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Posted
on September 26, 2001 by Toby
Crundwell
Appearance
In display properties, move on to the Appearance
tab. Predefined schemes can be chosen from the scheme list or custom
schemes can be created.
Here is a description of what each of the settings
in the Items menu do:
3D Objects: changes the default background
colour & text colour of applet windows & toolbars, etc. Fonts
cannot be changed.
Active title bar: changes the colour for the
title bar currently selected. All versions of windows from 98 onwards
support two colours with fading effects between them. Windows 95 users
need to use X-Setup to enable this; but even then it isn’t a total
solution; it looks horrible. Text font, size & text colour can also
be changed.
Active window border: This useless feature
adds a border of the selected colour to all active non-skinned windows.
I’d recommend leaving this set to 0 at all times.
Application background: Not discernable in
most cases; this changes the background in applications where a colour
is not specified by the application, for instance the non-active area in
ms paint.
Caption buttons: This refers to the size of
the minimize, maximize & close buttons on the top right hand corner
of the window, as well as icons in the system tray, but not ones in
taskbar toolbars (like quick launch). I’d recommend reducing the size
of these as far as is tolerable to free up some desktop space if you are
on a lower desktop resolution.
Desktop: This refers to the desktop colour if
you haven’t specified a background, and the background for the icon
text if you have. For details on how to remove the background for the
icon text, see the icon section.
Icon: Changes icon size as well as text size,
text colour & text font for the icon.
Icon spacing (Horizontal): This refers to the
horizontal space between icons displayed on both the desktop & in my
computer.
Icon spacing (Vertical): This refers to the
vertical space between icons displayed on both the desktop & in my
computer.
Inactive title bar: Similar to Active title
bar, but for all title bars displayed other than the active one.
Active window border: This useless feature
adds a border of the selected colour to all inactive non-skinned
windows. I’d recommend leaving this set to 0 at all times.
Menu: This refers to the size of the Bar in
which “file, edit” etc are displayed, at the top of most non-skinned
windows. You can increase the size of the bar as well as the size of the
text & you can change the text font & colour also.
Message box: Changes the font, colour &
size of the text that appears in message boxes
Palette title: A strange feature that changes
the size of title bars such as ICQ’s. I’d recommend leaving this
setting alone.
Scrollbar: Changes the size of the scrollbar
Selected items: Changes the background colour
of selected icons, items on menus, etc.
ToolTip: Changes text colour, size, font
& background colour of tooltips.
Window: Changes background & text colours
in windows such as Windows’ Explorer/My computer.
If you have desktop themes installed, you can
individually import the Window appearance from a desktop theme without
importing any other setting. To do this, go into control panel
and double click on Desktop themes. Select the theme
you want from the drop down list & click to uncheck every check box
under settings apart from the bottom three settings. Should
you wish to you don’t have to apply the colour scheme settings, or the
font sizes, as the Desktop themes control panel puts font &
window sizes, Font names & styles & colours in
separate categories. Now click apply.
Cursors
To change (mouse) cursors, go into control panel and
double click on mouse & go to the pointers tab. You
can browse to your own cursors for each of the events or use one of the
predefined schemes.
If you do not see any schemed you can install them
by going into control panel, double clicking add/remove
programs, moving to the windows setup tab, double clicking on
accessories, checking the mouse pointers box & clicking Ok,
then Ok again.
If you have desktop themes installed, you can
individually import the cursors from a desktop theme without importing
any other setting. To do this, go into control panel and double click
on Desktop themes. Select the theme you want from
the drop down list & click to uncheck every check box under settings
apart from Mouse pointers. Now click apply.
NB You can also preview a theme’s cursors before
applying it by clicking on Pointers, sounds, etc in the Previews
box & browsing through the cursors on the pointers tab.
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