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Posted
on September 26, 2001 by Toby
Crundwell
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Systems or General Software
prices here.
 This first part of guide covers basic customization.
More advanced users may want to skip to part
two, although it is recommended that you at least have a look
through part one before moving on too anything else. This guide was
prepared on windows 98, with specific references to differences in
Windows 95/Millenium where necessary.
Wallpapers
By default, all versions of Windows give you the
option of changing the wallpaper and window appearance. Open up control
panel and open display properties.
Windows 95 will only display background pictures
(i.e. bitmaps) saved within the windows folder. Windows 98 will display
bitmaps or JPEG files saved in the windows folder or the \windows\web\wallpaper
folder. Windows Me will also look under the my pictures folder
(usually located under my documents). In order for JPEGs to be
used as a wallpaper active desktop has to be enabled. You
can always browse to a picture if you’d rather not move it to one of
windows’ specified folder, or you can specify the my pictures folder
as another folder of your choice by clicking start, run,
typing in regedit & browsing to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders, double clicking on the my pictures value and
changing the directory from there.
You can easily browse to another directory, although
windows will not store them on the file list if you change your
wallpaper to something else. All versions of windows since 95 support
stretching of the image to fit the size of the screen. However, if
you’re still on windows 95, you’ll have to settle for the image
being in the center of the screen, or the screen in the center of
the background depending on the size of the bitmap (in pixels). Tiling
keeps repeating the wallpaper over the screen, or just shows a
portion of it if it is bigger than the current resolution.
A favorite method of mine to create a visually
pleasing desktop is to create a blurred background. NB This
cannot be done in Windows 95. Active desktop must be disabled.
To do this, open up Microsoft paint. Resize the
image until it is a small white square in the top left corner of the
screen, then zoom in. Keep doing this until you are at 8x magnification.
I suggest a size of four or six pixels. Now select some colours you
think you might want & colour the individual pixels, like this:
Save the file as a bitmap in the directory of your
choice. Now open display properties & select that bitmap as your
wallpaper (you may need to browse to it, depending on where you saved
it). Make sure stretch is selected for the type of display.
Now click apply. If the image shows banding of colours, change
your desktop colour depth to 32 bit from the settings
tab. NB The preview will not display a blurred image.
Blurred desktops work best with transparent icons. Details of how to
achieve this are under the icons
section.
If you have desktop themes installed, you can
individually import the wallpaper 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 Desktop Wallpaper. Now click apply.
Screensavers
Go into display properties and move to the Screen
Saver tab. Here, surprisingly, you can change your screensaver.
After selecting it, you can change the settings of it (screensaver
dependant) or preview it.
Screensaver files (*.scr) are normally stored in \windows\system32
on win9x/Me machines, and unneeded ones can always be deleted safely,
although I’d recommend uninstalling it instead if possible. Windows
screensavers such as flying through space or flying windows
can be installed/uninstalled from windows setup. Go into control
panel, open up add/remove programs, move to the Windows
Setup tab, select accessories & click on more details,
select screensavers & click on more details.
User installed screensavers can be removed from the
normal add/remove programs control panel.
If you have desktop themes installed, you can
individually import the screensaver 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 Screen saver. Now click apply.
NB You can also preview a theme’s individual
screensaver before applying it by clicking on Screen saver in the
Previews box.
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