Windows Make-Up Version 1.9e (17-Mar-1998) makeing windoze easyer COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND DISTRIBUTION CONDITIONS Windows Make-Up is Copyright 1997-1998 by Simone Avogadro. It can be freely distributed as long as no more than a nominal fee is charged for it, distribution togather with commercial software or in a bonus pack is subject to prior agreement with the author. No-profit private use is free, however the author suggests a donation ($5-$10) to U.N.I.C.E.F. or to a childhood related fund from anyone systematically using it. Internal use by businness users and companies REQUIRES them to make a donation of at least $25 to one of the above mentioned organizations. Commercial redistribution and inclusion in commercial software is subject to prior licence agreement with the author. What's 'Windows Make-Up' ? It's an utility developed to enhance the look of Windoze making it's use easier. It works by changing the appearence of some graphics object in order to make them more intuitive and more informative. It enhances: Yes/No buttons by adding a significant icon File Dialogs by enlarging them and allowing to have them topmost ComboBoxes by enlarging them up to the bottom of the screen The Start button by allowing to place there a custom bitmap The TaskBar allowing to place there too a bitmap An handy HD's free space indicator in the tray area The option to add a gradient to the titles of the windows (if you don't have Win98) INDEX 1. Installation & requirements 2. The interface 2.1 The Buttons make-up 2.2 The File Dialogs make-up 2.3 The Combo-boxes make-up 2.4 The Start Button make-up 2.5 The Task bar make-up 2.6 Misc settings 2.7 Title bar settings (still BETA) 2.8 Command line options 3. Uninstalling 4. Questions & Answers 5. Credits Using 'Windows Make-Up' 1. Installation & requirements Installing 'Window Make-Up' (WMU from now on :-) is very easy. The easyest way is to double click the install icon, this will copy WMU executable, this manual and the demo images and icons (122 Kb at all) in your programs folder under the 'WindowsMakeUp' directory, it will also add it to the automatic execution. Once running the program will use ~60 Kb for each running application that benefits it's enhancements, note that usually the applications that count toward this count are usually only the ones that appear when you use ALT-TAB to switch. The presence of WMU will add ~1 sec. to boot time and no noticeable slowdown to the system. There are two executables in the distribution. The default one is linked statically and will require about 230Kb ok memory when loaded, it does not require any additional libraries to work. The second one is called 'WindowsMakeUp_dynamic.exe' and is dynamically linked, in order to run this you will need two DLL's: MFC40.DLL and MSVCRT40.DLL, these libraries are quite common and you probably have them yet, however I advise you to use this second version only if you are sure these libraries are always loaded in memory when you work, most of the time they are not. These libraries are usually loaded by small utilities and programs and by some MS-Office tools. If you own Norton Utilities for Win95 you can look in the System Information panel to know if they are loaded or not. Consider that these libraries sum up to ~1.2Mb so useing the dynamic version when no other program employs them will waste ~1Mb. 2. The interface The interface of WMU is quite easy too, usually you'll only see its icon in the tray area of the taskbar near to the clock. By clicking (right- or left-clicking) on its icon you can bring up the configuration window. It's divided in five boxes plus four buttons, each box controls one of the functions that can be activated individually. The buttons allow you to update the current configuration while running (without restaring WMU), to quit (oh shame, why shound you quit?), bring up an about box and to hide again the configuration window without applyng the modifications. You can also change the behaviour of the tray icon, in the misc settings you can elect to use the right mouse button clivk to bring up also a drives list. Usually both left and right mouse click would bring up a minimal menu, double clicking or clicking with the middle button will bring up the settings window immediately, like selecting the 'Settings' voice in the menu. Starting a second copy of WMU will quit the previous one and substitute it with the second one. 2.1 The Buttons make-up In this box you find two columns of ten text boxes with at the top a button with an icon on it. WMU will add the icon above the column to any button which has in it the text of one of the texts below. Both the case and the presence of shortcut keys are ininfluent (i.e.: if the button says: 'Apply' you can use the text 'aPPly' or also 'APPly' in order to add to it an icon). When choosing an icon for your buttons remember that they will be shown