Chip 1998 January

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Desktop Themes v1.4 (c) 1997 Jonathan Potter Left Side Software This software requires Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 or later to run. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This program is distributed under the Shareware concept. If you like and use this program, please register by sending $US15/$AUD20 ( + $US8 for checks not drawn on an Australian bank) to: Left Side Software PO Box 2252 Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012 AUSTRALIA You can send also Mastercard/Visa information to sales@lss.com.au, or online at http://www.lss.com.au. Your contribution will help fund the further development of this and other great software. You will be given priority when asking for technical support, and also receive notifcation of new releases of this and other software. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Introduction The Plus! pack for Windows 95 adds many additional features to Windows - some things that really should have been included with Windows 95 itself. One of these is Desktop Themes. A Theme is a collection of sounds, icons, pointers (cursors), along with wallpaper, colour and font settings and a screensaver. Basically, it's all the things about the Windows interface you can configure through the Control Panel, brought together into one package. There are literally hundreds of Themes available, and until now you needed the Plus! pack to use them. Without it, it was necessary to install all the components manually, a difficult and time-consuming process. Then, if you didn't like the finished product, you had to manually change all your settings back again. The Desktop Themes application is a direct replacement for the Desktop Themes control panel provided with the Plus! pack. It offers the same functionality as the Plus! version with a few additional features. Even if you have Plus! you might want to consider switching to using Desktop Themes for the additional features. v1.1 of Desktop Themes also allows you to edit the Theme components directly, to easily create new Themes to distribute to others. 2. About Themes A Theme is described by a .theme file, which is basically a .INI file containing all the settings for that particular theme. Desktop Themes can read this file and make all the necessary configuration changes in one hit. You can find hundreds of themes on the net. Some good places to start looking are: Dale's Windows95 Themes Page http://www.bitshop.com/~dale/ Windows95.com http://www.windows95.com/apps/desktop.html Gionet's Win95 Plus Themes http://www.95themes.com/ Spike's Windows 95 Themes Page http://www.algonet.se/~spike/ 3. Installation No special installation is necessary to run Desktop Themes - simply copy the .EXE to wherever you want to keep it (eg C:\Program Files). You can then create a shortcut to it and put this on your Desktop, in your Start menu, etc. The first time you run Desktop Themes, it looks to see if Plus! themes have already been installed on your system. If they haven't, a dialog appears prompting you to create a directory to store themes in. This is necessary for the proper functioning of the program. The theme path defaults to "c:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes", because this is what Plus! itself uses. If you ever install Plus! in the future, the themes you currently have installed should work with no input from you. You can, however, store the themes anywhere you like. Desktop Themes also adds two items to the context menu for Theme files - Apply Settings, and Install Theme. Once these is installed, you can apply a theme instantly by right-clicking on it and choosing Apply Settings (or by double-clicking on its icon). You can install a theme by right-clicking on it and choosing Install Theme. Themes that you install with Desktop Themes can automatically be uninstalled, either using Desktop Themes, or with the Add & Remove Programs control panel. For this to work, the Desktop Themes executable must remain in the place it was when it was first run. That is, you should copy it to its 'final resting place' before running it for the first time. If you move the Desktop Themes executable after it has installed itself, you can update the context menus by clicking the 'Update' button on the Miscellaneous page. However, any themes you have installed will no longer be uninstallable from Add & Remove Progrems (uninstalling them through Desktop Themes will still work). If you have previously installed the 'Theme Installer' application by the same author, you should remove this (by double-clicking on its icon again). Desktop Themes completely replaces Theme Installer as the installer/uninstaller for themes. 4. Usage Start the Desktop Themes program by double-clicking on its icon. A dialog will appear containing several pages, the first of which allows you to select a theme from those installed. A drop-down list is used to choose a theme. This list contains the names of all themes present in the specified directory. It also has two special entries at the top of the list: (current settings) This refers to the current configuration of your desktop. You can select this at any time to return to your current configuration. (original settings) This refers to the configuration of your desktop when the Desktop Themes program was run. You can use this to return to the original settings, which allows you to undo any changes you have made with the Apply button. Note that the Cancel button does not undo the effects of pressing Apply. When Desktop Themes first runs, it also automatically saves your current settings to a theme called "My Original Settings". This way you will always be able to return to your old settings after having installed other themes. The "Save As" button allows you to save the current settings to a new theme. You can use this to preserve your configuration before you start playing with new ones. You can also use it to create themes to distribute to other people. The "Active Components" list allows you to choose which components in the currently loaded theme will be installed in your system when you choose Apply or Ok. By default they are all switched on, meaning that a new theme will totally overwrite your existing settings. You can selectively disable parts of the theme through these switches. 