I don't understand the hate for the translucent menubar. I like it because it helps keep the focus on the content of the frontmost window, where it belongs. After using Leopard for awhile, the Tiger menu bar looks like a big blinding white distraction. I know where the menus are and don't need to be constantly reminded of their presence.

The translucent menubar also adds a nice element of color coordination to the desktop.

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Solved is a little strong.
Some remaining issues:

1) You have to keep Menubar Tint in your startup items in order to recreate the effect each time you log in.

2) The menus have yet to be solved; they are still translucent.

Until these two things are resolved it won't be solved.

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I kinda like the transparant menubar as well. Although I admit, it took some getting used to.

And.. if you force the system into thinking it's running on "old" hardware I imagine it will have effect on certain other features as well (e.g. the photo mozaik screensaver... will it still work after screwing with the environment?)?

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Add me to the list of people liking the menu bar, though I do always have a solid background on my desktop. It blends in nicely.

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@3 - "will it still work after screwing with the environment?"

Of course not - that's why we have forums, for people to come and bitch that there system is all screwed up, all the while cursing Apple. This is what happens when you start pulling in Winblows fans. You MUST alter things on your computer, don't you know?

Oh wait, I'm an Apple fanboy who drinks the koolaid.....

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Or, you could just use an image editor to make a desktop picture with a white band along the top...

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I really can't understand the menu bar hate. I've been using Leopard for 2 weeks now, and from the moment I started with it, I've never had a problem. Maybe people just have distracting wallpaper that makes it hard to read.

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Ahh, this finally explains why my menubar hasn't been causing me any frustration -- I'm on a 1.33GHz 12" G4. I didn't understand what anyone was talking about..

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Yo nimrod,
Good comment. I also do not like the translucent menus since they look ugly and diseased on certain windows - Ideal if Apple gave a display preference to control the translucence from opaque (sensible) to clear (knock yourselves blind).
But credit IS due to SteveMiner for the next step in the evolutionary direction.

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"... like the opaque menu bar Leopard shows on systems with older video cards."

If I understand, my PowerBook G4 12" last gen. got an old video card?

Why is it so impossible to have translucent menubar on it? I find it cool and love to have have it. All my menus are transparent, all transitions are supported and some older PB G4 are able to support the translucent menubar feature. I mostly think it's a bug that Apple doesn't want to fix at all.

So, now if Menu Bar Tint developers could "reverse" this for us!

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The translucent menubar looks nice even with the space wallpaper. And the transparency in the menues is cute too.

But how do you get Safari to save the password in this form without filling in the New Users panel?

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Add me to the confused list.

This almost completely pathological hate of the menu bar escapes me entirely.

I have a bit darker background, sure. I can see portions of my background, sure. It is NOT distracting, it does NOT cause trouble. I can see everything I need to see.

This is a weird thing that I think has arisen because a few personalities in the mac community came out saying they didn't like it, so everyone piled on because it was "cool" to dislike the menubar.

While I'm at it.. I like, no I LOVE stacks. Both the Applications folder and the Download folder. I appreciate the time that went into developing that usability. It's convenient and quick, and I don't have to have my own downloads folder on the desktop or in the dock any more. Hurray!

I think people are just looking for things to whine about.

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what about having a 20px white line on the top of your desktop image?

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On my "older system" the menu bar has a nice grayscale gradient already, so it seems to me something is inaccurate in the update to the article. Either
1) setting the property to something like 0.63 actually creates a grayscale tint gradient
2) the setting just makes the menubar transparent and so it does not resemble the way it looks on older systems
3) older systems (video cards) differ in how they deal with the Leopard menu bar.

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I just don't like the transparency because it doesn't seem to fit w/ everything else. But I agree the menus are more annoying.

As for #2, you first point can be achieved by setting a gradient of 0.63 or whatever you like/

For the other who think white it to bright set the gradient to 0.5 or better yet 1.
1 should give the effect of a solid black bar - which is quite nice, but the menu names are harder to read.

I like the .63 gradient. It's a bit darker than tiger and that's good, but there is still plenty of contrast between the menu names and the background.

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I don't mind the menu bar either. It's actually a bit better for my screen. In my last LCD monitor running 10.2-4, I noticed a bit of "burn in" in the menu bar area. I'd figure making that a bit less of a striking white will keep that from happening as quickly.

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Great! Now onto restoring sub-pixel text rendering.

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I used to use Menufela before Leopard went out and killed all APE apps. It's used to auto-hide the Menu bar ala Windows Start Menu. Is there a program that can do this on Leopard?

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