transluscent windows

david101 · June 5, 2003 4:29AM

On the post your desktop thread i keep seeing transluscent/transparent windows.

I like this but don't know how to do it. Is this a standard osX feature or an app?

Apologies if this is a stupid question, but i've only been a Mac user for three days as i bought the 12" powerbook at the weekend. Finding the mac experience very pleasureable so far.

ast3r3x · June 5, 2003 5:56AM

Quote:

Originally posted by david101

...Apologies if this is a stupid question...

no such thing as a stupid question, just stupid people

...and i'm one of them because i can't tell you how to do this, although i think its possible, i think you have to edit some files...i'm sure somone will be more then happy to correct me and probably i'll be completely wrong

airsluf · June 5, 2003 9:01AM

cubedude · June 5, 2003 9:26AM

Better yet, look it up on MacUpdate.

Maybe what you are thinking of is Konfabulator.

mlnjr · June 5, 2003 10:14AM

TinkerTool? if david101 bought a new Powerbook over the weekend then his Mac has 10.2.x installed on it, including the latest version of Terminal. Under the Terminal menu next to the apple, david101, select Window Settings and navigate to the Color settings pane. Mere mortals can set the transparency of your Terminal window, among other things, there.

If you're talking about more than just making your Terminal window transparent then, yes, maybe TinkerTool is the way to go.

david101 · June 5, 2003 10:47AM

I must confess that i don't know which 10.x.x i have.

I don't know what terminal is, i need some kind of guide for switchers.

I was pissed when i found out that the prices had dropped two days after i bought it, but pleased when i rang John Lewis half an hour ago and they agreed to refund the difference.

mlnjr · June 5, 2003 10:59AM

david101, under the Apple menu in the top left corner, select "About This Mac". If your Powerbook is only a week old, you will most probably have a variety of 10.2.x installed. The menu to the right of that Apple changes according to which application is running in the foreground. To have access to the Terminal menu, you need to have Terminal running in the foreground.

Terminal is the command line interface tool that is included with Mac OS X. Changing the color of the text displayed in the Terminal, changing the color of the background and even making the window translucent are all things you can do to customize the appearance of the Terminal window. Is that the transparency you were referring to in the desktop pictures you've seen?

If it wasn't the Terminal you were talking about, which windows were you thinking of making transparent? A little more info, and I'm sure the folks here could be of more help.

ghost_user_name · June 5, 2003 4:16PM

As others have said, the Terminal can be made transparent, but that's all. A very few number of apps have options to arbitrarily set their windows' transparency/opacity level.

Most likely, what you have been seeing are widgets for the app Konfabulator. These are self-contained little windows that usually have one simple little task like displaying the weather forecast or cover art for iTunes music or the local TV lineup.

I think everyone else is missing another big one here:Unsanity's WindowShade X. This is a hack you can purchase that will allow you to set any existing window to be partially transparent or collapsed to just the height of its title bar. Be forewarned, though, that some people experience system instabilities or other problems after using these hacks, but they are fairly easy to remove.

Since this is a thread more related to what utilities can be used to make things transparent (and there's no built-in control for this in the OS), I'm moving this to the Software forum.

transluscent windows

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