Turn off reflection in Vista

Z

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
181
Hi,
Is there a way to turn off "reflection" that shows on window's title bars and borders in Windows Vista?

I don't know how to decribe this effect but this reflection is seen as diagonal lines. And to make things worse these lines move when a window is moved. I like the new Vista interface but these lines make interface a little too messy.

So does anyone know how to turn off just this effect without swithing to classic view?
 
I think in the advanced control panel theres an option to disable transparent glass. Unclick the box. To get there hit the windows+pause/break key at the same time, click advanced in the upper left.
 
You can disable the transparency, but the "reflection" effects the OP refers to remain. I'm not sure how you'd get rid of them without switching to Basic.
 
As Mithent said if I disable transparency, "reflection" doesn't go away. "Reflection" does go away if I turn off desktop composition (disable aero), but then I lose most of new vista's interface features.

Maybe it could be disabled via registry ... or maybe there is a file (a picture) somewhere in windows that is being reflected and it could be replaced with some uniform picture??
 
well shit now I see what youre talking about and I want it off too. lets sign a petition and get MS to get it da fizuck off
 
I must be blind as a bat because I don't see what you are talking about at all. I don't have any diagonal lines in any of my title bars or borders. Could you post a screenshot of it?
 
Generally it's not too noticeable as you don't have that much glass on screen. Take a program that's entirely glass (for some reason), though:
http://thewpfblog.com/images/anna.jpg

You can see diagonal lines going across the window. If you move a window and focus on looking at the glass title bar, or the lower glass section of Windows Media Player, you can see that the diagonal lines do not really move with the window, more than a little anyway.
 
Here are screenshots I took with transparency disabled. First one is windows explorer's title bar. In second picture title bar is bigger so you can easily see "reflecting" diagonal lines.

vistareflection1tb0.jpg


vistareflection2kn1.jpg


These diagonal lines move (relatively to window) when you move the window, which is really annoying. (They seem to have fixed position relatively to desktop)

Because of these lines moving or not moving (depends on how you look at it) when moving a window, it is kind of harder to maintain focus.
 
Only way is to modify the default theme or replace it with another theme which microsoft doesnt make easy.
 
As Renesis said modify the default theme or use one of the various Aero mods that are floating around the net. Here's my Vista laptop using a theme called Cleaero.

my.php
 
Renesis13B said:
Only way is to modify the default theme or replace it with another theme which microsoft doesnt make easy.
Click to expand...

Yep.

However keep in mind performance can actually decrease (given you have a capable graphics card) by not using Aero.... so any theming you do actually can hurt you vs. leaving it alone.
 
The "lines" don't move. They're supposed to be giving you the impression that the window border is a piece of glass with reflections on it - as though you were staring at your monitor and you had a glossy coating on it. When you're staring at the actual surface of the monitor's screen, you'll see what's being shown on it as well as light from behind you in the environment you're sitting or standing in. That's the whole point of "Aero Glass" - to give you "a bigger window on your world" so to speak.

It's amazing what people come up with in terms of disabling stuff in Vista. By the time most people disable every feature that Vista has enabled by default that makes it Vista in the first place, they end up with this half-breed-hybrid-middleground-I-don't-know-what-to-call-it thing... geez.

As for the Cleaero thing, that's pretty slick - but sooner or later people would end up complaining "I don't wanna see the windows behind what I'm looking it, it's too distracting..." and you know it. ;) They hate it reflecting what's behind them in their chairs as they face the screen (figuratively speaking), and they hate what's underneath, etc. It's a lose-lose anyway you slice it...
 
Does changing the color intensity help at all? (In the display options where you can set the window color)
 
It's amazing what people come up with in terms of disabling stuff in Vista.
Click to expand...

Still, the option to disable those reflections should be there, because it's obvious some people don't like them. I also noticed the reflections become more apparent and in-your-face, when you disable transparency.

Personally I don't mind the reflections, but I'm seriously considering permanently disabling the transparency.. It makes the OS appear more polished and professional IMO. Good thing they provided a checkbox for that. I mean, the transparency looks very nice when you just have one window open against a nice icon-less desktop.. but when you have a cluttered screen with lots of different windows and icons, the transparency can make things look quite messy and unprofessional. It's also much easier to see which window is active if you disable transparency and increase the color intensity.

I bet the final UI for Windows 7 will include much less transparency by default. I think MS got a bit carried away by the things made possible through 3d-acceleration.
 
