SillyDog701

[Antony]

Some users' Leopard menubar may be solid instead of translucent.

From the screenshot below, the menubar is translucent. The menu itself, although not well noticeable from screenshot below, is less translucent (and blurs out the objects behind).


Apple tells you why.

The translucent Leopard menu bar appears on most computers that are equipped with a graphics card which is compatible with Core Image.

Some graphics cards, such as an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200, may not have the necessary OpenGL capabilities to display a translucent menu bar even though they are compatible with Core Image. Those cards should render most effects, but not the translucent menu bar.

I am sure some users prefer solid colour through out the menubar. This is not a user-adjustable option directly from Leopard's System Preference. (Third party applications may be able to tweak this setting.)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

[Antony]

For comparison, this is the solid menubar of Leopard on PowerBook G4 (1.33GHz).



The menu itself is slightly translucent, and blurs out the objects behind.

Thanks to Jack Lin from applewoods for providing the screenshot.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

[Pu7o]

I am sure some users prefer solid colour through out the menubar. This is not a user-adjustable option directly from Leopard's System Preference. (Third party applications may be able to tweak this setting.)

Yes. For those who are interested in a solid menubar in Leopard, you might want to consider OpaqueMenuBar (Note: I did not test this, as I still don't have Leopard).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2 x64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070925 BonEcho/2.0.0.7 (mmoy CE K8C-X04)

[Antony]

It seems like there are quite a few people don't like the translucency in menu bar.

Besides OpaqueMenuBar pointed out by Pu7o, there are a few more ways...

Steve Miner pointed out a hack, in system configuration file, [tt]/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer.plist[/tt]
Add an entry like

Code: Select all

<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
<dict>
      <key>CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE</key>
      <string>1</string>
</dict>

will get a plain white menu bar.

Editing this file is NOT recommended for average end users.

Then there's Menu Bar Tint to give the "white" (opaque) menu bar a touch.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

[Antony]

Users of Mac OS X 10.5.2 (or later) don't need to hack the translucent setting of Leopard's menu bar.

As of Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update, users can change the translucent option from System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, Desktop:

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12