Comments on: Leopard’s Menu Bar

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:18:48 +0000

Apple don't like things to be too configurable. Lots of options everywhere make things complicated and cluttered. But I think they should publish the defaults commands for things like this so that advanced users can change them by hand, or make a combined utility to change all of these options from one app (like XP Power Toys)

By: Philippe

Philippe — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:23:42 +0000

I don't understand why Apple didnt put a small app to modify opacity of the menu bar and dock. It seems so simple to do for these guys and still it hasnt been added on release. Maybe they are keeping these little addin for the next release?

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:23:33 +0000

Fred wrote:
"The menubar opacity is just a plist value, even if they don't expose it, it's just a defaults command away"

So now that Leopard is released, can you tell us which plist to edit or which defaults command to issue to change this?

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:38:47 +0000

It would seem that, with the way Leopard is coded, my idea of editing the image file itself may be better.

By: akatsuki

akatsuki — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:15:11 +0000

I would imagine that somewhere in the system is a preference to set the transparency. So the question really is:

default write????

By: Ahruman

Ahruman — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:04:42 +0000

Bit late and all, but that “idea copied from vista” was itself copied from OS X 10.0–10.2. At least, when I saw Aero Glass for the first time, I immediately thought of the silly transparent title bars we used to have. Of course, Microsoft may have innovated that one on their very own; it’s not hard to come up with an awful idea.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:22:23 +0000

A useful behind-the-menubar tool would be one that changes color as a means of notification of some condition.

For instance, if a developer is running an app that is pointing at a production database, the menubar could turn bright red.

Or maybe the root account could be set up with a login script that tells the under-menubar app to display black-and-yellow caution stripes under the menubar.

In general, though, I'm not a fan of the transparency. It's copying one of the more reviled ideas from Vista.

By: Will Parker

Will Parker — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:56:10 +0000

@Daniel Jalkut:

"Remember the Apple menu in the center of the menu bar? That was funny, too."

Actually, it was much, much funnier than that.
(BTW, Daniel's referring to pre-Public Beta versions of Mac OS X.)

It wasn't a menu. It was just a 'decorative' Apple icon.

So useful.

By: Peter Maurer

Peter Maurer — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:06:35 +0000

@Michael: My pleasure.

@Jono: As Michael already pointed out, someone may either be guessing or breaking his NDA. But even if it's true -- this one took approximately 5 minutes; and if all else fails, it can still serve as a "How to write my own MenuShade competitor" tutorial. You could even extend it to let the user choose a custom background pattern.

By: Jono

Jono — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:50:02 +0000

Someone has already said (that's tried used a beta copy of Leopard) that you can turn off the transparency for the menu bar.
So it looks like there doesn't need to be any workarounds or hacks.