So far Microsoft seems to treat the taskbar as if it were part of the monitor’s bezels, therefore tending to be black, this way achieving two things; first, taskbar labels and icons are easily recognized and used, second, the rest of the screen is clearly distinct from the taskbar.

A different approach would rather try to merge the taskbar with the rest of the screen, and this is best expressed by the taskbar being transparent. The problem here is that a purely transparent taskbar would make sense only if a user was never going to change wallpaper, otherwise, in a wallpaper rotation scheme, sooner or later the taskbar items would tend to disappear and become practically useless — unless the program was able to change also letter color to make sure labels can be read on whatever wallpaper.

TranslucentTB offers yet a “fluent” option, which is essentially just an increased transparency along with blur, to the point that the taskbar is more conformed with the wallpaper colors while simultaneously remaining readable and useful.

Unfortunately the program won’t change similarly the Start Menu, which is a serious flaw. Right now I chose to have the normal behavior restored for the taskbar whenever I open the Start Menu, to have them match with each other; the taskbar becomes again “fluent” when the Start Menu is closed.

TranslucentTB is a useful little freeware that needs improvement. The whole concept is useful, offering functions that sometime may be incorporated into the official system options.

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