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This file contains important information for all users of
Thematic Software's Chroma user interface theming software for
Windows. Please read it over before continuing.
Contents
Welcome to Thematic Chroma. Using this software, you will finally be able to
cast off the bland buttons of a decades-old user interface and
replace them with a "look and feel" of your own choosing. If you don't
like any of the themes provided, you can always get more or even make your own.
Thanks for downloading Chroma, we hope it makes your Windows
experience more engaging. Please let us know what you think: e-mail
chroma@thematic.com.
This is the second significant full release of Chroma. It features enhancend performance, stability and control-coverage over the previous version.
Note that downgrading to Chroma v1.02 from v1.1 is not recommended. If you wish to do so, please use the uninstaller to manually remove v1.1, then cleanly install v1.02.
You start Chroma by double clicking on its icon. Note that programs
run prior to running Chroma will not get themed. You can also add
Chroma to your Startup folder, so that it is run automatically at
startup. There is an option in the installer and in the Advanced
dialog to add and remove the Startup item. Note that if you use an
alternative shell you will not be able to run Chroma with these
methods. See the section below on how to run Chroma in this case.
While running, the Chroma icon appears in the tray. This indicates
that Chroma is running and that new programs created will be
themed. Double clicking on this icon launches the control panel.
The Chroma control panel is added to the Display Properties control panel
applet. This control panel program can be accessed from the Control
Panel folder, by right clicking on the desktop or by clicking the Chroma
icon in the system tray. Note that under Windows 2000, the Chroma's tab is relegated to the "Advanced" panel, accessible from a button under the "Settings" tab.
Once open, the Chroma tab will be visible, and provides a number of
controls:
-
This provides a snapshot of the currently selected theme. Shift-clicking
will copy this snapshot to the clipboard, so if you have some awesome theme
you want to put on your web page, this is an easy way to make a quick
preview.
-
This lists the themes available in your themes directory.
To add a new theme simply copy the theme's zip file into your themes
directory. For example, if you installed Chroma in:
C:\Program Files\Thematic\Chroma
the themes directory is:
C:\Program Files\Thematic\Chroma\themes\. You can then
open the control panel and select it from the list. You can
find more themes here.
In addition there are tutorials and a reference on theme creation at the website.
NOTE! Underscores are converted to spaces for all theme display names. So, for example,
Flat_Ambient_Ravings.zip will be displayed as Flat Ambient Ravings.
-
This displays the Chroma version you have installed, as well as registration and license
info.
-
This displays a dialog where you can enter your registration code that
you will receive after purchasing the software. It will then stop pestering
you at startup (which is undoubtedly a good thing).
-
This displays various information about the theme, such as Author, Email address
and Copyright. It can also display a readme file and license, if the theme provides
those.
-
The Advanced dialog contains...more...advanced options.
The Exclusion List
The exclusion list allows you to prevent Chroma from theming a
particular program. To add program to the list press the Add button
and select the .exe file for that program from the list.
To remove a program from the list, simply select it and press Remove.
Run at Startup
This adds or removes a link to chroma in your startup folder.
Report Runtime Errors
Report Runtime Errors: This enables the reporting of errors found in
the theme when it is running. If you are developing themes you should
keep this turned on so that you can diagnose and fix the problems
with your theme.
Errors will be displayed in a dialog box in the lower left corner of your
screen.
Force top-level dialogs to taskbar This causes toplevel dialog
boxes, (like the Display Properties) to have taskbar buttons like
other programs. If you, like us, find it very irritating that you
can't ALT+TAB to an open control panel then you will appreciate this
feature.
Ignore character mode programsThis causes Chroma not to load into
console applications. Enabling this option can make certain programs
run a little faster, but will mean any programs you run from the
console (even gui programs) will not be themed. This is useful for
improving performance of development tools (like compilers, under
DevStudio), which don't have any gui.
Display the Chroma icon in the tray If this option is checked, Chroma
will place an icon in the system tray (next to the clock). Unchecking
it will cause the icon to be removed, but this requires a restart.
There are three ways to acquire more themes for Chroma:
Chroma Theme Pack #1:
A set of five
advanced themes available to registered
Chroma users. All five themes fully support all v1.1 controls.
The Chroma Theme Gallery:
We are always adding new themes,
and will soon host user-created themes too. Check out http://www.thematic.com/chroma/gallery/index.html
for the latest!
Once downloaded, place the themes .zip file in the
chroma\themes directory. There is no need to unzip it.
(Although you may wish to if you want to read the .cll file)
Make Your Own:
The extensive and ever-growing Chromumll
documentation project is available on-line at http://www.thematic.com/chromumll/index.html.
