Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 will improve that by offering to sync the primary desktop background color with the operating system’s Aero interface color.

Under Windows 7, Aero and the wallpaper color can be completely different, which may be a issue for users who like to see matching colors on their desktop.

Aero Adjuster now is a program for Windows that users can run to adjust the Aero color automatically whenever the background changes.

All you actually need to do is to download and unpack the program on your computer system. Once done you can run it with a double-click on the single executable file.

The program will modify the Aero color from that moment on to match the color of the desktop background. This is an automatic process that requires no user interaction.

Please note that the Aero color is changed permanently. Aero Adjuster will not automatically switch back to the default color if you close the application. You do however have an option to restore the old Aero color from the application’s system tray menu.

The core question with programs like Aero Adjuster is this: Do you want to run an additional program in the background for better matching Aero and wallpaper colors? The program does not use a lot of cpu cycles when it is running, but its memory usage can go as high as 15 Megabytes.

I have reviewed a similar program called Aero Blend in the past which offers a similar functionality.

Windows users can download Aero Adjuster from the developer’s Deviant Art page. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. (via)

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.

Aero Tile

To add the glassy aeroful tiles to your PC desktop, the portable utility Aero Tile delivers this distinctive glamour. It offers you several options and choices for My Computer, My Documents, Control Panel, Fonts and other such Windows dimensions. Aero Tile is simple to use. There is no need for extensive technical knowledge or added code.

Download Aero Tile from the following link and get started. It will arrive in a .zip file. Extract the application from the zipped file and launch. The options window opens immediately. Check the boxes next to the tiles you want to display. You have to arrange the tiles by dragging them and placing them in the appropriate area of the desktop.

Omnimo 4

This is an application based on Rainmeter. It is a multi-function desktop center. It is interactive and versatile once you get a feel for it. The tiles are easily customized and any information is accessible from an aesthetically pleasing layout. You will need to install Rainmeter 2.0 or higher, as Omnimo 4 requires Rainmeter. Download here. Now you can install and start using Omnimo 4.

It will open from a .zip file. The installation is simple. When complete, Omnimo starts right up and you can begin configuration.

Zetro

Another Windows 8 metro UI theme for Windows 7 is Zetro. It yields the stylish tiles of 8 to Windows 7. You will have to go through several steps to prepare the proper format to work in Windows 7 and produce tiles that are active and functional. The instructions can be found in the Readme file located in the extracted .zip folder for Zetro. The interesting thing about this tweak is that it is a theme pack that enables you to alternate between tiles and Aeros easily. This versatility is well worth the setup procedure and will produce a genuine Windows 8 format for the Windows 7 desktop. Download Zetro from this link.

The screenshot above shows the Zetro theme files after being transferred to the Windows Themes file, as described in the instructional Readme file. After this is done, choose the theme you want. Try all of them to see which suites you. You can switch back to Aeros by returning to the Windows Themes folder (C:/Windows/Resources/Themes) and selecting Aeros. This will set things back to Windows 7 appearance.

Each of these different tweaks offers a different appearance and functionality. Experiment with it and see which works best for you. After all, you can always uninstall it if you don’t like it.

The free software AeroBlend has surely been designed for users who like the Aero interface and work with it on a daily basis. The program adds a feature to Windows that changes the Window Color automatically whenever the wallpaper changes to match the dominant color of the wallpaper.

The Window Color is part of every Windows theme. Windows 7 users can access the current settings by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting the Personalize option from the context menu. A click on Window Color opens a configuration menu where one of the default color schemes or a customize color scheme can be selected.

But that color scheme does not change if the wallpaper changes. Vista users find similar, albeit a bit different options in their Control Panel.

The portable application AeroBlend changes the default behavior. It’s default configuration is set to change the Window Color of the Aero theme automatically whenever the wallpaper changes. It should be obvious that it only works if an Aero theme is enabled on the system.

The program settings, available after a right-click on the program icon, contain options to switch from wallpaper mode to active application icon or active application contents instead.

Additional options are available to change the color intensity of the Window color and if the colors should fade.

Windows users with AeroBlend running will notice a short delay whenever the wallpaper image on their desktop changes. The delay is caused by an algorithm that scans for the dominant color of the new wallpaper image.

AeroBlend could be interesting for users who rotate their wallpapers regularly. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating system. Downloads are provided at the developer website.

The Aero Clock is a lightweight standalone software for Windows that adds an analog clock to the desktop. The software is fully portable and can be started from from the location it is unzipped to.

It is by default always visible on the desktop. The always on top feature and other settings can be changed in the program options.

