Themers, A Question: How to Darken the Scroll Bar Thumbs?

[NoelC]

I don't really want to re-theme everything. The standard Aero theme plus BigMuscle's Aero Glass plus my themeatlas.png file looks pretty good. But one thing I'd like to do is to slightly darken the scrollbar thumb in most windows to make it a bit easier to spot.

I found a way to darken the scroll thumbs in Internet Explorer, which apparently runs off different settings than everything else in the system (great idea, Microsoft). All you have to do to do that is create a simple CSS file with a text editor, store it on your disk, then instruct IE11 to use it via the Internet Options > General tab > [Accessibility] button, Format Documents Using My Style Sheet option.

html {scrollbar-base-color: darkgray;}

That yields this:

I'd just like to be able to set the scroll bars on all the other windows, in general, to be a little darker as well (ideally while retaining a dark to darker animation when you hover over them). Is there a specific registry setting the stock Windows 8.1 theme implementation uses to set the color of scroll thumbs? If not, is something used out of the theme atlas that I missed?

Or is it hard-coded and really does need a theme replacement to be changed?

Sorry for my naivety about this, and thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge.

-Noel

[MrGRiM]

The thumb button for aero is part of the msstyles and is not a color property, they are images, if you want to change the color then you will need to edit the images, the only problem is that it will then remove the signature on the aero theme.

To save you the problem I made one with darker thumb buttons, it was not as easy as I thought but I did it without damaging the original Theme Atlas, this means you can still use your custom Theme Atlas with Aero Glass.

To use this theme you will need to enable the theme signature bypass on aero glass.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/0yyxuubwjbgv6of/Aero2.zip

Edited November 22, 2013 by MrGRiM

[NoelC]

Awesome! I didn't expect a custom theme developed for me - thanks man!

I've just put it in and had a bit of a scout around - it really does make spotting the scroll thumb easier. You've just made my desktop a little easier to use.

It seems Visual Studio doesn't use the theme color, though, so I still have to figure out how to darken those scroll bar elements.

Thanks again!

-Noel

[NoelC]

Everything seems to work fine with the updated "dark scrollbar thumbs" theme, but I made one interesting observation.

Outlook 2003 comes up with its own "blue" theme if the Windows 8.1 stock theme is active, but a completely different theme that seems to follow the rest of the system settings when your modified theme is active, MrGRiM. Note this over and under comparison of the top part of the application...

This is not a problem at all; in fact I kind of like the more integrated look. It's just curious that it would behave so differently. It's like your theme has found a way to be compatible with this old legacy application.

Anyway, thanks again, MrGRiM.

-Noel