed most of the old aero features from Windows 8

Hi Bull, you will need to change it in Windows 8 (For Testing Purposes Only) > Taskband Extended UI > Background

What he is saying is that if you make any change to the shell32.dll the WEI will not complete, it gets stuck at testing the CPU, doesn't matter what changes you make to it, as soon as the shell32.dll becomes unsigned it breaks the WEI.

Still at the end of the day who cares about the WEI anyway, aside from that I have not seen any other problems yet.

@Panda thanks for the heads up on build 8400, might grab that then just to make sure any important changes are not left out

OK I found an early build before MS made all the UI files into hex and edited UI file 34 to add the property for the statusbar image, it's not perfect though as the separator does not show correctly unless you make an image for it, but anyway it is better then nothing.

PS build number for the original UI Files if you want to get them all un hexed was Windows 8  build 6.2.8250.0 (winmain_win8beta.120217-1520)

Not sure if I am allowed to post it but here is the torrent for it as well http://kat.ph/windows-8-metro-consumer-prv-x64bit-t6233630.html

I would love to be able to remove this arrow al together, not just give it a blank icon, I want a way to disable it as well, if any of you know where to look let me know please

There may be a way to do that but it would probably require adding it in the shell32.dll UI files where the status bar call is made, I might try that out and I will report back if I figure it out.

might have to add some more properties in here:

<StatusBarModule ModuleID="StatusBarModule" layoutpos="bottom" layout="filllayout()"/>

Well I am not sure exactly what your trying o do there, but if you want to make the top smaller you can add a content margin property to the following locations.

Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Normal > Active
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Normal > Inactive
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Max > Active
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Max > Inactive

If you increase the content margin it will make it larger or if you add a minus value you can make it smaller, you are limited by how small you can go though as it will start to cut off the nav buttons and address bar, on my last theme I was using this and had it set to "0, 0, -4, -2" and that had a nice result as you can see below.

Just one other thing that may also help you to make it look more like 8 is to add the background image for the address bar in the following locations.

Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Normal > Active > Background
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Normal > Inactive > Background
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Max > Active > Background
Toolbars, Headers and Rebar > Rebar > NavBar > Aero > Max > Inactive > Background

Just be careful when you add a new image to those locations, I found it caused some problems until I added "BGTYPE:ENUM = None" to all the locations I first mentioned above.

Well hope this was of some help to you anyway.

Yeah no worries mate, I haven't had any problems at all with the beta so far, seems very stable

Not sure how it was corrupted, it's only happened a couple of times, don't remember the exact details of the problem, if it ever happens again I will try and get some more details of what lead up to it and I will send you the file to take a look at, just glad those temp files get created though.

Another bug I have had a few times is the first time you hit test WSB will just crash, I found it's a good habit to hit test just after loading it just make sure it's working OK, but after the first test if it works then it runs great the whole time I am using it.

I am very glad to say that I have never had this particular problem, I have had a few other strange issues that happen sometimes when saving, somehow the msstyles gets corrupted but have always managed to get the temp file and rename it to restore my project, it's had me worried a couple of times though lol

Good stuff mate, glad you got it all worked out

The message was for charleston, it's OK now though, just restored all the other UI files and just left the one, I also made this mod for Windows 8

I just wanted to mention that with this mod if you go to change setting in Windows Update explorer crashes for me, I will have a look later and see what UI file is causing the problem.

Edit: I just changed all the other ones back to default aside from UI File 124 and no Explorer crashes now, but also it looks exactly the same, what were the effects of the other UI files you modified from the first post you gave us?

Very nice Panda, off topic but what are you using to have the tabs on the top of your windows like that?

Edit: It's OK I found it, Clover looks pretty good but don't think it would work well with my style of themes

Seems I was able to do it by setting the border to 0 on line 332 and then adding the properties from there to line 329

<element background="themeable(gtc(CONTROLPANELSTYLE,2,0,3821),window)" bordercolor="themeable(gtc(CONTROLPANELSTYLE,17,0,3821),buttonshadow)" borderthickness="rect(0,0,1rp,0)"/>

Not tried this yet but I was just wondering if you remove the right border property from there and add a left border property to the main content window, would that work.

