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DESKTOP THEMES - FAQ

This File is intended as a general guide to desktop themes. It has been compiled from various sources.For more detailed help, book yourself into the EMERGENCY ROOM at the THEME DOCTORS site

1. What is a desktop theme?
2. Where do I find themes?
3. Where do I find good themes?
4. How do I download themes?
5. How do I install themes?
6. How do I find a particular theme?
7. How do I create themes?
8. What is the difference between Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes?
9. Can I use Plus! 95 themes in Plus! 98 and vice versa?
10. Can I use a theme designed for a different screen resolution?
11. How do I restore the original start-up/shutdown screens?
12. Can I play MPEG Layer-3 sounds in a theme? 
13. Solutions to known XP problems 

1. What is a desktop theme?

A desktop theme is a convenient way of converting several aspects of the desktop environment at the same time. A (complete) theme consists of cursors, icons, sound files, wallpaper, colour scheme and an installation file with the extension ".theme". Sometimes themes also include screensavers and start-up/shutdown screens.

Desktop themes are usually based on some specific topic, e. g. a movie, a band or a game. There are thousands of themes available on the web, ranging from top quality professional creations to amateurish crap.

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2. Where do I find themes?

There are lots of theme sites on the web. They can roughly be divided into five basic categories:

a) Sites that store themes.

Theme World
Custom Effects
Windows 95 Themes Collection
WinThemes.com
Tucows Free Themes

b) Sites that offer vast collections of organised theme links.

Trish's Theme Terrain
THE UNLEASHED
Desktop Heaven
Themez
Plus Themes

c) Sites that offer a limited amount of themes, often produced by the site owner(s).

Vanessa Zoe Desktop Themes
Themes by Gates
OUIJA'S DESKTOP THEMES!
Cap'n Jim's Homepage
themes you never knew existed...
Choc Fiction
Judd's Theme Bar
Digital Themes
Theme Park
Ill-Tempered

d) Sites that offer theme reviews with ratings, previews and written commentary.

The Theme Doctor
Dream Theme
Themez
Quality Desktop Themes

e) Sites that offer collections of links to different theme sites.

Desktop Themes Ring
Plus! Themes Ring
Theme Central Station

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3. Where do I find good themes?

In fact most themes on the web are of rather poor quality. It would be safe to say that about one theme in five is worthwhile, and about one in ten is really good. If you are looking for high quality themes you should consider visiting a theme review site. That way you'll at least know what you're downloading. Most high quality themes on the web are available on the review sites.

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4. How do I download themes?

On most sites the download instructions are very simple. You usually just click on the theme name.

Sometimes servers are very busy, resulting in slow or even stagnant downloads. To solve this problem, get an application called Get Right. It allows you to resume downloads. So if a server starts giving you a hard time when you've downloaded a portion of a file, you can simply abort the download and resume it later (i. e. without having to download the file all over again).

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5. How do I install themes?

Themes are almost without exception stored in zip format. This means you'll need a 32 bit version of WinZip to extract themes.

To install themes, you'll need to use some theme application. Microsoft Plus! is the most common and probably the best application. The latest and best is Desktop Architect which is brilliant and free. Download this as a replacement to Microsoft Plus! whether you are working in 95 or 98 and you will not regret it. But there are several other programs that work just as well, e. g. Desktop Themes or XTheme Manager.

Most themes are very easy to install. Just unzip them to your theme directory and install. But some themes are improperly coded. The most common mistake made is that the .theme file refers to directories or files that are missing or have nothing to do with the theme in question. Luckily, such mistakes are very easy to fix. A .theme file is simply a large batch file, i. e. a text file assigning paths to different files. A .theme file simply tells windows where to find wallpaper, cursors, icons, etc. If you open it in Notepad, you will almost immediately grasp the structure of the code. If a .theme file contains errors you can edit it very easily to fix it.

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6. How do I find a particular theme?

If you are looking for a theme based on some particular subject, but can't find it, try the following:

a) First try searching the largest theme sites, e. g. Themez, THE UNLEASHED, Desktop Heaven.

b) If you still can't find it, try searching AltaVista with the following commands:

+"desktop themes" +subject (e. g. titanic, jurassic park, starcraft)
+"desktop theme" +titanic
+themes +"jurassic park"
+desktop +theme +starcraft

c) You can request themes at Theme World.

d) You could also create your own theme.

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7. How do I create themes?

There is a brilliant
theme creation tutorial available on the web, created by Joey Holt.

A comprehensive tutorial is also available at Tucows Free Themes.

