Microsoft Big Ugly X

I don't know about the gray area, but the X looks like it is for closing the window.

I have this problem too using Office 10, but it only occurs with certain Windowblinds skins, so it is evidently skin specific.  Try applying a different skin and it might fix the problem.  Trying to adapt old skins to new software is a real pain, some of my own skins do this to Office 10 even, and I have no idea how to fix it.

yeah, I've noticed over the years that Windowblinds doesn't always play nice with Office...

I also tried excluding all the Office 10 applications from Windowblinds, but that doesn't change anything. 

Edit:  I noticed also that with each skin I applied in Windowblinds, the titlebar glyphs in Office 10, even if they did not go large, shifted some either left or right.  Every skin I applied change something about them.

To Stardock: Is there any way to build something directly into Windowblinds to completely exclude Microsoft Office 10 from being skinned?

My personal feelings are that it a skinning thing. There have been some really great looking new skins I can't use because I use Office Word and Excel a lot. The background is sometimes different colors. Have had the Grey like you show and had a Blue type orb color. you ought to try and see what you are typing with the Blue color as your eyes go off center. I don't know about Tom's (Lightstar) early skins but can say his latest updated ones work fine and don't effect Office at all. Also Karen's (k10w3) skins also don't effect Office. You may wish to try one of those skins to rule out any computer problem but i'm sure you will find out it's only certain skins. There are many other nice skins that play well with Office. One last point is that some of them don't work well with PS and other programs. So I can't help but not knowing for sure that the color is being changed when skins are being made.

If its skin related, why won't the stupid buttons change when I change it back to classic XP aRgg. Would unistalling windowsblind help? I really don't want to change skin, I really love this one. darn it, I was gonna get PS also =[

I understand you like the skin but did you try one I mentioned. LINK If this skin works than it's how the other skin was made in Skinstudio. If you can figure out what was changed in SS than you can change it back. Give this skin try, what do you have to lose. However if you still have the problem I have no answers for you, sorry. Don't un-install WB unless you have the problem with the other skin I mentioned and what does this do with getting PS?

Oh, I misinterpreted what you meant by PS and other programs.

And.

I have looked at them, the red and "fangs" idea just wasn't appealing to me. Nor are the zombies and stuff.

Isn't the point of choosing a theme is so that you can personalize it the way you want it to be? I don't want to open my computer every time and look at something that hurts my eyes. All I am wondering about is if I can reconfigure something to change those ugly buttons.

You also mentioned the ugly Grey and that is what I was trying to tell you. You don't have to like the fans, etc. skin just wanted to show you it was controlled by the skinners and what they skin. If you just installed it than you would see the changes. You would see that you had the regular White background in office the the min, max, and close buttons would also change.I take it the skin you are liking to use is a WB skin. I don't know how to do it but if you opened that skin in skinstudio and changed the graphics it would give you a different look.

Without installing another skin just open WB and apply the windows Aero skin. you will now see the changes. So yes WB skins change it.

Oh I see, yeah I already figure out it was skin related a few posts back lol. Thanks for the help though, strange thing is that even though I change back the theme to windows xp classic, the big ugly x's still stay there. But the grey typing area disperse . How strange.

Regarding the grey, it could be a system color setting in the skin but I don't know for sure.  If you like you could try to change it within Windowblinds Configuration similarly to the way I described here:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/400010

I doubt that it would be the "Buttonface" setting but you could try to find the shade of grey that you're wanting to get rid of.  Best to copy off the skin's directory before you start in case you want to dump everything you've changed.

No idea about the X.

Go to control panel>personalization>window color>advanced appearance settings>click on item>click on window>click on white box>apply>close. Simple!

RJC

But won't the skin change it back the next time he loads it or boots?

Office 2010/2007 on Windows XP will always show a custom skin for the titlebars of the main windows.  It also does this on Vista/7 when the DWM is disabled.  On Vista/7 with the DWM enabled the frames skin (it is also possible to make a WB skin force the skin on Vista/7 when the DWM is off, but this is not enabled by default).

The size of the X will be controlled by the size of the OS caption height and it looks like the skin you are using has a very large caption

The grey will be coming from one of the skin system colours, probably the window colour which is why exclusions make no difference as colours are system wide.  A different skin would probably not have this issue and this is one of the many reasons why dark skins are not ideal on Windows.

Just tested your caption height theory Neil, and you are right.  Any caption size above 30 causes this issue.  Just another limitation imposed on skinners by Microsoft. 

Ya the dark skins are what got me poking around in the Windowblinds Configuration / System Colors feature in the first place for Office and Adobe.  I've had fairly decent luck tweaking them there, that's a handy feature Neil.

VERY INTERESTING.

O. I use black themes because I heard it was easier on the environment. Plus goes nicely with my wall paper. Where do I adjust the caption size? I can't find it lol.

If you adjust the titlebar (caption) size without adjusting the actual image too you may have problems.  But if you want to try open the skin in SkinStudio and click on "Edit Titlebars and Window Frames", then in the window that opens up click on "Caption", next on the bottom click on "Extra Settings" and scroll down the page until you see "OS Caption Height" and adjust it there.  Be sure to remember what it was set at it in case you need to put it back.