To install Appearance Menu into the Menu Bar simply drag 'n' drop the file "Appearance Menu" onto the System folder icon in the Finder. You will need to reboot to load the software.
You must be using Mac OS 8.5 or newer to install and use Appearance Menu. It will not load on any earlier version of the Mac OS.
Overview
Appearance Menu installs a System-wide menu that contains a shortcut to the Appearance control panel as well as a list of all Appearance "Themes" that are available on your computer.
Appearance Menu will allow you to more quickly and conveniently change the currently selected Theme from any running program without resorting the somewhat slow and cumbersome Appearance control panel.
Themes are collections of color, font, background patterns or images, sound and Appearance settings such as Platinum or Paper introduced in Mac OS 8.5.
Because Themes contain all relevent settings, Appearance Menu only allows the user to change Theme. Future versions may allow the user to change specific items such as Appearance or Sound track.
Registering Appearance Menu
Appearance Menu is ShareWare. Registering your copy of Appearance Menu is required so that you can change Themes more than once without rebooting the computer.
You can purchase each copy of Appearance Menu for $5 US. To pay online using a credit card simply connect to the Internet as is required for your computer then select "Register…" in Appearance Menu. You can also use the "Purchase..." to go to the online payment web page at any time.
If you wish to include Appearance Menu on CD ROM or other non-volatile media that are to be sold or otherwise distributed please contact Public Access Software for licensing information.
Appearance Menu requires a PowerPC™-based Macintosh running Mac OS 8.5 or newer.
Appearance Menu does not currently include a Control Panel as does Sherlock Menu. Therefore you must enter registration information using the "Enter Registration Info" application at this time. All it does is ask for the information using the standard Public Access Software register interface and save this info appropriately.
Known Quirks
If you have any unusualy problems or experiences when using Appearance Menu please contact Public Access Software Support at <support@pasoftware.com> with a description of the problem and basic information about your computer (OS version, type of computer).
• The second and third menu items use Internet Config to access their URLs, since Mac OS 8.5 includes its own incarnation of IC and it most likely has a default web browser set they will work properly. If you are not online the URLs will not be able to load into the web browser.
• Appearance Menu will not update the menu to add or remove Themes unless you reboot the computer. Since adding/removing themes is not something one may do frequently and since Theme changes are immediate Appearance Menu does nothing in these cases. This may be addressed in a future version.
• Appearance Menu should honor Sound track settings for themes, but it seems that some Themes disable the sounds on their own. However if you change a Theme and *save* it, Appearance Menu should retain the Sound track settings.
