One of the things I really hate about Leopard is the translucent menu bar. With my default background image, it was nearly impossible to read the text in the menu bar. I ended up having to change my background image to accommodate the translucency in the menu bar... not good!

There is a hack that allows you to disable the translucency of the menu bar in Leopard. To do this, open up a terminal window and type one of the following lines (make sure to get this entire thing on a single line in the terminal window):

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 
'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1

or

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 
'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0

Use the first line to get a white menu bar, use the second line to get a gray menu bar. Once you enter this line and hit return, you'll need to enter the administrator password for your machine.

If you want the translucent menu bar back, repeat the process with this command:

sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 
'EnvironmentVariables'