Apply shadows and transparency effects to menus, active and inactive windows, customizing the appearance of your desktop to your liking.
- Y’z Shadow
- Version :2.2 / 2.3 Beta 3
- License :Freeware
- OS :Windows All
- Publisher :M. Yamaguchi
Y’z Shadow Description
Y’z Shadow attempts to enhance the looks of the menus and windows inside your operating system. It achieves this by adding shadows and transparency effects to all sorts of elements.
Its advantages
Visual OS enhancements are not easy to accomplish. This is a challenge mostly because Windows is very restrictive when it comes to visual tweaks and the operation needs applying various patches most of the time. Although transparency and proper shadow effects have been delivered starting with Vista and 7, lesser operating systems remained untouched.
This is a huge disappointment for the huge crowd of fans that acclaim XP and as a result development lead to applications that improve its looks a bit. Such an example is Y’z Shadow, a small utility designed to attach a drop shadow to the windows of all your applications.
Why opting for portable software
Y’z Shadow doesn’t require installation, but make sure to extract all its contents from the archive instead of running them directly. It will still work, but you won’t have access to the Settings menu.
Once you initiate the executable file, the software will automatically place itself into the system tray. Enabling it will bring out the mentioned drop shadows to the windows.
Since this is a portable program, it is important to mention that it doesn’t leave any traces in the Windows Registry. You can copy it on any USB flash drive or other devices, and take it with you whenever you need to personalize the looks of your windows and menus on the breeze, without having to go through installation steps.
Configuration settings
The Settings section allows you to change the color of the shadow, as well as its length and depth (on top, left, right and bottom of the window).
Drop shadows can also be attached to menus in Windows (and also to the Start taskbar), while setting a transparency level and fade-in effect (optional). Exclusions are possible by drag-and-dropping applications (up to 32) into Y’z Shadow. In order to view the results, just hit the Apply button.
Bottom line
Y’z Shadow can contribute to adjusting the appearance of any Windows operating system and it can be configured in such a way that the visual impact is actually noticeable.