:: rafael oliveira ::

Since the appearance of Google Chrome, many small details in the layout of the browser got my attention. One of them was the removal of the title bar, and the use of a glass tab bar, which integrates very well in the style of Vista/Win7 Aero.

Recently, Safari 4 coppied this layout, in a even more aggressive approach, that some found to be pretty disorientating.



And finally, we got to Opera...
I've been using Opera for more than 6 years, and I'm very impressed by all the great advances in the recent snapshots. But I (and others) have wished that the glass look would be implemented in Opera 10, but with so many features to implement/debug, I doesn't look that the Aero look will be in final (actually, it's promised to Opera V11) .

Here is the look of the new skin (that is being beautifully designed by Jon Hicks):



This new skin is getting really pretty, and as AntRepin suggested, it would look a lot prettier if it just used the glass style in the tab bar also...



So I decided to hack Opera and see if I could enable it... And for my surprise , I actually got to make it work (not a perfect solution, as it is just a hack done in a couple of hours), with very good results:



Finally, I merged this with my previous Opera hack, that removed the titlebar, and here is what I got:



Quite promising... I hope that this will really be implemented by Opera Team soon!

For those who want to take a look in the results live, I've placed them in Rapidshare and MediaFire:

Download Opera Hacks (Rapidshare)
Download Opera Hacks (MediaFire)

There is a modified skin (with black background in the titlebar that enables Aero after the hack). You need to install it in Opera (place AERO.zip in Opera\Skin\ folder, and select it using Tools -> Appearance -> Choose AERO on the list).


Then, run OperaAero.exe (it will create an icon in the tray area, to close it, click with the right button and choose Exit).


To remove the titlebar, put windowstyle.exe directly in C:\ and open the buttons.html in Opera. Click in the links in this file to add the Minimize, Restore, Maximize and Close buttons (or just add they right now) to the toolbar.

If you got everything alright, enjoy the results yourself!

It also works with the tab bar in bottom, left and right positions, although the look in left and right is awful with this hack, as the rendering gets a little washed-out with Aero enabled...

Finally, my congratulations to all in the Opera Team for the great work, that have long made Opera my favorite browser!!