in 16x16 pixels and that you can choose to use the default ones by choosing cancel and than saying yes to the request to use the standard icon. If you choose to use custom icons note that their size will sum up to the one added to each host application memory. From v1.5d you can select a box to keep the icons visible even when the button is pushed (and after), this might cause a bad feeling to someone so I did not set it as default, the used implementation adds no overload at all. 2.2 The File Dialogs make-up Here you have three settings, the first two are for setting the scaling of the dialogs and the third is to choose whever to have the dialogs always on top or not. The scaling can be anything from 100% up, values below 100% will be ignored, the upper limit is not significant (guess it... :-) but note that WMU will always make the dialog 100% visible both horizontaly and verticaly, so if you want full-screen dialogs just set both scalings to 2000% or so. The third setting will allow you to have the file dialogs in front of any other window, also of the taskbar, this will give you some extra pixels (should you need them...). P.S.: 'MS Office' file dialogs are not yet supported, if someone can provide better inside information they will be. 2.3 The Combo-boxes make-up This is very usefull too and allows you to get rid of these ridiculous lilliput-sized dropdowns with 5 voices out of 30 and a scrollbar on the right. Just set the maximum desidered height of your comboboxes. Note that the boxes won't anyway go below the bottom of the screen, this might be the reason for having different heights on different runs. TIP: You'll find these one invaluable while choosing font types or heights (try with WordPad to see what I mean :-). 2.4 The Start Button make-up You can now place your own bitmap on the shy 'start' button, you can choose any bitmap that windows will be able to load, it will be scaled, however it will take the memory needed to load it in uncompressed form, it will take the memory only once independently from the number of the running applications. From v1.5d if you activate the Task bar make up the orrible dotted-line surrounding the button will not appear any more to ruin your fine bitmaps on the button. From V1.6 you can also set a second image to use when the button is pressed, just choose it and be sure the respective box is actived. Note that the image will have 2 pixels from the left button border, this defect will disappear if you activate the TaskBar make-up too. From v1.7 there's also an option to scale the start button, for most users this won't make any difference, however there are many users that tend to have a lot of applications running. These users will most probably want to make the start button taller in order to place there a bigger image, please note that this does not limit you as to the number of available button, since Windoze simply leaves the area below the button empty. If you are using InternetExplorer 4.0 Active Desktop the scaling option will not be available and the corresponding edit boxes will be set to 100% and grayed. NOTE: From v1.7 the need to select also the task bar make-up has been removed. 2.5 The Task bar make-up With this you can place your own bitmap on the background of the dull taskbar, all the notes about the memory usage of the start button are still valid. Note that when moving up the bar you change it's size and you'll need to use the update button to have your image filling again the background of the bar. If you use InternetExploder 4.0 Active Desktop the selection area of the mini-bars will not be visible, neither will be visible the bar name, sorry for the inconvenience. 2.6 Misc settings Under this voice you can activate the option to show the available HD free space (in Mb) by clicking on the tray icon with right mouse button. When you click with the RMB a menu will pop-up showing the spaces available on various HD's, if you select any voice in there a window will open on the selected HD. The list of the HD's starts with "C:" an goes on until it finds an empty space, this to avoid showing many times substituted volumes. You'll notice that what you see is a menu, just choose an entry to show the root of the selected HD. 2.7 Title bar settings (still BETA) In v1.9 you can also set your own title bar gradients (like the ones of Norton Utilities), there are two parameters by now: number of slices and left color of the bar. The number of slices will affect the smoothnes of the gradients and the time taken to redraw them. The higher the value the smoother the bar but also the slower the redraw (on fast boards this is not too evident). The second parameter is the color of the left zone of the bar, that is the starting color as the ending one will still be the system standard value (if you want you can change it there). Let me tell that this is 100% safe to use this patch, the only real problem is that I don't know how to do it accurately so sometimes the gradiend is some pixels misplaced (never more than a couple), if this does not give you any problem just use it and feel safe. However know: this is SLOW! When this is on windows' redraw will be slower! Note from v1.9e: this feature will not be improves since Win98 adds it as system default. 