First thing that non-German speakers should do is to click on the Lng button to change the program interface language to English. The Second to modify the size of the clock, as most will probably dislike the large default size of 512 pixels in width.

Once they have done that they can play around with the transparency slider to modify the clocks visibility on the desktop, and the image texture pull down menu to switch the design of the clock. Available are seven designs in total, from the default Zitro design to silver, gold and stars.

Other settings include removing the second hand from the clock. It could be irritating to some users as it is always moving and visible all the time.

The position of the clock can be fixed so that it is no longer possible to drag and drop it to another location on the desktop. You can move the clock around otherwise by holding down the mouse button when it hovers over the clock and moving the clock around on the screen.

The two final preferences are to center the clock on the screen and to start the application with the Windows operating system.

Users who want an analog clock on their desktop should take a closer look at The Aero Clock. It is a free lightweight solution for all versions of Windows from Windows NT to the very latest Windows 7.

Those users may prefer to disable Aero Snap under Windows. The setting to do that is hidden deep inside the Control Panel.

To disable Aero Snap do the following

Click on the Start Orb of the operating system and select Control Panel from the menu that opens. Locate and click on Ease of Access.

In the next window select Change how your mouse works.

The next screen offers configuration options for the mouse. Here it is for instance possible to change mouse cursor size and color.

Locate the Make it easier to manage windows group and put a checkmark into “Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen”. This disables Aero Snap for the current user.

Click on Apply to save the configuration change.

Experienced users can disable Aero Snap in the Registry instead. To open the Registry editor press Windows-r, type regedit and hit the enter key on the keyboard.

Navigate to the following key in the Registry:

KEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Locate the parameter WindowArrangementActive on the right side and change its value to 0 if you want to disable Aero Snap, or to 1 if you want to enable it again.

And that’s how you disable Aero Snap on Windows. Are you using the feature?

But there are users who like the full blown Aero interface with everything enabled. The latest Windows 8 leak is probably after their liking. Microsoft has added an automatic colorization setting to the Windows Color and Appearance control panel applet which adjusts the window color based on the color of the background.

A dominantly green or pink desktop wallpaper image would be automatically matched with green or pink window colors in Windows 8.

Take a look at two sample images that demonstrate how the window color changes based on the desktop wallpaper. Click on the images for a full sized view.

Want that feature right now for your operating system? Then you may want to take a closer look at the Open Source application Aura which adds automatic colorization of windows to Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Take a look at the demonstration video first which shows how the window color changes depending on its position on the screen and the underlying colors.

Aura is simple to use and should work on all Windows editions that support full Aero. Just download the program executable from the project website, unpack it to a local folder and run the executable file.

Aura will automatically switch the coloring scheme which can be seen on all open windows. You can perform some tests by changing the background wallpaper of the system, or by moving windows on top of each other.

How is the program calculating the right window colors?

Aura is application that calculates average color of desktop background image or active window icon and sets it as Aero Glass color. It works like color hot-track in Windows 7 taskbar. Aura written in C# using WPF and Visual Studio 2010.

Aura has been recently released as a second beta, a final release seems immanent. The program needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 but has no other dependencies.

Recent problems with blurry fonts got me experimenting again and I discovered a way to disable transparency in Windows Aero. Many Windows 7 users probably now that already but maybe there are some like me who never researched the issue before. Here is the guide that explains how to disable transparency in Aero.

The easiest way to disable the visual feature is to right-click on a free part of the desktop and select Personalize from the options. This opens the Personalization Control Panel applet which can be used to change Windows themes, icons, color schemes and other appearance related settings.

A click on Window Color at the footer of that screen opens a new window with options to change the color scheme. More important for this guide is the ability to disable transparency in the menu as well. Users who want to remove transparency from Aero need to remove the checkmark next to Enable Transparency to do so.

The effect is applied immediately to the operating systems and users should notice that all transparency effects have been removed from the system. A click on the Save Changes button saves the setting.

Update: Windows 7 users who want their transparency back can follow the steps outlined above to do so. Only the last step is different, as they need to place the checkmark again in the Enable Transparency box.

What you can do is to pick a color in the Windows Color and Appearance control panel, enable transparency, set the color intensity and under color mixer, change values for hue, saturation and brightness.

Turning off transparency for instance can be very handy if you take screenshots regularly of open windows and programs in the OS.

Still, there are more settings available that are not listed in the control panel applet. That’s were Aero Tuner, a tool to demonstrate how DWM, the Desktop Window Manager, can be controlled with a software.

The developer has posted an extensive (Russian) article on the tool and the settings which you can find here.

