beebfun Desktop Themes - How to grow your own

How to Create your own Desktop Theme - Tips, Tools, Tricks

Microsoft Resource Kit Utilities.

You will need this kit if you want to make your own desktop theme. This tool includes an Animated Cursor Editor and an Image Editor. The Image Editor is used to make and edit cursors and icons, and the Animated Cursor Editor used to make .ani files for any animated cursors.

Microangelo for Windows 95.

This utility provides access to icons of all sizes and color formats used by Windows 95. Browse, manage, create, and edit icons from 8x8 to 64x64 pixels in size and up to 256 colors. The Explorer-like Browser specializes in locating icons on your system. Double-click to open icons for editing in Studio, libraries for viewing in Librarian. The Engineer replaces system icons, removes shortcut arrows.

WinZip

This is a 32 bit zip extractor for windows 95. Also you will need this to extract any of the themes on this site. This utility also has support for long file names.

Creating Icons

The easiest way to create icons is with the Microangelo utility. Create the picture in the 32x32 grid. Then rename the cursor (.CUR) to an icon (.ICO) when you are finished. You need to create 5 icons: My Computer, My Documents, Network Neighborhood, Recycle Bin Empty, and Recycle Bin Full. You can also use the standard icons that come with Windows 98 too (COOL.DLL). The icon numbers are 16, 17, 20, and 21. So, in the theme file, and listed as:

My Computer: DefaultValue=%WinDir%System\Cool.dll,17
My Documents: DefaultValue=%WinDir%System\Cool.dll,19
Net Neighborhood: Default Value=%WinDir%System\Cool.dll,18
Recycle Bin Empty: Default Value=%WinDir%System\Cool.dll,21
Recycle Bin Full: Default Value=%WinDir%System\Cool.dll,22

Creating Cursors

You'll need to create 14 cursors with Microangelo or Microsoft Resource Kit Utilities. Cursors are made in 32x32 pixels. You can make all or none of them animated. The 2 cursors that are normally animated are the Wait and Busy icons. The Wait icon is shown when Windows 95 is doing something. The Busy icon is shown when Windows 95 is too busy to handle any other mouse clicks / commands. The rest of the cursors are:

Arrow - Normal pointer.
Help - Displayed when you click on the ? in a dialog box
NWPen - The Pen cursor.
No - Displayed when an option is not selectable with the Arrow cursor.
Size NS/WE/NWSE/NESW - Will show up when resize a window.
Size All - Displayed when you can move a window.
Crosshair - Looks almost like a target sighting for precision selection.
IBeam - Displayed when you are in a text region.
Up Arrow - Never seen this cursor in action!

Creating Wallpaper

You will need a graphic manipulator like Windows Paint, PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro to create a wallpaper. You do not need to create a .BMP wallpaper, .JPG is probably the best to save your wallpaper because they are 3-10 times smaller than the bitmap. Also, make sure the picture is in 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768 saved in a decently high quality.

Creating Sounds

You will need a .WAV editor or Sound editor to create sounds like Cool Edit 96. There are 20 sounds you can provide for different events to. Try to match a good sound for the sound event (e.g. someone asking a question for the Question sound event, a theme song for the Windows Start sound event, etc). Here are the sound events:

Default Sound - Just what it says.
Program Error - Played when there is an error.
Maximize - Played when you maximize a window.
Minimize - Played when you minimize a window.
Restore Up - Played when you restore a window larger.
Restore Down - Played when you restore a window smaller.
Menu Command - Played when you select a program/option on a menu.
Menu Popup - Played when you look through program menus/option menu.
Open Program - Played when you open a program.
Close Program - Played when you close a program.
Ring In - Played with a program that uses the ringing options.
Ring Out - Played with a program that uses the ringing options.
Asterisk - Not sure when this is played.
System Default - Used when one of the other files is missing.
Exclamation - Played when you do something that is not supported.
Windows Start - Played when you start Windows.
Windows Exit - Played when you exit Windows.
Critical Stop - Also known as System Hand.
Question - Played when a program ask you a question prompt.
Empty Recycle Bin - Played when you empty the recycle bin.

Sounds events that you can use with the same WAV file so you don't have duplicate WAV's:

Default Sound and System Default
Program Error and Critical Stop (System Hand)
Maximize and Restore Up
Minimize and Restore Down

You don't need to use the highest quality for sounds (Stereo, 44KHz, 16 bit). All of the files you download from my site have WAV's that are in Mono, 11KHz, 8 bit quality. And most of them sound great unless the original sound was bad quality.

Creating Startup/Shutdown Screens

A great part of a theme is the startup/shutdown screens. There are 3 screens that are needed:

Startup,
Shutting Down,
Shutdown Complete.

These 3 files will replace the original Windows 95 screens that you see when your starting or shutting down windows. These files are located in the C:\ and C:\Windows directories named LOGO.SYS, LOGOS.SYS, and LOGOW.SYS. The .SYS extension is just for Windows. It is actually a .BMP file saved in 320x400, 256 colors and then renamed to a .SYS file. You can even animate the screens using a variety of shareware programs like CB Animator.

Creating the Theme configuration file

When you have all the multi-media files resourced you will need to create a *.theme configuration file where * is the name of your theme. You will need a text editor (e.g. Word or notepad) or some utility that does this automatically for you (e.g. Theme Create). This file pulls the whole theme together with all the commands Windows needs to set it up. There are a couple of ways to make the *.Theme file.

One way can be to use existing theme files and edit these to suit your theme: Copy an existing *.Theme file that you like and rename it to your theme name.
Use Theme Create to build a .Theme file.

There are some variables you can use in the .Theme file to point to certain locations for the files. The first is %WinDir% (you need the % signs) which tells Plus! to look in your default Windows directory. The second is %ThemeDir% which tells Plus! to look in your default theme directory. These variables make the .Theme file more flexible on different machines. Some people may have Windows set up in C:\Windows and others may have it in some variation. It makes it easier to write %ThemeDir% than C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes.