desktop composition with classic theme? (vista)

I am using windows vista 64. I usually have my theme set to windows standard; I like the simplicity and minimalism of it. HOWEVER, one feature I REALLY enjoy when using the vista theme is the desktop composition feature where, when you hover over a window in your taskbar, it shows a little preview box of what is going on in that window. Is there a way to enable this option in windows classic mode? It only seems to work under vista themes with me. Screen cap below.

 

Jesus Christ that image is huge.

 

you have to enable Vista aero to get the thumbnail. I feel your pain. I use the standard theme on my old computer and working in that interface became such a pain I changed it back to aero.

 

I really hate the aero look, but the thumbnails are really convenient and nifty.

 

productivity > aesthetics

You could always get yourself a theme skinner.

 

btw, with Thumbnail Sizer you can resize the previews. I have them 640x640 (that's up to..). so you can hover and see much useful info in there.

and you know you can configure and colorise aero? i think it has quite much style, even for non-skin users it's quite nice. and always remember, using aero means higher performing gui, too, and freeing your cpu from gui rendering.

 

Awesome program. i didnt know about the performance increase either, I always thought aero hogged up more RAM.

 

I don't use Vista, but I found this on Google:

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-gener...-theme-dwm-enabled-windows-classic-theme.html

http://www.pchelpforum.com/windows-vista-7/35921-dwm-enabled-windows-classic-style.html

 

aero doesn't use more ream, desktop composition does (partially). what they do is doublebuffer a window, so if an app hangs, you can still see the last available pic. of course that needs more ram than in win3.1 where everything everytime got redrawn completely in gdi. on the other hand, the gui always looks like it should, no flicker, no wrong drawings, nothing. that needs more ram, but it's not like you have a problem with it at 2gb.

what desktop composition mainly does, is shifting all the drawing to the gpu, thus enhancing both the speed of the gui as well as releasing all resources from the cpu.

 

QFT. The reason Aero can show the window previews is because every window is drawn in the video memory as a texture, and it can be accessed as such via Aero, just like any texture in any DirectX/OpenGL app. You are actually using more video RAM than system RAM though, so if you have a video card with dedicated memory you'll actually be making BETTER use of your system resources than with the non-Aero interface, because all the graphics will be stored on the GPU RAM instead of system RAM.