Nothing silly about asking a question mate and thanks for the link, that is a pretty neat idea

OK I just added margin="rect(0rp,5rp,0rp,5rp)" on line 335 and 345 and that added some space, not sure if that was all you wanted to do though.

What are the numbers of the UI files you have done so far and what else were you planning on changing?

Windows and Caption Buttons > Basic > Frames > Window > Top > Active/Inactive

Awesome work mate, looks like it's really coming along, I like the new features I am seeing as well, I know that the upgrade to 1.6 is free but I will definitely be making a nice donation, keep up the great work

Messed with a bit more and doesn't matter what I set it to the bottom logoff and more programs areas are not effected by adjusting the alpha threshold values although it does work on the program list and list view areas.

Also just wanted to mention that Stardock's Start8 is using the msstyles to recreate the start menu but it is still very buggy at the moment but it is themeable and doesn't disable the apps like it does using the Windows 7 explorer.exe hack, maybe in future releases they will have worked out the bugs a little better, we will see.

Well I have never played with that setting before though it does have some interesting results it's not really working right, any other ideas?

I got a working start menu back but I have a big problem that I am not able to solve with the way Windows colours everything now, when we had the blur it was the same problem but I was able to remove the blur from the start menu and that allowed me to create great looking start menus, but now I face a new problem



I have managed to remove it by enabling the full aero transparency with blur using files from older builds to replace all the theme and DWM files but that doesn't work too well and is not a good solution, what I need is a way to either just remove it from the start menu or a way to disable the colour layer but at the moment I am not very hopeful of either solution being created.

Would love to have this working, I seem to be having lots of problems replacing anything in Windows 8 without it breaking something, sick of doing repairs and system restores, this tool just makes it simple to test changes.

We need Ave to come and make us some fresh tools for Windows 8, seems that Ave's Apps died with Vista, I know that Theme Resource changer was created by Ave as well looking in the dll file it mentions Aves Start Button Changer even though I have not been able to find it anywhere on the net.

Maybe we all need to get together and and start a donation pool to get him started on some new apps or maybe make some of his apps open source so we can get some fresh developers to take interest.

Anyway I appreciate all the work you have been doing Panda, I don't know what we would do without you and the other staff keeping things going.

This already happen, somehow http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1091045-windows-7-explorer-for-windows-8/

Thanks for the link, had a go at this and yep the start menu is back and works great, now to fix the aero in explorer and get WSB working right

If you need a Beta tester for the 1.6 version mate, even if it's basic functionality, I am happy to help

Yep I can also confirm this, I had a look as well using Restorator and all the images are still in there for the start menu, now all we need is a way to bring it back as well as the start button lol

That's a pretty cool trick, a bit easier then the other way too lol, thanks Panda

You can also change the colorizationopacity : int to "0" at

Windows and Caption Buttons > Aero > DWM Window > Frames > Window > Top > Active , Inactive.....

Thanks Dave, now I know how I did it then lol

I used to get so annoyed at that as well but some time ago my theme just stopped doing it so I have stayed with that msstyles ever since for all my new themes lol, wish I knew how I did it though.

I have used this tool a bit and it's really great for testing new mods but is there going to be any more development with it, it would be great if we could have this running as a service at startup so we could package it with custom themes and avoid having to change system files. Even better would be if it could run the modified files from the theme folder, so anywhere the current msstyles was being used is where the modded system files would be run from, that way if you select another theme it will change to the system files for that theme.

This would make installing and using themes an awesome leap forward I think, the only thing I am not sure of is the amount of memory it would require to have it for a large amount of modified system files.

What do you mean?

Well I have very little idea what I am doing and just trying to make some sense of it, the colour property I was looking for was Explorer & Shell > Explorer > TreeView > TreeItem but instead I found the one for Lists, Menus & Tabs > TreeView, so in a way thats still good because it still lets me use another custom colour rather then the default Window Text colour.

I think it would make more sense if I could have it changeable through Explorer & Shell > Explorer > TreeView > TreeItem as that's where all the other properties are for Hot, Selected etc and also where any text effects are applied like shadows and Fonts, just seems like the most logical place to edit the main navigation Tree View colour.