How do I make every thing semi transparent, like in this screenshot?

WindowFX lets you do that. https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx/

you can also save the money and use Glass2K http://www.chime.tv/gui.shtml or Trans2K http://www.545studios.com/f/software.php . both are free and work on 2K and XP.

I fail to understand the interest though.

It slows down your system to a crawl, and makes everything less legible. Go figure.

If you have a decent graphics card (ATI) with good drivers you can set things to semi transparent without much of a speed hit if any.

Even when you drag the window around, resize it, etc.?
I have an excellent gfx card at work (spent some 400$ on it) and I still don't get the interest of translucency. At least in Windows.

At home, I got Linux, and my IRC software has the chat window semi-transparent, and it runs smooth like a kitten. And that computer is 5 years old!!

What Gfx card is it? I have a Geforce 4 ti4600 and a Radeon 8500. The radeon is smooth as can be. The Geforce has issues (at least the drivers do).

Matrox Marvel G450:

Full-suite video editing
High-quality DVD and video playback
Web friendly MPEG-2 capture and playback
Matrox DualHead TV Out
S-video and composite video input and output

Timeshifting with picture-in-picture
TV tuner with Personal Video Recorder
Closed captioning (North America)
Teletext browsing (Europe)

Matrox G450 256-bit DualBus graphics chip
32 MB DDR memory
Industry-defining 3D, 2D and DVD image quality
DX7 Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping
32-bit color VCQ² rendering
Matrox DualHead gaming



http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/marv_g450_etv/home.cfm

I can do the the transperency fine... with Gforce 2 Mx 400.... so the lag probably doesn't come from the graphics card... ... i haven't had problems with that... but I do take care of my system... always have the latest drivers... and such...

But anyway, regardless of the lag, I don't understand the interest. It makes it harder to make up anything.

paxx: XChat is transparent to the desktop. that´s a lot faster than real transparency.

WinFX sounds good. I was afraid to hear that paxx.

I'm using a GeForce 2 and will see how it goes.

I like to use it with my chat windows... I don't do much transperency... but It makes it easier to talk with multiple people at once...

pipowell......I have the Geforce 4 ti4600 from Gateway and I haven't had any problems or "issues" yet with FX (that I know of or are readily apparent). What issues are you talking of?
My driver version: 6.13.10.3082 (30.82)
Are those the latest drivers and if not would I update from Gateway or NVIDA?
I have a 700XL with 1 gig of memory and WindowsXP Pro on a 2.4 mz cpu.

With WinFX you can choose to make only certain apps transparent. I agree, if the whole system is transparent it's more of an irritant than it is cool looking...

Yes, for chat, I agree, it's cool. Cause I can control the color of the text so that it has a neat contrast with my wallpaper behind and remain legible. But for folders I would never use it.

HuronJoe: Transitions mainly. Turn on shadows and try and do a transition. Major pause or ugliness. Also doesn't like shadows and transparency at the same time. Nvidias drivers are the main reason the launch of WinFX 2 was delayed so long. Stardock had to write a routine to get around it (hence the fallback mode).

Paxx: It's useful for windows that refuse to move and you still need to see what's below them. Also for windows where you need to see what's going on but don't necessarily need to click them or interact with them in any other way. Just set it to click through and Bob's your uncle. Also a small amount of transparency just makes it look cool and doesn't affect the legibility that much.

raxx: btw.: you can run XChat on Windows also http://www.xchat.org/

The only thing that I would like to see capable of handling transparency is my Command Prompt. The reason being that I often work from the prompt and use Notepad to keep track of things. It would be easier if I could have my prompt in the foreground be transparent enough that I could see Notepad behind it.

Virtual Plastic has an app listed called Console 2... that is a transparent command prompt... I use it... it's super cool

I'll check that out. Thanks, da_zman.