Joe Average said:
The "lines" don't move. They're supposed to be giving you the impression that the window border is a piece of glass with reflections on it - as though you were staring at your monitor and you had a glossy coating on it. When you're staring at the actual surface of the monitor's screen, you'll see what's being shown on it as well as light from behind you in the environment you're sitting or standing in. That's the whole point of "Aero Glass" - to give you "a bigger window on your world" so to speak.
Click to expand...

Actually the lines do move. Or they don't as the window does, but in any case they are not static, if I am understanding what you are saying. Drag one around the screen and watch them closely. These were added as a "feature", in either beta 2 or RC 1, I don't remember which. Windowsblinds or a hacked theme are going to be the mainstream options for removing this.
 
JimmiG said:
Still, the option to disable those reflections should be there, because it's obvious some people don't like them. I also noticed the reflections become more apparent and in-your-face, when you disable transparency.
Click to expand...
Saying "some people want this option, so it should be there" isn't valid logic. Every option you add means more and more things the code has to support and more and more things to test. More code means more bugs, more bugs means more problems. You have to pick and choose the features you want. And to be honest, people whining about the 'reflection lines' doesn't even begin to approach the radar of the 'issues that actually matter' list. Some people are simply never happy.
Personally I don't mind the reflections, but I'm seriously considering permanently disabling the transparency.. It makes the OS appear more polished and professional IMO. Good thing they provided a checkbox for that. I mean, the transparency looks very nice when you just have one window open against a nice icon-less desktop.. but when you have a cluttered screen with lots of different windows and icons, the transparency can make things look quite messy and unprofessional. It's also much easier to see which window is active if you disable transparency and increase the color intensity.
Click to expand...
If it was truly transparent, I'd agree with you, but it's heavily blurred, so even with a lot of windows it looks fine.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Actually the lines do move. Or they don't as the window does, but in any case they are not static, if I am understanding what you are saying. Drag one around the screen and watch them closely. These were added as a "feature", in either beta 2 or RC 1, I don't remember which. Windowsblinds or a hacked theme are going to be the mainstream options for removing this.
Click to expand...

Like I said, the lines don't move. No matter where the window is positioned on screen, the "lines" are still in a static place. As per my example above, if you moved your monitor left or right or up and down, the items being reflected off the screen surface - in other words, the stuff in your environment - isn't moving. Imagine someone drawing diagonal lines all over the surface of your monitor screen, and then you might get it. It's not a moving animated display, hence the "lines" or the reflections as they may be are always in the same place, and the "lines" travel from upper left to lower right.

Put up three windows and stack them staggered from upper left to lower right, you'll see a "line" that crosses each of them diagonally in one straight... well... line.

It's not hard to understand how this works, as everything that appears onscreen when Aero is enabled is a 3D texture, every single pixel you see is being rendered as a 3D object with length, width, and height. Once you look at it from that perspective - no pun intended - then it becomes pretty simply to grasp how Aero works.

The simplest answer is this: if you don't want those lines or reflections, disable the Aero and Vista Basic interfaces totally, because even when Aero is disabled and you revert to the Vista Basic GUI, the "lines" then become an actual part of the window border graphic. Not exactly the same concept, but either way, they're there embedded.

The only way to truly get rid of them would be not running any Vista GUI enhancements whatsoever, i.e. disabling the "visual styles" in Performance Options, the way it was done in pre-Vista Windows versions.
 
Joe Average said:
Like I said, the lines don't move.
Click to expand...

Almost; they do shift slightly. But I know what you mean.

I'm not personally bothered by them though; I find Aero to be fine, and far better than Luna, which I immediately changed to Watercolor from using a hacked uxtheme.dll (the existence of Luna themes for Vista is rather amazing to me!).
 
Saying "some people want this option, so it should be there" isn't valid logic
Click to expand...

Have you seen the display options under the Advanced tab of what used to be "My computer"? They have every option imaginable in there, so why not a checbox to toggle reflections?

If it was truly transparent, I'd agree with you, but it's heavily blurred, so even with a lot of windows it looks fine.
Click to expand...

Without the blur it would look totally chaotic - I tried some Vista "themes" for XP that didn't feature the blur, only transparency, and it was utterly confusing and fugly. Thanks to the blur, transparent windows are acceptable, but depending on what's underneath a window border, it can still look quite messy - things with high contrast like bold text, or things with many different, bright colors, can really mess up window borders - especially the windows with thick borders like the Explorer windows. Also, if you open several windows side by side, it's very hard to tell which one is active, unless you look at the close button in the corner.
 
