I'm trying to make my Windows 10 install look as much like Windows 7 as possible. So far I have pretty much everything (blurred taskbar, aero orb, aero glass, win7 theme atlas), but there's one thing that doesn't work right. Windows 10's title bar buttons (min,max,close) extend the full height of the title bar itself. What I want to know is if there's some program that will let me change the height of the buttons, but not the title bar as well (WindowMetrics in the registry doesn't let me do this). Instead of it looking like the first image (ignore the black bar and TeamViewer button), I'd like it to look more like the second. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

This is something I found that shows what I want in Windows 10. It's an older build, but I don't see how there could be a very drastic different between such close builds.

Edited August 17, 201511 yr by Zacharee

Yes, making the caption buttons fit the full height of the title bar is something Microsoft pulled out of its... hat right at the end.

 

You can make caption buttons a few pixels shorter in the theme atlas, but I'm not sure there's any way to make them anything like the way they looked in Win 7 through just atlas graphics changes. 

 

It's possible Big Muscle's companion .layout file could be used to help with the task, but it's not documented yet as he hasn't released his Windows 10-compatible Aero Glass tool.

 

This is the best I've been able to get them to look with what we know today (noting that the title bar is shorter owing to changes in the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] key).

 

 

-Noel

Edited August 17, 201511 yr by NoelC

That's disappointing. How would it be possible to make the buttons shorter without messing things up? I mostly want to just make it so the buttons don't go below the title bar by a few pixels. They get cut off in Chrome and extend slightly into other windows, such as CMD.

You can make buttons images smaller and ajust sizing margins into your visual style. This makes them "visualy" smaller (in fact they continue to adapt themself to title bar height but you don't see it). I think it's also possible with .layout for atlas, I will try it in my Windows 10 vm

Edited August 17, 201511 yr by MTDirector

I have no idea how to edit theme atlases. Would you be able to if I sent you the one I have?

After some testing in vm, I am able to reduce their size only with full theme and not with atlas. I can make a Windows 7 Aero visual style for 10 (or if you have an atlas you want to use, send me it and I will make a theme with it)

Here's the msstyles file I have.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-mjmplK3CyJekZoczE2aEVQWW8/view?usp=sharing

That's disappointing. How would it be possible to make the buttons shorter without messing things up? I mostly want to just make it so the buttons don't go below the title bar by a few pixels. They get cut off in Chrome and extend slightly into other windows, such as CMD.

 

Well, it wasn't disappointing for long.  Big Muscle's latest beta release now allows caption button sizing.

 

-Noel

The problem there is that the latest update breaks my computer. I'm currently in the middle of running chkdsk because I did something while disabling aerohost so I cold roll back to the older version. Windows Store and built-on apps no longer work. I'll try the version again after without the ModernFrame DLL, but I don't have high hopes.

OK. I have everything fixed now, including metro apps. The newest build of Glass8 still freezes my computer though, even without ModernFrame. Any ideas?

I'm sorry to hear that happened to you.  Knock on wood I'm not seeing any problems with build 149.

 

I suggest posting your debug.log entries for range of times you tested the new build in Big Muscle's thread and reporting to him what happened so he can have the best chance of fixing it.

 

-Noel

What's added in 149 that gives the ability to change the button size? Is it a registry key or is there a new version of the GUI?

He added an entry you can specify in the .layout file that accompanies the theme atlas file.

 

In other words, when you use a replacement theme atlas file, say xyzzy.png, you can also have a file next to it named xyzzy.png.layout in which you can specify a CaptionHeight=n entry.  You could, in the case of a 3rd party theme, extract the theme atlas png file from the STREAM resource of the .msstyles file, then add the .layout file with

 

See:  http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173379-windows-10-development/page-56#entry1105793

 

-Noel

Hmm. I wish I could get it. Is it possible that it breaks when the files are under C:\AeroGlass\w64 instead of just C:\AeroGlass?

OK. Build 160 fixed everything. But does anyone have a Windows 7 theme atlas?