So when the issue with cleartype will be fixed

If you look closely at Windows Aero you will notice that the rendering is greyscale over anything thats semi transparent.  For example the breadcrumb bar in Vista, the right hand side of the startmenu, the taskbar etc.

This is because Cleartype rendering requires knowledge of what is under the text and this cannot be fully known with semi transparency. 

I believe you have probably enabled WB explorer background transparency and thats why WB is being forced into rendering greyscale on those parts.

Altho im on a posting hiatus, sorta, I have to second this, most areas I see in vista text do not appear to be antialiased, I use Calibri almost exclusively, and frankly, it looks awful, start menu, taskbar, explorer windows, context menus, etc..

I could I suppose remove all font references and use default fonts but that would mean replacing and updating them all again once this is fixed, as of now, for me, it's probably the most displeasing part of using WB on Vista and really, makes a great theme, look bad.

In reference to your last post Neil, even using opaque backgrounds, doesnt make much of a difference. My current themes menus and start menu are opaque and althought the text isn't THAT bad, it's nothing like the clarity it should be.

Actually, its slightly better over an opaque BG image in explorer.. but that defeats the purpose of being able to use Transparent commandbars and infopanes... as soon as I stop using a slightly transparent background, I also lose transparency everywhere else.  

@ Neil Banfield,


All right, I see there's same issue with regular Vista theme engine, i.e
cleartype is disabled on transparent areas.
Curiously, even when I disable transparency,
Vista disable cleartype on area "supposed to be" transparent. Dumb.

However, I've tested Windowsblinds with 100% opaque theme,
and still there's a problem :
* cleartype doesn't work on start menu
* cleartype doesn't work on "breadcrumb navigation".

Also I tried to remove transparency using "Explorer backgrounds" tab of
windowsblinds, and cleartype is not back in the explorer (and that's part where
cleartype is the most usefull , I think).


Finally, I used an opaque theme, and then used a program like "blend" from "Lord Devrexter"
to induce transparency (here : http://devrexster.googlepages.com/, sorry I don't like windows fx ).
Cleartype stayed even on transparent area, so technically it should be possible.

@vStyler


yes, I've been using your rapture theme, and calibri really looked bad, especially in explorer.
I've checked option "I do not want to use any system wide fonts defined by this skin"
and it looks overall better, but still far from perfect in explorer.

I wouldn't say there's no anti-aliasing, but calibri look messed up with the default small
size in explorer. Are you sure Standard Font Smoothing or Cleartype is enabled on your system ?

Me? I think its been turned on on my system since before it was invented   

Hopefully Neil can work thru this somehow and at least get it representd correctly in opaque areas of WB as it certain is of much poorer quality compared to XP.

The reason I use it in my blinds and will continue to do so is so that when it IS fixed I won't have to update them all. Anything else seems awfully bulky to me thesedays.

I just realised that right-click menu has Cleartype despite being transparent .
There's really NO CONSISTENCY in the way Cleartype is handled.