By now, there are several programs available that put nice designs or even pictures on the desktops.  People call it eye candy.  But why stop at the desktop?  You have always been able to put at least a simple pattern on the desktop, but have always had just a plain menu bar at the top of the screen.

Not anymore.  With this control panel, you can set the menu bar’s background to any pattern you wish.
 When you open the Menu Bar
Pattern control panel, it
looks something like this.

There is a representation of
the Finder’s menu bar, a
list of patterns, and a bunch
of buttons.  The miniature
menu bar displays the
pattern that is currently
installed.  The list contains
other patterns that have been
included.

To use Menu Bar Pattern,
simply place it in your
System Folder (or your Control Panels folder on System 7 or higher), and restart the Macintosh.

Once it has been installed, you can activate and deactivate it using the On and Off radio buttons at the top.  The checkbox at the bottom also allows you to specify whether its icon will be displayed when you start up the Macintosh.

System Requirements

In order to use  Menu Bar Pattern, you must have a Macintosh with Color Quickdraw and System 6 or higher.

Note that because B&W patterned menu bars are virtually unreadable, Menu Bar Pattern deactivates itself automatically when the screen is set for fewer than 16 colors.

Disclaimer

I won’t be held responsible for the patterns that anyone puts in their menu bar.  Menu Bar Pattern will work on a gray-scale monitor, but patterns may obscure the menu titles, so it’s best on a color monitor.  Hey, if you’re really wierd you can give the bar the exact same pattern as the desktop, leaving yourself only a thin black line to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.