Tip #4252 - Customizing Your Aero
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Customizing
Your Aero
One of the most
talked about features in Windows Vista is the new Aero Glass
interface. Aero Glass requires at least a DirectX 9 enabled
video card with WDDM drivers and either AGP 8x or PCI-E. Now, don't
be turned off by those big terms. All you need to do is download DirectX
9.0 and you can do so for free right on this Web
site.
First of all,
the Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) allows for the visual
effects seen on a user's desktop to scale relative to the available
graphics hardware. Now, not all graphics cards have the capability
to run Aero Glass, but for those that do, the effects are fantastic.
In addition to the transparent Window borders, running Aero Glass
also enables the Flip 3D function Erin talked about last week and
some very nice animation effects.
Aero Glass also
comes with a new panel for adjusting the visual appearance. To customize
your Aero Glass appearance, just right click on a blank area of your
desktop and from the pop up menu, select Personalize.
You may also access this by going to Start, Control
Panel, Appearance and Personalization, Personalization.
That will open
the "Personalize appearance and sound effects"
panel from which you can customize many aspects of your Vista appearance.
Next, click on the Visual Appearance link to open
the "Change your color scheme" panel. From
that panel, there are a number of predefined color schemes you can
choose from to apply. There is also a checkbox to Enable/Disable
the transparent glass. Along with that, there is an option to open
the Color Mixer, which will allow you to highly customize
the displayed color of your Vista computer. With the Color Mixer,
you can adjust the color, saturation and brightness of your window
borders. At the very bottom of this panel, there is also a link to
open the Classic appearance properties if you'd like
to do that.
Note:
In the latest builds of Windows Vista, some users who have Aero enabled
have not been able to use the transparent glass. If that happens to
you, it is sometimes possible to get it by lowering your screen resolution.
Vista's Aero Glass
ushers in a new and updated look for Microsoft Windows, as well as,
some very nice visual effects. It should also be noted that the Aero
Glass interface may still undergo some changes in the next releases
of Vista, but either way, it's still a joy to use, so check it out
today!
~ Ramachandran
Kumaraswami
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