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June 18, 2007

software

We need to go back…to a non-transparent menu bar

Posted Jun. 18, ’07, 8:43 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

nontransparent.jpgAside from the state of third-party iPhone development, one of the most contentious issues at WWDC this year was Leopard’s new menu bar. Mucking with the Mac OS’s longest surviving UI widget has caused a lot of friction in the past (anybody remember the non-functional Apple icon from OS X’s Developer Preview?), so it’s little surprise that the transparent effect that appears in Leopard has some crying “bleh.”

Fortunately, we’ve got Peter Maurer and the Many Tricks crew around for just such an eventuality. Maurer, the author of Butler, Service Scrubber, Witch, and other useful utilities, has come up with a hack that’ll stop Leopard’s menu bar from going the way of Michael J. Fox’s hand in Back to the Future, aptly titled “Non-Transparent Menu Bar.”

Just pop the app open and select “Toggle Level” from the application menu. It’ll even give us Tiger users a glimpse of what the future looks like (i.e., mildly overcast). You’ll need to do some extra tweaking if you want the app to run in the background, but hopefully that won’t be too much trouble by the time Leopard hits the streets for the rest of us. Unless Apple would be so kind as to include a way to turn the transparency on and off.

[via TUAW]


3 Comments

Rory Author Profile Page said:

I really hope Apple provides an 'opaque' option...I hate this transparent menu bar business. Not only does it just scream 'VISTA!!!' but it looks totally out of place with the opaque unified theme. I'm not counting on Apple to make the transparency optional, so a little app like this would be really nice.

June 18, 2007 9:49 AM
Urban Lindeskog said:

I cannot see the any practical use of an transparent menu bar either...

There's nothing interesting underneath the menu bar anyways, unless you count full screen views (like video or iPhoto).

And in that case, I'd rather have a legible menu bar that drops out of view completely when applicable, like the status quo.

June 18, 2007 12:57 PM
Mark U. said:

Have we verified for sure that the transparency isn't optional? One blog report I read (can't remember where it was now) from someone who had been hands-on with the Leopard beta indicated that the menu bar could be set to opaque if the user chose. But I haven't seen that comment repeated in any other discussion on the topic, although none of the other discussion participants claim to have "touched" the beta.

June 18, 2007 4:20 PM

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