As you can see, lots of border and toolbar transparency. You basically have two options at your disposal to get rid of the Aero theme and transparency that comes with it: Install a different theme.

Ignore Aero

Ignore Aero is a theme for the Thunderbird email client that disables some, but not all, of the Aero effects. The title bar and borders still use transparency, while the other toolbars do not.

The extension is not an ideal solution for users who want to get rid of Aero completely, as it reduces the Aero effects only in the email client. You can download the Ignore Aero add-on for Thunderbird from the Mozilla Thunderbird Extension repository.

Alternative themes that pretty much have the same effect are NoGlass or Classic Reloaded.

Compatibility Workaround

You can run Thunderbird in compatibility mode to disable Aero automatically and only for that program and no others running on the system. For that you need to right-click the Thunderbird shortcut that you click on when you start the email program and select Properties from the context menu. Switch to the Compatibility tab in the Thunderbird Properties window.

Enable “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3) from the options.

Running Thunderbird in compatibility mode has the same effect as installing one of the themes mentioned earlier in this article. The title bar and borders remain transparent, the other toolbars turn solid.

Disable Aero transparency

If you dislike the Aero transparency, you can disable it in Windows 7 by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting Personalize from the options. You then need to click on Window Color at the bottom of the Personalization window. Here you can uncheck “Enable Transparency” to disable it completely or use the color intensity slider to modify it.

Inspiration for this post taken from Ask VG.

Why would someone want to make windows transparent at times? To access or interact with underlying windows or icons of course. This speeds up access to the data as users do not have to move, resize or minimize the window on top to access or interact with windows and icons located under that top window.

The default hotkey to make the active window transparent is Shift-Ctrl-Z (with options to change the hotkey in the program options). The window will stay transparent until the hotkey is used a second time. The program is configured to display the contents of underlying windows and the desktop only, which means that you cannot interact with the windows or icons by default.

You can change the default behavior to include a “click-through” option to interact with underlying windows and icons.

This way you could easily use the hotkey to launch a program or file from your desktop that you would not see otherwise, or interact with another program or window that is underneath the current one.

A slider is available in the options to set a transparency level to either show more of the active window or less of it on the screen.

Windows Vista and Windows XP users get a bonus. They can use the shortcut keys Ctrl-Windows-Up/Down and Ctrl-Windows-Left/Right to maximize/minimize windows and send them to a monitor on the left or right of the current monitor.

See Through Windows is a handy application to improve the work flow when working with the Windows operating system. The software is available for all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Users may need some getting used to time before the program becomes part of their work routine though.

See Through Windows requires the Microsoft .Net Framework. The developer is unfortunately not revealing which.

My final theme will differ only slightly in wallpaper and Emerald theme chosen, but the end result will have the same effect. So, without further adieu, let’s get to the theming.

RGBA support

You can read the full article “Enable RGBA support in Ubuntu 10.04“, but here are the steps for enabling this effect.

Installation:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Enter the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk
3. Enter the command sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
4. Enter the command sudo apt-get gnome-color-chooser gtk2-module-rgba
5. Enter the command sudo apt-get install murrine-them

Configuration:

1. Click on System > Preferences > GNOME Color Chooserand, in the Engines tab, check the Global check box and select Murrine from the drop down.
2. click on the Preferences button and (in the new window) scroll down until you see Configure of Enable/Disable RGBA support.
3. Make sure both check boxes are checked and click OK.
4. Click Apply back in the main GNOME Color Chooser window to dismiss that window.

Choose a theme:

1. Right click on your desktop and select Change Desktop Background.
2. Click on the Themes tab.
3. Click the Customize button.
4. From the Controls tab scroll down until you find a Murrine them.
5. Select a Murrine them and click Close.
6. Close the Appearance Preferences window.

Emerald

You now have to install and use Emerald. To install emerald follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install emerald
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. When complete close the terminal.

Before you open up the emerald themes manager, let’s locate a good theme to use. The best place to find Emerald themes is the Compiz Community. Look around until you find a theme you like. For it to go with the RGBA look you should make sure it’s a glassy theme. Once you have found a theme you like, download it and save it to your ~/Downloads directory.

Now, follow these steps to add the new Emerald theme:

1. Click <Alt>F2 and enter emerald-theme-manager.
2. When the emerald theme manager opens click the Import button.
3. Navigate to the ~/Downloads directory.
4. Select the theme you downloaded (it will have a .emerald extension).
5. Click Open.
6. Once the theme is imported, select the theme.

If the window decorations do not change immediately that means you need to start Emerald. To do this follow these steps:

Click <Alt>F2 and enter emerald --replace

Now the window decorations should change. If not, go back to the Emerald Theme Manager and select your theme again. Once the decorations have changed you can close the theme manager.

Figure 1

Last bits

You will want to make sure you have enabled Extra in the Visual Effects tab of the Appearance Preferences window to get the full effect of the RGBA/Compiz/Emerald desktop. Figure 1 shows an example of what this can look like.

I understand that there have been issues with the full transparency on my desktop screenshots. This will change for future articles. But in this case, it was necessary. ;-) For those that do want to enjoy a full-on transparent desktop – ENJOY!

Why RGBA? If you are a fan of good old Transparency (like me) then you understand this is something Linux has needed for a long time. Yes it can sort of be done through Compiz with some tweaking…but not GTK+-wide. That’s what RGBA support is all about, allowing a themable transparency throughout the GTK+ widget set. The only problem I have found (outside of non-GTK+ apps not playing well with RGBA) is that certain features don’t want to accept the transparency as well as others. That and a need to give the desktop some finishing touches. And that is just what we are going to do here.

