Here's a peek at my newly constructed Vista start menu. Plain of course, not elaborate like yours

Wish I could get the damn text colours to match though...   

reinstalling msn.......*grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr* finished the start menu, dying to show you...

Keep the pic private for now

The search box background is hidden away in Explorer and IE > Explorer Information Pane > Search and Address Field Background. It consists of five images, the fourth one being the start menu image.

The Start Menu All Programs is exactly the same image as in XP.

Why can't you?

The All Programs works fine for me. I must have a different version of Vista...   

Dunno on that one   

Because I wanted the menu text to be white but Vista takes the all programs and search text from the window text colour.

For the font issues take a look at the ui file and see what it has for system fonts settings. It should only have these settings or you will have problems with colors and changing to a font you want in the start menu. as such it should be here

[SystemFonts]
SystemMenu=0
SYstemMessage=0
SystemStatus=0

0 being the system font to be used

any other entries will cause it to lock the fonts for the start menu to whatever is named here for the font - with also making it impossible to change colors at some parts with SKS.

remove these here if present

SystemIcon=
SystemCaption=
SystemSmallCaption=

that should help with font issues - but one other thing also.
most of the time these fonts do not change in vista without a logoff to see how they are changed.
they can pic their own poison one could say and be perverted to another font listed in the skin without doing so to see the end results.

good luck and if you need other help with vista let me know
WWW Link

SGT  

No, the IE7 Tabs are hardcoded black, Also the Command Bar in explorer is hardcoded white.

Uneditable , both.

The search bar I believe uses the explorer window font color.. typically black.

Is it down to the individual to keep their own copy of these tips - or is it known that they are being collated elsewhere, the wiki for example?

Well, whoever's fault it is.. its extremely inhibitive when designing frames. One of the main things I talked about when I inititally wrote up my assessment thread on Vista way back when. It's why most, if not all vista skin frames are so plain thus far.

The thing about Blurring and Transparency in WB6 is..a lot of Vista users , using trans skins tend to have it turned on to some extent, that or.. they have Vista-ize me...turned on.

So.. even if a skin isnt designed for these functions, they will still be applied to it when the skin is installed.. in other words, it has to be turned off by the user.. per skin.. or it will stay applied and when applied to a skin that isn't designed for it..or a skin that has frames that don't closely match Aero default dimensions [plain and rounded].. it can make the skin.. look.. eh.. really bad.

The Search\Close Search.. icons, should be skinned by you..two states. Your search box placement coordinates may be buggering those states up.. also... on mousing over the Search box 'close icon'.. the 'X'.. it also inherits a button background from.. somewhere.. probably the toolbar buttons.. so take that into consideration.

Glad you got your text colors fixed Fuzzy.. it's a dodgy balancing process but can be done.

Back to XP for me