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8. What is the difference between Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes?

Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes are basically very similar. There are however a few important differences:

*Plus! 98 themes have more advanced colour schemes.

*Plus! 98 themes have an additional icon for the "My Documents" folder.

*Plus! 98 themes have a different icon code. This is the only compatibility problem.

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9. Can I use Plus! 95 themes in Plus! 98 and vice versa?

Plus! 95 themes work fine in Plus! 98. However, the icons of a Plus! 98 theme will not load in Plus! 95. This problem is very easy to fix however. If you have a Plus! 98 theme and want the icons to work in Plus! 95, you can edit the .theme file in Notepad to fix the problem.

A Plus! 98 .theme file icon code looks like this:

[Software\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon] DefaultValue=%ThemeDir%Theme My Computer.ico,0

A Plus! 95 .theme file icon code looks like this:

[CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon] DefaultValue=%ThemeDir%Theme My Computer.ico,0

So just remove all instances of the line "Software\Classes\" from the icon code, and the icons will load.

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10. Can I use a theme designed for a different screen resolution?

Windows does a really terrible job of stretching or shrinking images to screen size. So if you want to use a theme with a wallpaper in a different size than your screen resolution, you should either adjust your screen resolution, or resize the wallpaper with an image editor. The perfect image editor is ThumbsPlus.

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11. How do I restore the original start-up/shutdown screens?

The start-up screen is called "Logo.sys" and is located on the root directory C:\. Just delete it and the original windows start-up screen will appear the next time you boot. The two shutdown screens are called "Logow.sys" and "Logos.sys", and are located in the windows directory C:\WINDOWS\. Just replace the current files in your windows directory with the original (English) Windows95 or Windows98 screens. If you have installed Plus98 you'll need the Plus98 logo screens.

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12. MPEG Layer-3 Sound files

Some users may experience problems with MPEG Layer-3 format sound files. If so, download one of the MPEG Layer-3 Codec installers from the utilities page at Themeworld.

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13. Solutions to know problems on Windows XP

Question:
Do all these themes work with Windows XP?

Answer:
Yes, most will work properly but there are a few issues that need to be referenced separately.

Default XP Themes Directory:
Windows XP contains a few theme settings straight from the factory, which enables you to change the look and sound of your desktop. That's good because this also means Windows XP comes with support for theme settings. No third party software is required to run various themes on a Windows XP system. However, they do reference theme parts very differently than in the past. Those that have used themes on Windows 95/98/ME/NT and 2000 operating systems should already know that the default directory location is within the Program Files\Plus!\Themes directory, which is coded %ThemeDir% for short. This older directory structure kept everything within a theme all nice and neat within the same directory. Now with Windows XP, this is not the case. We can continue using the %ThemeDir% location to create and distribute themes, which is highly suggested but.... Windows XP default themes are not setup in this manner. The location of various files is too much information to go into detail about here. If you own Windows XP, simply open one of the default theme (*.theme) files with a text editor and you'll see that the code has changed considerably. In short, themes created on older operating systems will work on Windows XP but there are a few minor issues. Continue reading for more information on each individual file issue.

Default XP Screen Saver Directory:
Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME systems normally reference screen saver (*.scr) files from the "C:\Windows\System\" directory. However, like all Windows NT based systems including Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the default installation directory for screen saver (*.scr) files is in the "C:\Windows\System32\" directory location by default.

XP Screen Saver Compatibility:
Some themes contain screen savers that may not function properly on Windows XP. This is mainly due to updated DirectX drivers that are now being using by Windows XP. In most cases, this only means you will not be able to use the screen saver so you should just remove or uninstall that part of the theme from the theme package.

XP Web View Images:
The small images seen in the Windows explorer when set to view as a webpage are not changeable, as they were in the past. There is a way to do it but there are no theme managers that support this feature yet.

XP System Logo Screens:
The screens that show when turning a computer off and on are also hidden now and not a theme option.

XP Theme Application:
To actually go about applying a theme in Windows XP requires a few extra clicks and there isn't really a "shortcut" to the main theme application program. Windows XP applies themes using a dll file as a program. It's something most wouldn't know how to dll with. Ahem, bad jock. Anyway, the best way to apply a theme is to browse to the themes directory and open the theme file you wish to use.

XP Theme Application Shortcut:
If you choose to install your themes in the highly suggested "C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\" directory location, you may also consider placing a shortcut to the folder itself on your Windows XP desktop or someplace where you can get to it quickly. "Shortcut to Themes"

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