5. Previewing a theme To preview a theme, you must first Install it. See the description of the Install page below for more information about this. You can preview the components of a Theme before you Apply it to your desktop. The "Display", "Sounds" and "Pointers" pages allow you to see or hear the various components of the current theme. Each page contains a list of components - for the graphical ones, just click on its name to display it. To hear a sound, select the appropriate sound by name and click the play button. 6. Miscellaneous settings The "Miscellaneous" page contains several additional options that Plus! provides. Some of these might not work on a standard Windows 95 system, but feel free to play around with them. The "Stretch desktop wallpaper to fit the page" feature is emulated by Desktop Themes, but some of the others seem to require Plus! to work. If you change the 'Show icons using all possible colours' setting, you will need to reset Windows for the change to take effect. This page also has a field labelled "Path to Themes". You can use this to modify the path that themes are stored in. If you enter a directory that does not exist, it will be created automatically. 7. Installing Themes The "Install" page allows you to install a new theme. Themes are usually distributed in ZIP format, so you must unzip the theme to a temporary directory. You MUST use a ZIP program that supports long filenames (like WinZip). Once you have done this, you must enter the full name of the .theme file in the Install page. Use the Browse button to help you find it. Theme Installer will also attempt to install any TrueType fonts that have been included as part of the theme. Themes that have been installed with Desktop Themes can also be uninstalled automatically. To uninstall a theme, select it in the list and click the Uninstall button. You can also uninstall themes via the Add & Remove Progrems control panel. If an error occurs while uninstalling a theme, it is usually because one or more of the theme components is in use by something, and can not be deleted. Some third-party themes are not constructed correctly. The .theme file which contains the references to the theme components uses a notation that allows non-specific path names for components. For example, it can specify : %themedir%MyTheme\MyComputer.ico instead of c:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\MyTheme\MyComputer.ico This means that wherever your themes directory is on your system, the theme will still be able to find its components. Some themes do not use the %themedir% notation - instead, they use absolute paths to theme components, often paths on the theme author's own system. You might see something like : d:\work\mytheme\MyComputer.ico This is plainly not going to work on any computer other than the theme author's. A future version of Desktop Themes will try to get around this problem. For the mean time, themes that are not constructed correctly will not work. Note that if you want to create a theme for distribution, you should use the 'Distribution' option on the 'Edit Theme' page (described below), or else you might run into this problem as well. 8. Installing Startup and Shutdown screens Startup and Shutdown screens are not officially part of a Theme, but you often find them distributed with themes. The "Screens" page allows you to easily install startup and shutdown screens, and optionally to backup your old screens. Use the Browse button to locate the three screens in question. They often have the following names: Startup - Logo.sys Shutdown Wait - LogoW.sys Shutdown Safe - LogoS.sys Note that you do not need to provide all three screens; Desktop Themes will only install the ones you select. You can also select the "Backup old Startup/Shutdown screens" option to have your old screens preserved. If you do this, you can restore your old screens later using the Restore button. Note that you can only restore the last backed-up set of screens, so if you are testing several sets of screens you should Restore the old set in between installing each new set. Press the Install button once you have selected the screen files, and they will be copied to the appropriate locations automatically. Note that Windows NT 4.0 does not support the startup/shutdown screen concept and so this page is unavailable when running on an NT system. 9. Editing Themes Note that the 'Edit Theme' page contains a reminder that Desktop Themes is a shareware program. If you register, you will receive an unlock program that removes this reminder page. The 'Edit Theme' page allows you to create a Theme for distribution to others. The tree view contains a list of all the Theme components; creating a theme is simply a matter of going through the items in the tree and supplying the appropriate settings or files. Note that you do not need to provide a file for every single item in the list. Once you have set the components of your theme, you should select 'Distribution' from the list. You can then select an empty directory to create the theme in. Use the Browse button to locate the directory and give the theme a name, and then press the Save button. Desktop Themes will then write the Theme file to this directory, and copy all your components from wherever they are stored on your system. Using this method is better than the 'Save As' option from the 'Theme' page as the Theme file will be created with the correct %ThemeDir% and %WinDir% notation. It also provides a convenient way of gathering all the theme components together. Once the theme file has been saved, all you need to do is ZIP the directory using WinZip or a similar program, and it is ready for distribution. Note that this procedure will not copy files from c:\Windows\Media or c:\Windows\Cursors. It will also not copy the COOL.DLL file. If you have files in these directories that you want to distribute as part of your theme, you will have to copy them yourself using Explorer. 