Solved How to Change Toolbar Fonts in Windows Aero?

[RetiredEngineer]

Hi Everyone,

Because of failing eyesight, I work best in Windows Aero if I can change all the display fonts from Segoe UI to Segoe UI Semibold. I can do this everywhere except for the Toolbar text shown in the attached screen shot. In the lower left are my pop-up menus, created from Toolbars by "squashing" them down to single-letter titles (R,A,L,C,E,F,M); and right below the Windows Explorer menu bar is another Toolbar it would be nice to display with Segoe UI Semibold entries.

I would be pleased to pay a reasonable development fee to anyone who cares to provide these Toolbar modification.

Kind Regards,
RetiredEngineer

 

[derekimo]

Hi there, the offer for money is a nice gesture but we just like to help.

I'll be honest, I don't know of a way to do that but I do have an alternate suggestion.

What if you added an icon to those toolbars, say a different color or something like that.

What made me think of that was this tutorial,

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61294-shut-down-computer-shortcut-create.html

I used to have that as a toolbar on my win 7 machine and it was a nice big icon like explained in step 6 of option two,

I'm sure we can fix you up with some icons if want to try that.

 

[RetiredEngineer]

Hi Derek,

I am most grateful for your attention to my reading problems. However, using icons alone looks to be too large a task at this point.

I should point out here that one of your colleagues, who understands how to create new Themes using Windows Style Builder, has offered to post a new Segoe UI Semibold Toolbar font add-in. Worth watching for, at least for me.

Kind Regards,
RetiredEngineer

 

[derekimo]

Hi there,

You're welcome, I understand.

I was thinking of having one of our graphics experts make icons with those letters for you.

I hope that works out for you, sounds like just what you wanted anyway.

Let us know how it goes.

 

[Bongo]

I will see what I can do and get back here in a day or 2.

Jerry

 

[Bongo]

I think I got it for you.

You will need to do 1 of these 2 ways of Enabling custom themes for it to work.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/34579-enabling-custom-themes-windows-7-a.html
Or
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/28377-theme-how-apply-custom-themes.html?filter

Download and extract the zip folder at the bottom of this post to your Desktop.

Put both the SemiBold theme folder and the SemiBold.theme file in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes


It will show up under Installed Themes as SemiBold in Personalization.


Let me know if it's OK.

Jerry

 

[RetiredEngineer]

W7 Toolbars Are Now Readable For Me

Thank-you, Jerry, for the Segoe UI Semibold fix to Toolbar fonts in W7. My Toolbars now work as I need them to, and I can now read their text for extended periods without eyestrain.

Well done!

Kind regards,
RetiredEngineer

 

[RetiredEngineer]

An Additional Note Of Gratitude And Appreciation

Thank-you, Jerry, for the Segoe UI Semibold fix to Toolbar fonts in W7.

Now that I've used your Semibold font fix for W7 Aero, I realize that you went well beyond the call of duty. Not only do all Toolbars display in Semibold, but every other user of this font in the System also displays in Semibold. As a result, everything in my System is now easier to read and select.

All I have left to say at this point is ...Thank-you, Thank-you, Thank-you! In one fell swoop, you've given me many more years of useful eyesight. For me, this is truly a substantial value added.

May God bless you and keep you. I will be eternally grateful.

 

[A Guy]

Jerry is an awesome guy as you have found out. Well done Jerry

A Guy

 

[Bongo]

You're Welcome, glad I could help.

Thank you Bill!

 

[nnq2603]

About this issue, I'd like to have the tutorial on how change all fonts in Win7 by 3rd applications (for 3rd visual style/theme not official Aero one) in the way Bongo did. Can anyone provide a guide/tutorial/link? Thanks. (I've method to get it work correctly in default Aero theme but not yet with 3rd ones)
I did attempt to search but only found this topic and www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1175-fonts-change-16.html but not change all the fonts still leave some behind.

I tried a Msstyle editor and change all fonts in Fonts section to Tahoma 8pt but applying theme still leaving another fonts in other parts of windows UI. Especially in this windows Control Panel\System and Security\System
Screenshot below is what I tried with font changing feature.

 

[Bongo]

About this issue, I'd like to have the tutorial on how change all fonts in Win7 by 3rd applications (for 3rd visual style/theme not official Aero one) in the way Bongo did. Can anyone provide a guide/tutorial/link? Thanks. (I've method to get it work correctly in default Aero theme but not yet with 3rd ones)
I did attempt to search but only found this topic and www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1175-fonts-change-16.html but not change all the fonts still leave some behind.

I tried a Msstyle editor and change all fonts in Fonts section to Tahoma 8pt but applying theme still leaving another fonts in other parts of windows UI. Especially in this windows Control Panel\System and Security\System
Screenshot below is what I tried with font changing feature.

You will need to change more fonts than just the one you did, look at the screenshots below, in the first one in the search area make sure it is on Properties and then type in Font than on the left side you will need to click on each item and change the font there.

Jerry

 

[nnq2603]

@Bongo: I had some spare time to did just what you suggested and changed all fonts in search result. But only problem is there's too many manual repeat (I didn't really count) but at least 50-60 repeat for font changing task. Is there any faster way than this? Or this's the fastest way to do this font setting task.

 

[nnq2603]

Resource Hacker for font changing.

OK, so this's the solution for someone like me (I post this in order to help any other one in future who might search for this fonts problem and solution, I'm aware of Ave style editor is so powerful and great for creating/modifying visual style). Resource hacker or similar tool can do this font editing/changing task much faster and easier (if what you want is just change all fonts to your favorite one). I also see myself spending much less time in modifying/editing numerous tedious properties field to accomplish little thing in visual style (beside font/size I also want to use antialiased mode rather than Cleartype mode, just my preference, but with regular msstyle editor the task takes so much time). Thanks to those free tools.

Open msstyle with RH, Ctrl+F to find by fontname or anti-aliasing mode, but they usually place in string table. Editing can be done by copy+paste (could use external text edit for search replace to some extend) much faster than manually clicking and editing UI in Ave style editor. Only one thing I haven't figured it out yet, that's I can export string table to *.rc file and open with external editor for further editing but can't find a way to import *.rc file back into RH (I replace graphic images and icons with RH hacker before without problems, but replace *.rc file seems need a bit more trick that I'm not aware of. If anyone know, pls tell me, thanks). Even without this import function, it's still much faster than the old way 'coz you can treat it as raw text data not values of input field.