One of the most hyped features of Vista is its new transparent windows, courtesy of the Aero graphics engine. This is a useful option if you’ve got lots of windows open on a crowded screen and more to the point, it looks good. However, if like many others you’re still not convinced Vista is worth upgrading to, you can still have this classy little feature courtesy of Vitrite.
Vitrite is a tiny app that allows you to manually adjust the level of transparency for almost any visible window. When executed, Vitrite minimizes to the system tray in the lower right corner of the screen. If you wish to make a window transparent, you simply click on the window and press ‘Ctrl Shift’ plus any number on your keyboard depending how transparent you want to make it with one being the most transparent setting. So no more flicking between tabs or scrolling through your toolbar to see what you’ve got open – you can see everything at a glance. Obviously, be careful that you don’t pile too many windows on top of each other or else everything will start to look incomprehensible.
Note as well that Vitrite also offers the option to toggle the ‘always on top’ feature. Again, just press ‘Ctrl Shift’ with the ‘+’ key to make the active window float on top of the other windows. So there you have it – one of Vista’s most attractive features for nothing!