10. Wallpaper Notes Support for JPEG Wallpaper files in Desktop Themes is implemented by converting the JPEG to a temporary BMP file. If you Apply a theme that uses a JPEG for wallpaper, the picture is converted to a permanent BMP file in your Windows directory. This file is overwritten each time you Apply a theme that uses JPEGs, so you only ever have the one converted picture. Since BMP files take much more room than JPEGs, you should ensure you have enough space on your Windows drive (approximately 3mb is required for an average size 24bit picture). This is the same mechanism as Plus! uses. The JPEG conversion itself requires about 1mb of memory - if a wallpaper isn't appearing, and it's a JPEG file, then you probably do not have enough memory. In this case, try closing some open applications and try again. Desktop Themes also emulates the Wallpaper stretching that Plus! performs. This is very useful as it allows you to use practically any size bitmap to fill your screen, instead of leaving an ugly border around the outside. Unfortunately, Desktop Themes' stretching isn't as transparent as Plus!'s is; it has to convert the original size image to a BMP file in your Windows directory (much like the JPEG conversion - of course if you are stretching a JPEG file you only get the one BMP!). This can take a bit of time, and requires some hard drive space. It generally works very well though. Because stretching is implemented via a converted BMP file, if you change screen resolution the stretched image will no longer be the correct size. To remedy this, run Desktop Themes and select the Miscellaneous tab. Turn off 'Stretch wallpaper to fit the screen' and click the Apply button. Then turn it back on and click the Apply button again. You will also have to do this if you change Wallpaper through the Display Properties, and want to stretch it to full screen. 11. Other Notes If you have Plus! installed when you run Desktop Themes, it won't install itself in the registry as the default theme handler. If you decide you want to switch to using Desktop Themes, just go to the "Miscellaneous" page and click the "Update" button. This will force it to install itself as the default handler, overrinding Plus!. The previous version of Desktop Themes seemed to have a bug in the way the desktop window was refreshed after the icons had been changed. Some people reported losing all their icons, others reported their icons going black and white. Until a permanent solution to this problem has been found, you need to click on the desktop window and press F5 to refresh the icon display manually. 12. Command line switches Desktop Themes supports several command line switches. In practice you will never need to use these, but they are listed here for reference. /s <filename.theme> - Apply the given theme /conv <source.jpg> <dest.bmp> - Convert a JPG to a BMP /stretch <source> <dest.bmp> - Stretch a BMP or JPG to full screen For example, "Desktop Themes.exe" /s "C:\program files\plus!\themes\my_theme.theme" - This would apply the settings in the supplied theme "Desktop Themes.exe" /conv picture1.jpg picture2.jpg - This would convert the supplied JPG picture to a BMP "Desktop Themes.exe" /stretch picture1.jpg picture-stretched.bmp - This would stretch the supplied picture to be full screen 13. Uninstalling To uninstall the Desktop Themes application, simply delete the file. To uninstall themes themselves, use either the "Install" page of Desktop Themes, or the Add & Remove Programs control panel. 14. Copyrights Desktop Themes is (c) 1997 by Jonathan Potter / Left Side Software. Based on Desktop Themes in Microsoft Plus! (c) Microsoft Corp. Uses The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software (v6a) 15. Release History v1.0 Oct 96 - First public release v1.1 Nov 96 - Added ability to install Startup/Shutdown screens - Added Edit Theme page - If you changed the theme path in the Miscellaneous section, the theme list wasn't being updated automatically - Applying changes to the system colours wasn't saving the changes permanently (they would revert to the previous settings next reboot) v1.11 Dec 96 - Now need to click on desktop window and press F5 to refresh the icon display - hopefully a solution to this will be found soon - Automatically saves a "My Original Settings" theme when it first runs, enabling you to recover your original settings at any time. v1.2 May 97 - Desktop Themes now runs properly under Windows NT 4.0 without crashing on exit. - The 'Screens' tab is unavailable when running under NT as NT does not support startup/shutdown screens. v1.3 Jun 97 - Several people reported problems installing Themes, and this was traced to the fact that they had had the Plus! demo installed before installing Desktop Themes. The Plus! demo was setting a registry key incorrectly, which stopped the theme install working. Desktop Themes now resets this key automatically. v1.4 Jul 97 - A problem in the later versions of Plus! prevented themes created by Desktop Themes from working on systems that used Plus!. This has been fixed.