Christian Desktop (c) 1998 Rom Tech, Inc. 2000 Cabot Blvd. West, Suite 110 Langhorne, PA 19047 USA Direct Sales: (215) 750-6606 Customer Support: (215) 750-6606 Fax: (215) 750-3722 Web: http://www.romt.com NASDAQ: ROMT (c) 1998 Jonathan Potter, Left Side Software This software requires Windows 95 or Windows 98 to run. Contents: 1. Installation 8. Installing Startup and Shutdown Screens 2. Introduction 9. Wallpaper Notes 3. About Themes 10. Other Notes 4. Usage 11. Uninstalling 5. Previewing a Theme 12. Copyrights 6. Miscellaneous Settings 13. Content 7. Installing Themes 1. Installation First, before proceeding, you must close all applications running in the background, including the MS Office Task Bar, any anti-virus programs, etc. Then insert the disk into the CD-ROM drive. Windows® 95/98 The program will start automatically on most Windows® 95/98 machines when you insert the Christian Desktop CD (this may take a few seconds). If the program does not start automatically: 1. Click on the Start button; then select Run. 2. Type D:\SETUP in the space provided*. Click OK. 3. Follow the on screen instructions. * Note: If "D" is not the drive designation of your CD-ROM drive, replace "D" with the letter that does identify your CD-ROM drive. If you receive an error message such as "Cannot find the file d:\setup (or one of its components)", this usually means the wrong drive letter has been used or the CD-ROM has not been placed in the CD-ROM drive. When the program first runs, it will prompt you for a directory to save the themes in: "C:\Program Files\RomTech\Christian Desktop\Themes" is the default directory. If you already have themes in another directory that you would like to use, change it to that directory here. If you need to change this directory in the future, you can do so in the "Miscellaneous" tab in the Christian Desktop program. If you are not sure, just leave the default path as it is. Christian Desktop also adds two items to the context menu for Theme files - Apply Settings, and Install Theme. Once these are 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 Christian Desktop can automatically be uninstalled, either using Christian Desktop, or with the "Add & Remove" Programs section within 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 Programs section under the Control Panel. (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). Christian Desktop completely replaces Theme Installer as the installer/uninstaller for themes. 2. Introduction The Plus! pack for Windows 95 adds many additional features to Windows, including a Themes capability. A Theme is a collection of sounds, icons, pointers (cursors), along with wallpaper, color 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 Christian Desktop 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. 3. About Themes A Theme is described by a .theme file, which is basically a .INI file containing all the settings for that particular theme. Christian Desktop can read this file and make all the necessary configuration changes at one time. 4. Usage Start the Christian Desktop program by clicking on its icon in the Programs Menu (via the Start button), under Galaxy of Home Office Help. A dialog will appear containing several pages, the first of which allows you to select a theme from those installed. All the themes supplied with this disk must be installed first (see the Install section below). 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 Christian Desktop 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 Christian Desktop 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. 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. Please remember, not every theme has all of these components in it. 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 Christian Desktop, but some of the others seem to require Plus! to work. If you change the 'Show icons using all possible colors' setting, you will need to reset Windows for the change to take effect. This page also has a text field showing the path to the 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. You must enter the full name of the theme file in the Install page text box. Use the BROWSE button to display the themes supplied with the Christian Desktop program. Using the pull-down menu at the top of this dialogue box, select the "C:" drive. Then highlight the "Program Files" folder and click OPEN, then the "Galaxy of Home Office Help" folder and click OPEN, then the "Christian Desktop" folder and click OPEN. There will then be displayed 12 folders, one for each of the 12 themes included with this disk. Highlight a theme folder you would like, then click OPEN. It will display the theme file (the theme's name followed by ".theme"). Highlight this item, then click OPEN. Then click the "Install" button. This theme will now be displayed on the Theme page and is ready to be previewed. You can also use the Browse button to find other themes on your PC if you know where they are. Theme Installer will also attempt to install any TrueType fonts that may have been included as part of the theme (not all themes have these fonts). Quite often, themes have several components defined in the .theme file that were not supplied in the archive (e.g., the screen saver). Christian Desktop 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 Christian Desktop 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" Programs section within 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. 8. Installing Startup and Shutdown screens Startup and Shutdown screens are not officially part of a Theme, and are not included in Christian Desktop(*). However, the feature to change these screens on your system is contained in this program under the "Screens" page. 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; Christian Desktop 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: There are various WEB sites at which Startup and Shutdown "SYS" files can be downloaded and used as replacements for the standard "SYS" files contained in Windows 95/98. 9. Wallpaper Notes Support for JPEG Wallpaper files in Christian Desktop 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. Christian Desktop 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 unsightly border around the outside. Unfortunately, Christian Desktop's 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. 10. Other Notes If you have Plus! installed when you run Christian Desktop, it won't install itself in the registry as the default theme handler. If you decide you want to switch to using Christian Desktop, just go to the "Miscellaneous" page and click the "Update" button. This will force it to install itself as the default handler, overriding Plus!. 11. 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 section within the Control Panel. 12. Copyrights Christian Desktop is (c) 1998 by RomTech, Inc. Program engine is (c) 1998 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) 13. Content Themes courtesy of DeAnna Rushing and Linda Bloom.