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Desktop Themes v1.80
(c) 1998 Jonathan Potter
Left Side Software
This software requires Windows 95/98 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 consider registering to support the further development
of this and other great software. The registration fee is $US15.
You can register online at http://www.lss.com.au/register.htm. We regret
that due to high bank charges, checks not drawn on an Australian bank can
no longer be accepted.
If you don't want to register online, you can send your Mastercard or Visa
details (name, number and expiry date) to the following address. You can also
send checks in Australian dollars (drawn on an Australian bank), or cash in
USD, FF, DM, GBP or AUD.
Left Side Software
PO Box 2252
Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012
AUSTRALIA
Registered users will be given priority when asking for technical support,
and also receive notifcation of new releases of this and other software.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** For a simple, step by step guide to installing a theme,
please see the end of this file **
** PC dealers and VARs please see the end of this file **
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 thousands 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://dale.bitshop.com
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 three 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.
(initial settings)
This refers to the configuration of your desktop when the Desktop
Themes program was run. You can use this to return to the initial
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.
(windows defaults)
This will restore your system configuration to the default Windows 95
settings.
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.
The button in the "Active Components" section labelled "Set As Random Options"
allows you to select which parts of the theme will be changed if Random Theme
changing is enabled in the Miscellaneous section.
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 do not fall
into other categories. "Use large icons" lets you toggle your desktop icons
between normal size (32x32) and large size (48x48). "Show icons using all
possible colours" will enable the display of 256 colour icons on your desktop.
"Window animation on minimise/restore" lets you turn off the annoying (to some)
window animation features of Windows. The "Stretch desktop wallpaper to fit the
page" feature causes the desktop wallpaper to be stretched to fill the entire
screen if it is smaller than the screen, and shrunk to display the entire picture
if it is larger than the screen.
Desktop Themes 1.80 can select a random theme automatically, every time you restart
your computer. To enable this feature, turn on the "Select a Random Theme on Startup"
option. You can select which components are changed by using the "Set As Random Options"
button under the Themes tab.
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.
Quite often, themes have several components defined in the .theme file that
were not supplied in the archive (eg the screen saver). Desktop Themes will
successfully install a theme even if components are missing, and will
display a list of the files that could not be installed at the end of the
process.
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 required that you click on the desktop
and press F5 when desktop icons were changed. The new version of Desktop Themes
is able to refresh the desktop automatically. If it should fail to do this, however,
simply click on the desktop and press F5 as before.
12. Sites
The new 'Sites' tab in Desktop Themes 1.7 provides a convenient list of web sites
where you can download themes. To go to one of the listed sites, simply click on
the name in the list and then click the Connect button below. Your web browser
will be automatically launched, however you do need to be already connected to
the Internet for this to work.
13. 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
14. 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.
15. 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)
16. 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.
v1.5 Aug 97 - Fixed a potential problem in the wallpaper stretching that
could have prevented stretching from working if Plus! or
the Plus! demo was ever installed.
- Wallpaper settings are now preserved correctly for
multiple users.
v1.6 Sep 97 - A list of the files (if any) that could not be installed
is now displayed after you install a theme.
- Now uses a registration code rather than an unlock
program.
v1.7 Dec 97 - Added the 'Sites' tab
- Fixed a couple of minor problems
v1.71 Dec 97 - Changed the way fonts are configured in the Edit section;
the new method should be more accurate. Also fixed a
problem relating to the way the system fonts are changed
when you apply a theme.
- Fixed a problem where if you selected Clear in the Edit
section to remove a sound, it would not actually be
removed properly.
v1.72 Dec 97 - Fixed another small problem, this time to do with the way
screensavers were saved in the theme file.
v1.74 Mar 98 - Desktop icons now refreshed automatically.
v1.75 Mar 98 - Fixed a bug which could cause Desktop Themes to crash
when installing some badly constructed themes.
v1.76 Apr 98 - Animated pointers are now animated when a theme is
applied instead of after you restart Windows.
v1.77 Apr 98 - Fixed another problem changing desktop icons. Should now
also support different icon sets for different users.
v1.78 May 98 - It is now possible to edit the Windows Default sound
in the theme editor.
v1.80 Jun 98 - Added Random Theme changing option to the Miscellanous
section.
- When copying theme files for Distribution in the Edit
section, the name of the wallpaper file is left intact
instead of being changed to 'ThemePicture.bmp'
- Changed "(original settings)" entry to "(initial settings)"
to avoid confusion with "My Original Settings"
- Added "(windows defaults)" theme entry to enable you to
easily return to the Windows 95 default settings
- Added support for the new Windows 98/NT 5.0 system colour
settings - HotlightText, GradientActiveTitle and
GradientInactiveTitle
Installing a Theme - Step by Step guide
---------------------------------------
Firstly, you need to have already "installed" the Desktop Themes program itself.
All this means is that you have placed the "Desktop Themes.exe" program somewhere,
and run it at least once. It will have asked you to select a folder to store
themes in (or, if you already had Plus! installed, it will use the Plus!
folder). After this step, installing themes is easy:
1. Download the theme you want from the Net, pull it off a CD, or whatever.
2. Using Windows Explorer, Move the theme ZIP file to a TEMPORARY folder.
To create a temporary folder easily, simply right-click on the Windows
desktop and select New -> Folder.
3. Once you have the ZIP file in the temporary folder, you need to extract
it using a zip program that supports long filenames. WinZip (http://www.winzip.com)
is the most popular of these. Extract it into the temporary folder.
4. Go to the temporary folder using Explorer, and right-click on the .theme file.
The .theme file will usually have the name of the theme itself, the type will be
"Desktop Theme File", and it will be shown with the Desktop Themes icon.
5. When you right-click on the .theme file, a popup menu will appear. Select the
'Install Theme' option from the menu, and the Desktop Themes program will be
launched to automatically install your theme.
If you like, you can substitute steps 4 and 5 with the following step:
4. Run the Desktop Themes program, and click on the "Install" tab. Then select the
"Browse" button, and use the dialog to navigate to your temporary folder and
select the theme that you want to install.
Once your theme has been installed, Desktop Themes will show you a list of
the files (if any) that could not be installed, for some reason or another.
Usually you can ignore this. Once the theme is installed, you can also delete
the contents of the temporary directory, as they are no longer needed.
You should then be able to click the "Theme" tab in the Desktop Themes program,
and you will find that your newly installed theme has been added to the drop-down
list.
PC Dealers and VARs - Please Read This!
---------------------------------------
Are you a PC dealer or VAR and are looking for something extra to bundle with
the systems you sell?
For a small, one-time fee you can now obtain a licence to distribute a
fully-working version of Desktop Themes with every system you sell. Whats more,
we will even customise your version of Desktop Themes with your company name in
the title bar, and company logo displayed in the About page. You can now give
your customers the option of using the thousands of free desktop themes available,
without them having to buy the expensive Plus! upgrade.
We impose no restrictions on the number of copies of Desktop Themes you can
distribute, but we stipulate that your customised version of Desktop Themes can
only be bundled with new systems - it must not be sold individually, or distributed
electronically in any way.
For pricing and other details on this valuable offer, please e-mail jpotter@lss.com.au.