I'm using Y'z Toolbar to mod the buttons in the Windows Explorer, which mostly works fine. The only thing still bothering me are those horizontal and vertical lines seperating the different toolbars - is there any registry-mod or tool to remove them?
mm. i think they are based on what the skinner chooses. i could be wrong though
on a side point though, was VS is that? is it longhorn alternative? it looks nice
Yeah, it definitely depends on the VS... But I've grown to love this one (yes, it is Longhorn Alternative) and just hope there's a workaround to make those lines disappear.
You'd have to manually edit the theme yourself, /me never figured out how to do that.
Please search the forums before posting new threads.
A simple search for "lines" results in the following:
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread....highlight=lines
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=20492
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread....highlight=lines
Thanks for the links, voltaic... I was searching for "bars" and "throbbers" but not for "lines", that was my mistake.. 
But the elder threads are not really helpful in my case, the tool 3D Color Changer is only useful to change the color of the lines, but there's no help on how to make them disappear completely...
I believe one of the threads I linked to mentions this, but I'll repeat it anyway.
The way the visual styles are rendered in XP require you to have certain sections of the window have solid colors. 3d dark shadow, highlight colors, etc. are all solid color properties coded into the visual style via an editor program (StyleBuilder for example).
Now, if you have a visual style that has a gradient or a graphic in the toolbar area, then you'll find out that it's not possible to remove all the lines completely. What you can do, however, is edit the visual style so that the solid line colors match the gradient as closely as possible.
The horizontal lines you are referring to can be removed without editing, if you hide the "file, view, edit.." menu from your toolbar. Or you can try moving the menu itself to the right side of the toolbar buttons. In essence, to get rid of the horizontal line you need to get the toolbar down to a single row.
The vertical lines require a little more work. You need to get yourself an editor and start editing the visual style file. Now, I'm sure this has been mentioned in the forums before but I'll regurgitate it for you.
First thing you want to do is to make sure the following properties under "Globals" are the same color:
EdgeLightColor
EdgeHighLightColor
EdgeDkShadowColor
EdgeFillColor
After doing that you need to go to "SysMetrics" section of the theme and set the followingto the same RGB color:
MenuHighlight
BtnShadow
BtnHighlight
DkShadow3d
Also, check the $ButtonFace$ and $EdgeShadowColor$ values under "Substitution" to make sure they are also set to the same value.
All the preceding properties I mentioned should have the same color values.
Concerning everything above, make sure you test out the visual style through the process to make verify everything looks right. I often notice that the visual style will act erratically if you set all of the colors I mentioned to the same value. For example you might get thick black lines for every shadow color. The easiest way to prevent this is to use slightly different RGB values for different properties..
For example, if you have BtnHighlight = "139 159 184", set your DkShadow3d = "139 159 183".
The difference in color will be unnoticable (to most at least) and the theme will look seamless. This way you won't be setting all the colors to the exact same value.
Another advantage of doing what I described above is that you will notice all context menus will have a uniform color. This means the horizontal separator lines in context menus (right-click menu for example) will be gone. Personally, I find that more appealing as it looks similar to some OSX themes.
This is by no means a tutorial, as that would take quite a bit of time to write. For the time being this is just a quick reference to help you out. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
If you get stuck or can't manage to modify the theme you can send it over to me and I'll try to make the lines go away for you.
Thanks a lot voltaic, very helpful post... But now I kinda miss the seperator lines at other places (such as context menus), so I guess I'll eventually end up using the unmodified msstyle. I was hoping that there was a tool similar to Y'z Toolbar that runs in the bg + allows the lines to be edited/removed "on the fly"... Well, maybe one day Y'z will continue development or something.
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