The Aero Tuner application is linked at the bottom. Non-Russian reading users who are interested in the article may want to use Google Chrome, or an online translation service to translate the article into another language.

The portable app displays all settings in its interface on startup. It is possible to select the main and glow colors separately, which makes only sense if transparency is activated.

Four sliders are available under the Parameters section to control the color balance, after glow color balance, blur balance and aero stripes.

Changes are immediately visible in all open windows. A click on Save changes writes the new settings to the Windows Registry so that they become the new parameters for Windows Aero on the system.

You can download Aero Tuner from the developer’s website over at Winreview.ru.

Aero Weather is unfortunately only able to tap into weather information of US zip codes, which limits the reach of the application quite a bit as it means that it can only be used by US users for an accurate reflection of their weather conditions.

Still, those users may find that Aero Weather adds automatic customization to the system’s color scheme. Users from outside the US may still use the program to customize the color scheme of Windows Aero.

A configuration window is displayed on first startup. It is necessary to enter a US zip code and validate it. The program displays the current location automatically after verification.

Three additional configuration options are available. It is possible to switch the color type from temperature based to conditions, define the color range and if the night mode should be enabled or not.

Lets take a closer look at how the settings change the color scheme:

Temperature-based color changes

• Minimum and Maximum values let you define your own range of colors
• Maximum temperature (or higher) is always red
• Minimum temperature (or lower) is always purple
• Color is calculated based on minimum and maximum values. For example, given a minimum of zero, and a maximum of 100, if the temperature is 50 degrees, the calculated color would be a shade of green

Condition-based color changes

• UI is grey if it’s cloudy, blue if it’s sunny, white if it’s snowing, dark grey if it’s raining, etc

“Night Mode”

• Dims the Aero colors when the sun sets (retrieves sunset time from weather server). Colors appear dimmer and less vibrant
• Brightens them when the sun rises the next day

Aero Weather needs to be running in the background all the time. The program has two main purposes. It can be used to get an impression of the current weather conditions or temperature level based on the system’s color scheme. Besides that, it changes the color scheme of Aero frequently, which is great for users who do not like to see the same color scheme day in day out.

Aero Weather is available for all Windows operating systems supporting Aero. (via)

Screenshots with Aero effects enabled look unprofessional, largely because of the transparency effect, as the underlying colors of windows or the desktop are automatically included in the screenshot.

Take a look at two screenshots of the same window, the first with Aero enabled.

screenshots windows aero

screenshot without aero

The second screenshot was taken with the portable software Shotty, and Windows Aero enabled. An alternative to that is to change the default theme of Windows Vista or Windows 7, so that Aero is disabled. This allows the creation of screenshots without transparency and shadow effects.

But Shotty is probably the better solution for many users, who want to work with Windows Aero, but need to take screenshots without Aero effects.

Shotty comes with an installer, that offers to install the program or extract it and make it a portable application. An icon is placed in the system tray upon startup, which contains configuration settings, and links to program features.

shotty screenshot

Screenshots are created by pressing Ctrl-Print on the keyboard, or by left-clicking the system tray icon. Both can take screenshots of the full screen, or a single window, but not a custom selection.

Shotty takes high quality screenshots by default, this and the default keyboard shortcut can be changed in the program’s options.

The screenshot is displayed directly in the included (basic) image editor if the keyboard shortcut has been used to take it. The system tray icon on the other hand offers controls to directly save the screenshot, send it to the editor or to one of the supported image hosts.

shotty controls

The image editor includes several popular image editing options, including the ability to highlight or diffuse an area, add text to the screenshot, or to cut the image to keep only the selected region.

image editor

Screenshots that have been edited may be saved to the local computer, uploaded to one of the supported image hosts, or discarded. Shotty supports four different image hosts currently. There is unfortunately no option to add a custom ftp server to the upload options.

Shotty is an excellent tool to create screenshots in Windows, especially for users who regularly take screenshots but do not want Aero effects included in the shots. The download is provided at the developer’s website, the program is compatible with Windows 2000 or alter and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, which is included in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

We have monitored the cpu usage and memory usage with Windows Aero on and off on our test system and were not able to detect any wild swings one way or the other. Systems without Aero seem to use less RAM, 50-60 Megabytes less in our case. While this does not seem much on a system with 8 Gigabytes it could prove to be useful on systems with 1 Gigabyte or less.

windows aero enabled

windows aero disabled

How To Disable Windows Aero in Windows 7

It is thankfully not complicated to turn off Windows Aero in Windows 7, all it takes is to select one of the available Windows 7 themes without Aero support. Start with a right-click on the computer desktop and the selection of Personalize from the context menu.

personalize menu

This opens the Personalization Control Panel applet, displaying all themes that are installed on the operating system. Most themes located in here are usually original Microsoft themes, Windows 7 shipped with both Aero Themes, and Basic and High Contrast Themes.

personalization

To disable Windows Aero scroll down to the Basic and High Contrast Themes and select one of them with a double-click. We suggest to pick the Windows 7 Basic theme as it resembles the default theme but with Aero turned off. But regardless of the choice Aero is disabled after the selection of the new theme.