First things first

One of the things you are going to want to do, upon completion of adding RGBA support, is to install the Emerald decorator. Why would you want to do this? Because Emerald will give you the feeling of continuing that RGBA support into the window decorations, whereas the default decorator will not. I’ve covered Emerald before (see my article “Add Emerald for slick window decorations“) so installation shouldn’t be a problem. Once installed you want to use the right theme. For the Murrine themes I have found the Glassified Mac theme to work best. You can browse through the entire Emerald Themes page to find the one that matches your desktop perfectly.

One of the issues you might find is that you have to replace your window decorator every time you log out and log in. This can be a hassel. Instead open up the CompizConfig Settings Manager (click System > Preferences > Compiz Config Settings Manager), do a search for “decorations” (no quotes), select Window Decoration, and replace the command with /usr/bin/emerald. Now your default window decorator is Emerald.

The panel

Probably one of the biggest glitches is portions of the GNOME panel just don’t seem to want to work with RGBA. It took me a while but I figured out a “way” around it.

Figure 1

The biggest issue are the three main menus. No matter what you try you can not get them to work with the transparency. So what I found is to get rid of that applet (it’s actually one applet called Menu Bar) and replace it with the Main Menu Applet. Once you have done that you can then set the panel to transparent. You can’t set it to complete transparency, however, or you will have a bit of a disconnect with the notification area. There are still issues with some of the applets in the notification area…but they don’t stand out as much as the Menu Bar. Figure 1 shows the changes I have made. It’s not perfect, but it fits much better with the new desktop.

Figure 2

What does that new Main Menu applet look like when used with RGBA support? Take a look at Figure 2 for a sample.

Final thoughts

The addiction to eye candy is a rough one. You find yourself tweaking and tweaking until you think you can tweak nor more…until you find yet another tiny customization that looks better. The RGBA-enabled desktop is a fairly slick one. I hope you find it to be as eye-candy-tastic as I have.

The simplest method to get a composit manager installed is to install Compiz. Compiz is an outstanding window manager all on its own that is, by default, ready for compositing. With Compiz installed you will have a composit manager that E16 can deal with already installed.

In Ubuntu if you issue the command sudo synaptic you will open up the Add/Remove Software application. From here do a search for compiz. When the results come up select compiz and allow the system to install all necessary dependencies. Finally click Apply to install all of the packages.

Once Compiz is installed you should be able to set compositing up in Enlightenment. With a right mouse click the Settings menu will appear. Select “Composite Settings” to open up the configuration window.

Composite Settings

Once the settings window opens you will see a few configuration options to choose from.

Composite Settings Window

The first option to take care of is Enable Composite. Make sure that is checked. The rest of the options are all up to user taste.  I prefer to have  Fading Speed set to slowest (slider to the far left), Shadows Blurred, Default Unfocused Window Opacity near 1/2, and Default Pop-Up Window Opacity around 3/4 on. Once you have selected these options click Apply to set them.

The final effect can be pretty amazing for just a “simple window manager”.

The full effect

Final Thoughts

What I love about Enlightenment is that it is a lightweight desktop that manages to pull off enough tricks to impress yet doesn’t drag your machine to a halt. With a little hackery, Enlightenment can make Windows Aero look like a sad attempt at a modern desktop.

But with the plethora of terminal emulators available, why would you add yet another? Aterm offers some features that most other players can not touch. One of the more obvious features is that of transparency. I know, I know – both GNOME and KDE terminals do transparency, but not as easily and as well as aterm. Let’s see how this is done.

First and foremost to get aterm to open with various forms of transparency you will be issuing a command. Once you have settled on the exact combination of arguments you like you can then create an icon, launcher, or menu entry to suit your needs.

With that in mind let’s take a look at some of the options to allow you to get some funky-ness with aterm.

the first thing we will do is basic transparency. To get basic transparency you execute the aterm command like so:

aterm -tr

To expedite coolness I am going to add a couple of switches:

aterm -tr -fg white -bg blue +sb

The above command will produce an aterm like you see below.

Basic aterm transparency

What I did with the above command is:

• tr – Enable transparency
• fg – Change the forground color (text)
• bf – Background color (highlight)
• sb – With the “+” symbol the scroll bar is turned off

That is not all we can do. Let’s add the following:

tint – Add a tinting color to the transparency

fade – Fade the contents of the aterm window when it no longer has focus. The amount is from 0-100 with 0 being the most fade.

Here’s what the command aterm -tr -tint blue -fade 50 -fg white -bg blue +sb will look like.

Aterm with Fade

Naturally you’ll want to play around with colors and fade amounts depending upon your theme/background.

Final Thoughts

This has given you but a taste of what the aterm terminal emulator can do. If you’re like me, and you like some desktop eyecandy, this is a great way to get it without having to pump up your resources or spend all day tweaking.

Since you can set the transparency level to be fully transparent you could effectively a state on your system where you do not see Blend anymore which means you cannot change the transparency level anymore; Unless you reboot that is. But that only happens once, don’t you think. As I said Blend can make all Windows transparent or set individual transparency settings for selected windows which is probably the better and safer way.

Individual windows can be selected by adding the path to their executable to Blend or by dragging a little icon from Blend to the open program window which will have the effect that Blend adds this program automatically to the list.

The memory footprint of Blend is extremely low with only three Megabytes and 120 Kilobyte on the hard drive. If you like and use transparency in Windows then Blend is the application for you. Oh, and it’s version 0.0.0.1. Maybe a joke of the author because it runs perfectly on my system.