Eliminate the blue outer glow in ExposÃ©

One of the more questionable changes that was introduced in 10.6 Snow Leopard was a soft, blue glow that appears around application windows when using Exposé. Previously, in 10.5 Leopard, the entire Window was highlighted blue; now, however, the Exposé window previews are able to update their contents on the fly and obfuscating them with a blue highlight negatively affects the user experience.

Unfortunately, the blue glow that Apple's designers have chosen to overcome this gap is somewhat garish and just plain lacking in style. In response, creativebits has posted a tip for changing that glow into something a little more eye-catching and a little less flashy.

The process is fairly simple and involves replacing two PNG image files within the Dock application. Creativebits has the full explanation as well as a sample set of replacement files that work pretty well and look very tasteful. Follow the break for a preview of the tip in action and decide for yourself whether the difference is worth the effort.

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Source: http://creativebits.org/mac_os_x/change_horrid_blue_expos%C3…

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Tips and tricks Snow Leopard

One of the more questionable changes that was introduced in 10.6 Snow Leopard was a soft, blue glow that appears around application windows...

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Park

I like to blue glow too and prefer it to how it was done in Leopard.

February 25 2010 at 12:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

howie

Why is this such a big deal? Do we spend a lot of time in Expose? I like the blue outline.

February 25 2010 at 6:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Zhang

Honestly I don't see anything wrong with the blue glow. "Lacking in style?" Perhaps, for the more aesthetically minded out there. "Horrid?" That's a bit of a strong word.

February 25 2010 at 4:09 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Zimmie

Windows have *always* been able to update their contents in ExposÃ©. It's been that way since 10.3, when ExposÃ© was introduced. If you were playing a video and went into Show All Windows mode, the video would keep playing in its tiny window.

What I dislike about New ExposÃ© is the non-uniform window scaling. It makes it harder to mentally track what is in what window. Completely breaks my mental model of my windows.

February 25 2010 at 1:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Waffletower

I read the comments on this post to learn how to evoke the blue glow. I am a heavy exposÃ© user and the glow lasts about a quarter of a second on my screen at best -- hard for me to relate to the quibble but if I had to smell bell peppers for .25 seconds everytime I used exposÃ© I would have blogged about it too.

February 25 2010 at 1:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

aleonell.10

i have a imac with snow leopard and it doesn't have any glow at all

wat are u guys talking about ???

February 25 2010 at 12:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Vitu

Yeah, now it looks just like vista!

February 24 2010 at 11:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

williamlane

For those not 'seeing the glow', it doesn't happen 'til you float your cursor over a window with Expose running, i.e. 'showing all windows'.

February 24 2010 at 11:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Athtart

Same here...10.6.2 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro.. no blue glow anywhere in Expose. Obviously it is not something everyone experiences....