The theme is applied instantly and it is possible to use the icons at the bottom of the screen to change its appearance, including changing the desktop background, color scheme or sounds.

It is possible to enable Windows Aero again by performing the same steps and selecting one of the Windows Aero enabled themes from the list of available ones. The easiest way to spot the difference is to look at the titlebar of any window, if it is transparent Aero is enabled, if it is not Aero is disabled.

The vulnerability was discovered in the Windows Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll) which is used by “desktop composition to blend the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and DirectX drawing”.

The vulnerability received a preliminary Exploitable Index rating of 3:

Although it is possible that the vulnerability could allow code execution, successful code execution is unlikely due to memory randomization. In most scenarios, it is much more likely that an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could cause the affected system to stop responding and automatically restart.

The vulnerability is only affecting Windows systems with the Windows Aero theme installed and in use. Windows Aero is not the default theme in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Microsoft’s suggested action is to disable the Windows Aero theme for the time being until a security patch for the vulnerability is released.

To disable Windows Aero by changing the theme, perform the following steps for each user on a system:
1.
Click Start, select the Control Panel, and then click on Appearance and Personalization.
2.
Under the Personalization category, click on Change the Theme.
3.
Scroll to the bottom of the listed themes and select one of the available Basic and High Contrast Themes.

The security advisory and the blog post announcing the security vulnerability contain additional information.

Update: The 64-bit vulnerability has been patched. Windows users who have downloaded all recent security patches for their operating system, or installed the first Service Pack for it, are safe from the exploit. Users who have disabled the Aero theme because of the exploit can turn it back on. This is done by following the same steps outlined above.

Aero in Windows 7 introduced several new features like Aero Peek that allowed users to preview thumbnails or program windows by hovering over the icon in the Windows taskbar, Aero Snap which allowed users to snap windows to the right or left side of the screen and to minimize or maximize them or Aero Shake which basically minimized all windows but the active one on execution.

Windows Aero Blur has been revised in Windows 7 as well. The feature blurs the backgrounds of toolbars, taskbars and windows. A good example of how Aero Blur affects a window can be seen in the Gadgets window.

Windows 7 Aero Blur

Windows 7 No Aero Blur

Windows 7 Aero Blur Tweaker is a software program to quickly disable or enable Blur in Windows 7. The developer has created both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of the program that displays two buttons of which one is active at all times.

The two buttons displayed hide blur or show blur. A click on a button will perform the operation which is immediately visible in the operating system.

We had to run the program with administrative rights for it to function correctly.

Windows 7 Aero Blur Tweaker is available for download at the developer’s website. It can also be downloaded from Softpedia in case the download at the developer’s homepage is not working correctly. The program seems to need to Microsoft .net Framework.

AeroZoom is a lightweight Autohotkey program that turns the Magnifier application of Windows 7 into a program that can become useful during presentations as well.

The program adds a series of mouse only controls to the Magnifier including the ability to zoom in and out by left-clicking and using the mouse wheel. That alone is a handy feature as it allows users to control the magnifier only with the mouse.

The software runs in the background most of the time. Its control panel can be opened by pressing the left and right mouse buttons at the same time. This opens a list of buttons that can be used to change the state of specific features of the Windows 7 Magnifier including colors, mouse, keyboard and text states.

Additional buttons are available to display the magnifier window, stop the magnifier process, reset all settings and to open the Snipping Tool, Wordpad and Calculator.

AeroZoom is a portable software program that is offered as a right-hand and left-hand version. Especially the ability to control the zooming with just one hand and the computer mouse is worth noting. The program works best with a wireless mouse as it can be used from further away during the presentation. The lefthand versions of the software program are stored in the same program directory.

It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. (via Addictive Tips)

These features are not available in Windows XP or Windows Vista. AquaSnap brings those two features to those two operating systems. The program calls them AquaSnap and AquaShake which basically ports the Windows 7 features to the operating systems.

The developer offers the original features and modified versions that come with additional settings and options.

