Vista tree view: disabling fade-out of tree nodes

Question

When using a tree view (e.g. the folders list in Explorer), there are little triangles next to each node which contains sub-nodes. Unfortunately, they fade out as soon as one leaves the tree view with the mouse. This is very annoying, because one can't see anymore which folders contain sub-nodes as soon as the mouse is somewhere else.

Is there a way to prevent Vista from fading out the little triangles?

Answer 1

I miss the simplicity of the old windows explorer. That being said, the only way I know of to have some indication of which folders have sub-folders and which don't on Vista is as follows:

• go to Control Panel
• open Folder Options
• go to the View tab
• Under Advanced Settings and under Files and Folders
• there is a checkbox: Display simple folder view in Navigation pane. Uncheck it.

Now in your folder tree view, the folder nodes that that don't have any subfolders will have a straight line flowing down their left side whereas those folders with subfolders have a blank space (where the triangle would be) on their left side with dots above and below the blank space.

Answer 2

To stop the fade effect in Vista's tree explorer you need to change the "Fade or Slide Menus into View"

1. Right click Computer > Properties
2. Advanced System Settings
3. Under Performance click Settings
4. Un-check Fade or Slide Menus into View
5. Apply

Answer 3

I checked aero.msstyles (the file which contains all the visual resources) and it seems that treeview expander glyphs are resource ids #804-812.

I was hoping to find a transparent resource or zone which might have hold a non-hovered, transparent version of the expander, but it nothing like that seems present (the idea being that if such a resource existed, one could edit it with the appropriate expander icons).

I also checked Aero's UIFILE resource in shellstyle.dll, looking for something related to focus or mouse movement for treeview expanders. Again, no dice.

Therefore I think that it is probably not possible, at least not through editing the visual style files.

Answer 4

I can confirm that there is no setting to change this. A comprehensive list of items that can be disabled is available here.

You can also have a look at the options under Performance.

• System
• Advanced System Settings
• Advanced
• Performance Settings

Answer 5

I couldn't find any way to do it by configuration, but clicking in that window (or clicking an item in the list) will stop the fade out.