2.8 Command line options You can also control some of the features of WMU from a command line. Here follows a list of the possible options and their meanings, all of them are case insensitive: /install :Reserved DO NOT USE! /Bar : Sets the file to use for the bitmap behind the task bar. /Start : Sets the file to use for the bitmap in the start button. /StartAlternate : Sets the file to use for the bitmap in the start button when it's pushed. /UseBar [ON|OFF] : Toggle on and off the use of the bitmap on the bar. /UseStart [ON|OFF] : Toggle on and off the use of the start button image. /UseAlternate [ON|OFF] : Toggle the use of the alternate start button image on and off. /YesIcon : Sets the file to use for the icon on affermative buttons. /NoIcon : Sets the file to use for the icon on negative buttons. 3. Uninstalling Should you ever want to remove WMU from your system just use the standard applications install/uninstall, this will remove all the files and, hopefully, the registry entries. Should these entries remain know that all of them are below: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WindowsMakeUp. no other modifications to the registry are made by WMU. InstallShield also adds an entry: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Simone Avogadro", if you elect to disinstall by hand you must also delete this entry. 4. Questions & Answers Q: In previous versions the tray zone did lose its border. I'd like to do it again. A: Maybe I'll reintroduce it.Write me to notify your wishes. Q: Pushing the close button in the configuration windows of WMU hides instead of closing!. A: I know, since the window you do see is the main application window closing it would close the whole application, so I interpret the closing button as a wish to hide it, if you want to quit there is a button for it. Q: If I try to quit WMU with CTRL-ALT-DEL Win95 will tell that WMU doesn't respond is it right? A: Yes it is, in fact using CTRL-ALT-DEL will just do the same as pushing the close button, so have a look at the previous question. Q: With some applications the icons on the buttons have a solid (usually white) background! A: I know, you'll also have noticed that almost 100% of the old Win3.x applications present this defect, this is due to the way windows treats transparent objects. This is quite changed from Win3.x to Win95 so placing a transparent object of Win95 over a Win3.x handled button will not have the hoped result. Sometimes this appens also on 32bit applications written with interface builders that rely on Win3.x-style window handlying (mostly the early win32 compilers). Maybe I will discover a way to apply transparent objects that is suitable both to Win95 and to Win3.x, however I don't feel very much this need as I don't use these old applications. Q: The file dialogs of all the 'MS Office' programs don't resize! A: Yes, they are not standard file dialogs so WMU doesn't resize them, maybe they will be handled in a future release. Q: Previous versions had a problem with the images on the task bar, having a bitmap there could cause the button to disappear, this was really annoying, did you correct it ? A: Yes, at least! It took a lot to perfection this make-up, the main concern was the non-standard way of drawing static bitmaps in an explorer window (as the bar is). From v1.6 I solved the problem with the tasks buttons, still the start button and the tray area wuold disappear when coming back from a full screen application. More widely switching back from a full screen application would waste the appeareance of the task bar, until a new window was focused. From v1.7 it seems the task bar won't be a nightmare anymore to me. It you experience probems just let me know. Q: I use Internet Explorer 4 Active Desktop and have a couple of additional controls in the task bar, when the taskbar make-up is active I cannot see anymore the titles of such windows and their sizing border! A: I know, you are right, however it appears that IE4.0 draws them as a part of the non-client area and then refuses to draw it when requested, sorry but I don't know how to get them back.Write if this is a real problem so I'll know someone is willing to have this fixed 5. Credits Author: Simone Avogadro e-mail: simonea@komodo.ing.unico.it also: savogad@tin.it <-- Please warn before attaching here also: simone_avogadro@yahoo.com <-- No attachments here address: Simone Avogadro viale Rimembranze 33 22070 Appiano Gentile (CO) ITALY Beta testers: Donato Corvi donato@tol.it Stefano Gazzani Michele T. Davide Orlando Aldo Funicelli