AquaSnap for instance comes with four different modes with one being an exact copy of AeroSnap in Windows 7. The other three modes add additional regions at the borders of the screen. AquaSnap simple for instance makes use of the bottom border as well so that it becomes possible to display two windows horizontally and vertically. This is topped by the advanced version that supports a total of eight different regions.

AquaShake can also mimic the AeroShake option of Windows 7 or use an advanced version to shake a window so that it will remain always on top. Several sliders are provided to change the opacity and shake detection.

The third feature of AquaSnap is a glass effect. This is turned off by default. AquaSnap brings features of Windows 7 to Windows XP and Windows Vista. Those features might be interesting for some users. The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Update: Even Windows 7 users may want to consider using the program as it extends the functionality of Aero Snap that is provided by their operating system natively. the software is offered as a portable version and installer at the developer website.

To be precise: Windows Aero is not available in Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows 7 Starter and only partially enabled in Windows 7 Home Basic.

But there is another problem that users can encounter when trying to get Windows Aero to work. Microsoft has build in a hardware check that performs a check of the operating system before enabling Aero. It will block Aero from being executed iIf the operating system fails that check. This can usually be attributed to not meeting one or multiple of the minimum hardware requirements to run Aero.

Aero Enabler has been created by the developer to enable Windows Aero in Windows Vista and Windows 7. It’s primary purpose is to enable Aero in Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows 7 Home Basic. It will only be enabled if the computer system passes the hardware check to ensure that the system will run stable even with Aero enabled.

The minimum requirements to run Windows Aero are:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of system memory
• DirectX 9 compatible graphics processor with a Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver, Pixel shader 2.0 in hardware, and a minimum of 128 MB of Video RAM
• 40 GB hard drive with 15 GB free space

The software comes with a switch to disable the hardware check which only makes sense if the hardware check failed although the hardware should be capable of running Windows Aero. Enabling Aero on a computer system that does not meet the requirements could result in all kinds of problems including performance and stability issues.

Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Basic users who want to give Aero Enabler a try can download the software at the developer’s website.. (via Techie Buzz)

This Windows Aero Glass feature is now available in Windows XP thanks to Fast Aero. Fast Aero, a portable software, is a work in progress with the ultimate goal to provide the Aero Glass feature for all Windows XP users. The current version of Fast Aero provides the Glass effect on most – if not all – windows that are open in Windows XP. Please keep in mind that only new windows will display the Windows Aero Glass effect. Some can be minimized and maximized again while others need to be closed and reopened.

The default language of the software is Polish but it can easily be changed in the config.ini to English so that the language line looks like this: language=english. The only options provided by the interface are to enable or disable the blur effect. Version 1.3 which is supposed to come out in December will offer additional features like finetuning the blur intensity and refresh interval.

The Windows XP Aero Glass effect looks pretty solid in this version. Users who like to add some special bling to their operating system will surely love Fast Aero. Other users might feel that its resource usage does not justify the visual gain. It comes down to personal choice and preference in the end.

Update: Fast Aero development has stopped. I have uploaded the last public version of the Windows XP Aero application to the Ghacks Technology News server. You can download the program from the following link: Fast Aero (442)

It is apparently not a big problem to enable the Vista Aero interface in Windows Vista Home Basic even though it is officially not included in that version. All you need to do is to change the values of two registry keys and restart Windows Vista afterwards. Open the registry by pressing Windows + R, typing regedit and hitting enter afterwards.

Navigate to the key Hkey_Current_User \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ DWM \ and change the value of the entry Composition to 1 and the value of CompositionPolicy to 0.

Now you can select the Aero interface by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalize from the menu. Switch to Colors and Appearance and click on Classic Appearance Properties.. and choose Windows Vista Aero from the menu.

Update: Microsoft has continued the naming confusion with the release of Vista’s successor, Windows 7. Windows 7 did ship with a professional edition that replaced Vista’s business edition. The breakdown in Home Basic and Home Premium has not been changed though, and Windows 7 Home Basic users face the same restrictions that Windows Vista owners faced when the operating system comes out.

The program that offers a similar function for older Windows versions is called Madotate. It adds another icon to every window next to the icons on the top right corner. If the new icon is pressed the window will be changed from 2d into 3d. Every window has a short tab that displays the title of the window. Left-clicking a 3D window changes it again from 3d into 2D mode, you can move it around by keeping the left mouse button pressed. Right-clicking the window makes it possible to change the point of view for that window which means that you can give it more space or less space on your desktop.

The most important aspect of the application is that it uses only a few megabytes of system memory will the feature in Windows Vista requires a lot.