Joe Average said:
Like I said, the lines don't move. No matter where the window is positioned on screen, the "lines" are still in a static place.

It's not hard to understand how this works, as everything that appears onscreen when Aero is enabled is a 3D texture, every single pixel you see is being rendered as a 3D object with length, width, and height. Once you look at it from that perspective - no pun intended - then it becomes pretty simply to grasp how Aero works.
Click to expand...

1. You are correct in that the lines themselves don't move, but if you drag the window everything but the lines move, therefore they give the illusion of movement, as they are not in the same position on the window frame after it is moved. And since the window frame is what they system draws, they actually do move, but they do not change location if you get what I am saying. They stay in the same location, but are in a different location relative to the rest of the window.

2. It is not hard to understand how it works, maybe a little difficult to make the point of what is happening. For the sake of keeping it simple so that a lengthy explanation is not necessary, most would say they move. True in their relationship to the window, but not in their relationship to the screen.
 
Sorry for bumping this somewhat old thread, but has anyone found a solution for this? These "reflections" are extremely annoying imo...
 
That turns off a lot more than just the reflections ;-) Meh, maybe I'll just go back to the windows classic look... the same i've been using since 2k...
 
OP: That's an interesting observation. I got tired of the boring default Aero style, so I am using Window Blinds. Looks like it takes the Classic desktop and skins it to look like Aero. I'll have to check when I get home if I am still seeing the visual effects you observed.

BTW, I like Window Blinds. It makes it easy to change and customize any number of theme features in one place.
 
Spectrum17 said:
BTW, I like Window Blinds. It makes it easy to change and customize any number of theme features in one place.
Click to expand...

I like Window Blinds but stuff would always go wrong for me when I tried it in the XP SP1 days. Like it would crash often and I'd end up with no explorer. Don't even get me started on LiteStep...:eek:
 
wasnt that reflection effect supposed to change throughout the day as the sun moved?
 
Then piss off the Vista theme and find an alternative theme to use. It's not as if none exist, after all.

It's part of the Vista theme, and this would have to be one of the most petty complaints I've ever seen. Hey, hell! To get that 'glass with transparency and effects' they've cheated a bit, and put a part of it in the actual theme rather than in the transparency effect. Vista theme is designed to work with Aero Glass transparency.

Don't like it? Use something different.
 
Just buy Windowblinds from stardock. Its not that expensive and it improves things a lot. They even claim it improves performance, and while I don't know if that is true, I certainly see no loss.
 
defuseme2k said:
Just buy Windowblinds from stardock. Its not that expensive and it improves things a lot. They even claim it improves performance, and while I don't know if that is true, I certainly see no loss.
Click to expand...

While there may not be a LOSS, there is no improvement like Aero gives you by offsetting it all to the GPU.
 
And it probably also removes the aero features that are actually useful (previews on taskbar and alt-tab, and the possibility to use switcher), right?
 
defuseme2k said:
Just buy Windowblinds from stardock. Its not that expensive and it improves things a lot. They even claim it improves performance, and while I don't know if that is true, I certainly see no loss.
Click to expand...

Screw windowblinds just patch the uxtheme yourself and head over to deviantart.

I dont see why people think microsoft should rewrite their fucking theme for a few people. :rolleyes:
 
l0calh05t said:
And it probably also removes the aero features that are actually useful (previews on taskbar and alt-tab, and the possibility to use switcher), right?
Click to expand...
Well, Alt+Tab is there everywhere, the Windows+Tab is what Aero gives you.
But of those listed above I rarely use any of it other than Alt+tab... I just enjoy the boost Aero gives me.

pfunkman said:
Screw windowblinds just patch the uxtheme yourself and head over to deviantart.

I dont see why people think microsoft should rewrite their fucking theme for a few people. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Still though, if it isn't Aero you aren't getting any performance BOOST from it.
 
TechieSooner said:
Well, Alt+Tab is there everywhere, the Windows+Tab is what Aero gives you.
Click to expand...
Not Alt+Tab with Previews (which is what I meant). Windows+Tab (Flip3d) sucks imo, so I don't use it. I prefer Switcher (insentient.net) which requires aero, though.
 
Wow. Picky aren't we?

If you don't like a theme, make your own or find another one. Microsoft may be a lot of things but they're not psychic.
 
You don't need to be psychic to know that for anything that's animated in a window manager, there will be someone who doesn't like it (and you can turn off pretty much everything else.

Anyways, I just installed the uxtheme hack and used resource hacker to remove those annoying reflections. Problem solved, and aero still active. :cool:
 
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