These are general problems that will not go away any time soon, if
ever.
- Win16 programs do not get themed. This is just too hairy. Unfortunately
this means several utilities under 95 do not get themed, such as Notepad
and Solitaire.
- Unfortunately there are many controls in Windows programs that look
like controls that we theme but that are custom, or otherwise
inaccessible to us. Examples of this are the push buttons, radio
buttons, and check boxes in MS Office. Also many scrollbars do not get
themed, for example in Internet Explorer 4 and 5. In some cases we
will be able to fix these problems; in others it is very unlikely.
- Programs invoked through OLE under NT do not get themed (for
example, Excel activated through a spreadsheet embedded in a Word
document will not be themed.)
- WinHelp does not get themed when run from within a program. However,
clicking on a help file in Explorer will run a themed WinHelp.
There are several problems that we are aware of with this
release.
- Old themes may appear visual incongruous. Please see the theme issues section.
- Windows NT4 may crash when you log-out.
- Norton CleanSweep and Chroma: Chroma and CleanSweep don't play well
together. We hope to solve this problem in a future version, but for
now you can use one or the other, but not both simultaneously.
Unfortunately completely disabling CleanSweep requires uninstalling it.
To uninstall CleanSweep so that Chroma can run, use the "Add/Remove
Programs" application in the control panel. Note that if you have Norton
SystemWorks, you can remove just CleanSweep and leave the other
elements of SystemWorks untouched. Note that Chroma will try to test to see if you have CleanSweep installed and refuse to run if it is.
- Raydream Studio calls certain apis incorrectly and consequently
doesn't work with Chroma. It has been added to the exclusion list.
- The scrollbars in MS Paint under 95 don't work right. On
NT and 98 they should work, but you will have to remove it
from the exclusion list to have it work for those platforms.
- There are some minor cosmetic problems with toolbars.
- The TNT2 video card-related bug that plagued Chroma for so long has been resolved. If you have an nVidia TNT2-based video card (e.g. Diamond Viper 770 series, Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Riva TNT, Asus V3800, STB Velocity 4400, Leadtek s2 320) and continue to experience difficulty, please consult the on-line FAQ.
If you use an alternative shell such as LiteStep the normal methods
of invoking Chroma will not work. We have provided another method for
these cases. The command line:
chroma.exe <program file>
will run a themed version of the program given by <program file>.
By prefixing the command used to launch your shell with the full path to chroma.exe
you can get a themed system. For more details, please see www.thematic.com/chroma/docs/tips.html#shell and your shell documentation.
Note that LiteSpawn doesn't presently seem to support the passing of parameters to the shells it launches, and so cannot be used to start a Chroma-themed shell.
If you encounter problems with Chroma please email a detailed
report to bugs@thematic.com
containing the following information:
- Processor type and speed. (ie. Pentium 100, Pentium II 350, AMD K6)
- Amount of RAM. (ie. 64MB etc.)
- Video card type. (ie. ATI Mach 64, 3DFX Voodoo)
- Operating system version. (ie. Windows 95 OSR 1, OSR 2, OSR 2.5,
Windows 98, or Window NT 4.0 (service pack))
- Internet Explorer version. (ie. IE 4.01, IE 5.0)
- The theme you were using. (ie. tactillian, greydient)
- A detailed description of the problem. Please provide as much
information as is relevant. In particular it is important that you
tell us the exact sequence of steps necessary to produce the
problem. If the behavior can not be reliably reproduced make sure you
state that clearly.
Please report any and all bugs you encounter. We are still interested
in your report even if someone else has made us aware of the problem.
We judge the importance of the bugs submitted to us by how many
reports we get.
Chroma is not freeware. If you wish to continue using it, you
must register. Registration costs $20 US, and will not only cover
v1.1, but all subsequent revisions until 2.0. You can expect many upgrades,
new features, bug fixes and themes over the next several months, but only
if enough people register Chroma. Please do so, and the result will be a
better product.
You can register online at http://www.thematic.com/chroma/register.html. There are details on that page about
how to register in other ways, for those that would prefer sending a check
or money order.
Chroma makes use of the freely available zlib (by InfoZip) and
libpng (by the PNG Development Group) libraries; credit and many
thanks are due to the authors for these excellent libraries.
For information about zlib, go to:
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib
For information about libpng and the PNG image format, go to:
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png
The home page of Thematic Software is
http://www.thematic.com.
Please visit us for info and more themes.
Thanks for using Thematic Chroma, we hope you enjoy it.
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