LinuxQuestions.org - translucent menus, making window skin

Hey all. I have yet another question. This has been plaguing me because I for the life of me can't understand it.
running Redhat 9
---with KDE 3.1.x <--x = ? not sure, or that it even matter(hope not)

I have definitely searched around a lot for the answer to this first question. first-don't start off saying "goto look 'N feel" --> KDE 2! ;)
okay...
i want to click the 'K' on the panel and have the menu open and be transparent.
I goto Kcontrol, then styles or something in there. Click the advanced tab and it has several options set to disabled. "menu" is one, i set it to transparent then i get a pop-up telling me "the selected theme: blue curve does not support menu transparency..." blah blah blah. So i change from blue curve to another...to another, going down the whole style list and every time the pop-up will say the above with "bluecurve" changing to the current selected style. Tell me this makes sense...im hoping im being clear. i think the transparent menus are sweet, i want to run them now!

**KDE-look.org is nice and all but im really trying to do this myself and to understand what is happening

my second question is quick. the part of any window that you would click to grab it... if you make your own window skin, can you make a transparent gap between that and the body of the window? if so, how?