Besides the background, you can also control other aspects of the display appearance, including window color and transparency. To work with these settings:

1. In the Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization.
2. Click Personalization.
3. Click Window Color and Appearance.

Depending on the version of Windows Vista you're running and your display adapter (and its compatibility with the Aero interface), you might see one of two windows.

If your system supports Aero, you'll see the controls shown in Figure 3-5. From here you can select a color tint for the window borders, title bars, and other elements, and you can set their amount of transparency.

Figure 3-5: Aero window color and appearance settings.

Enlarge image

If your system doesn't support Aero, the Appearance Settings dialog box opens, shown in Figure 3-6. (You can also get to this dialog box if you do have Aero available by clicking the Open classic appearance properties for more color options hyperlink shown in Figure 3-5).

Figure 3-6: Appearance Settings dialog box.

In the Appearance Settings dialog box, you can do the following to fine-tune the display appearance:

1. Select Windows Classic from the Color scheme drop-down list.

The settings in the following steps apply only when Windows Classic style controls are in use.

2. Click the Advanced button. The Advanced Appearance dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 3-7.

Figure 3-7: Advanced Appearance dialog box.

3. In the sample area at the top, click the desired element to customize. Alternately, you can open the Item drop-down list and select the desired element.
4. Select settings for the Size, Color 1, and Color 2 options for that item. Depending on the item, one or more of those controls might not be available. For example, when customizing the desktop, size is not an issue, nor is Color 2.
5. If the chosen item contains text, the Font controls are available, as shown in Figure 3-7. If so, select a font, size, color, and other font attributes (such as bold and italic) for that text.
6. Click OK.

Controlling the Screen Resolution and Color Depth

In addition to controlling the colors and design elements of the display, you can control two other very important technical aspects:

• Resolution: The number of pixels (individually addressable colored dots) that comprise the display. The higher the resolution, the smaller the dialog boxes, icons, and text will appear, and the more memory the display adapter requires.
• Color depth: The number of binary digits needed to describe all the possible color options for a particular pixel. The higher the color depth, the more realistic photos look onscreen and the more memory the display adapter requires.

To control the screen resolution and color depth:

1. In the Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization.
2. Click Personalization.
3. Click Display Settings. The Display Settings dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 3-8.

Figure 3-8: Display Settings dialog box.

4. Drag the Resolution slider to adjust the resolution.

On LCD (liquid crystal display) monitors, anything other than the highest possible resolution may cause the text on the screen to appear fuzzy. If you want the text to be larger in Windows but don't want the fuzziness associated with a lower resolution, close the Display Settings dialog box and click the Adjust font size (DPI) hyperlink on the left side of the Personalization window. In the DPI Scaling dialog box, select Larger scale (120 DPI).

5. Open the Colors drop-down list and select a color depth. On most systems, there is no obvious difference between Medium (16 bit) and High (32 bit).
6. Click OK.

If two monitors are displayed in the Display Settings dialog box, it means that your system can support multiple monitors. However, if one of them is grayed out, as shown in Figure 3-8, it means that no external monitor is attached to that adapter. (This is the case when you use a notebook computer with a built-in screen and no external monitor.) When multiple available monitors appear in the Display Settings dialog box, you can set separate settings for each monitor. Just click each monitor and configure its settings separately. To figure out which monitor is which, click the Identify Monitors button.

Next, find out how to control the performance of your keyboard and mouse.