Themes and Schemes in Vista

Deleting a theme

We’ve spent quite a bit of time here discussing how to customize the Vista desktop appearance and then save those changes as a theme. But what if you want to delete a theme? It takes only a few steps:

1. Open the Personalization Control Panel application (right-click an open area of the desktop and choose Personalize), and then choose the Theme link.
   
2. From the Theme Settings dialog box, select the theme you’ve slated for deletion in the drop-down menu and click the Delete button. Vista removes the theme definition file and all related media that may be associated with the custom theme.

Theme files, by the way, are stored in the %WinDir%\Resources\Themes folder by default, but you shouldn’t delete theme files manually. Use the steps just outlined instead.

Disabling Theme Changes

Sometimes themes can be the bane of an administrator’s existence. Users end up losing icons and can’t figure out how else to launch favorite applications, or they change the wallpaper to something that’s, shall we say, less than business-appropriate, and so on. Inevitably, they end up calling you over to set things back to the way they were—a loss of productivity, to say the least.

Fortunately, there’s a way to enforce that a particular theme be used. More specifically, there’s a way to prevent changes to any part of the Vista desktop so that whatever settings have been configured for the user will remain unaltered.

The technology answer here is to use a GPO, and configure a policy setting that prevents any desktop changes. Here’s the procedure to follow:

1. Open the Microsoft Management Console by typing mmc from the Start menu. You will be prompted to continue if you’re using User Account Control.
   
2. A blank MMC console opens. This console has zero functionality right now, but it will be functional once we add a snap-in. To do so, click File -> Add/Remove Snap in.
   
3. The Add or Remove Snap-ins dialog box appears, as seen in Figure 4-23. From the list, choose the Group Policy Object Editor and then click the Add button (in the middle) to snap it into the blank console.

Figure 4-23.  Choosing the right tool for the job

You’re now asked to which object the GPO will be linked. In a Windows server domain environment, you can link GPOs to domains, sites, and organizational units (OUs). To manage a single computer, choose to link the GPO to just the Local Computer where the setting will apply. If your Vista computer is not part of a domain, you’ll only get one choice: the Local computer.

Now the MMC console appears with a snap-in loaded called Local Computer Policy. There are two main groups of policy settings here:

Computer settings

These settings configure computer behavior, such as startup and shutdown activity.

User settings

These control user behavior, such as actions at logon and logoff time.

As you might imagine, there can be a lot of overlap when configuring settings for a particular desired behavior.

There are hundreds of possible Group Policy settings (and that’s just for the Local computer; never mind ones available in a Windows server domain), so we’ll focus here on just the desired result: preventing user changes to the desktop. To do so:

1. Expand the Group Policy by selecting User Settings -> Administrative Templates -> Desktop -> Desktop.
   
2. Here you see just a few of the possible desktop settings that could affect user behavior. (And not to beat a dead horse here, but these are just the desktop settings in the Desktop folder. Look at the taskbar and Start menu settings if you really want to start feeling overwhelmed.)
   
3. Note that none of these settings is configured by default. To prevent changes to the Desktop theme (that is what kicked off all this discussion, recall), double-click the “Prohibit changes” setting.
   
4. In the “Prohibit changes Properties” dialog box, click the Enabled radio button, as shown in Figure 4-24.
   

5. Now, click OK. The setting should be enabled in the Group Policy Object Editor MMC console.

If you’re wondering whether the Group Policies can apply to one user but not another user, the answer is yes. If you’re waiting for me to tell you how, you’ll have to look ahead to Chapter 12.

Figure 4-24.  Prohibit changes to the desktop with a GPO

Disabling themes, Part two

There’s another way to disable theme changes without quite as much heavy lifting as is the case when editing and applying a Local GPO. Because Vista’s themes are controlled by the Themes service, all you have to do to disable theme changes is to stop the Themes service. Sneaky, but hours of fun.

There are actually two ways to do this. One is by stopping the Themes service from the Command Prompt. The proper command isnet stop themes.

To restart the Themes service from the Command window, use the commandnet start themes.

The advantage of this is that it’s a rather efficient method for turning off themes without changing anything about the underlying theme configurations.

This command must be performed from an elevated Command Prompt. For instructions on how to automatically start a Command Prompt with elevated permissions, see the tips in Chapter15.

The other way to stop the Themes service is to use the Computer Management MMC console. Here’s what to do:

1. Open the Computer Management MMC console. As with so much else, there are several ways to do this. You could right-click the “Computer” item in the Start menu and choose Manage from the context menu, for instance. As always, you could also type something likecompat the Start menu instead.
   
2. There are three main nodes here: System Tools, Storage, and Services and Applications. Because we’re trying to stop a service, we want to focus on the Services and Applications node. Expand it, and then click Services.
   
3. In the list of services, scroll down to the Themes item and double-click it to open the Themes Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-25.

Figure 4-25.  Stopping the Themes service with the Computer Management console

Now, you can use this dialog box to configure several actions for the Themes service. To stop it immediately, click the Stop button.

You can also prevent the Themes service from loading at startup time by selecting Disabled in the “Startup type” drop-down menu. This will prevent all future theme changes until an administrator either changes the Themes service startup behavior or starts the service manually.

Stopping the Themes service will have an immediate and dramatic impact on the Vista interface. It will cause you to lose use of even the Windows Vista Basic theme, and you will now be using a Vista machine that looks a whole lot more like Windows 2000. The Start button, for example, will now be square instead of round, and window buttons will change to a more retro look. And don’t even think about using Aero; an investigation of the Window Color and Appearance options after stopping the Themes service will turn up options that are quite different from those that are possible with the Themes service running.

To regain use of Vista’s many themes, including Aero, just select the Themes service once again and click Start. It’s also probably best to let the Themes service load at startup.

Using Vista’s Color Scheme

Vista’s Aero color scheme changes the game somewhat when it comes to tweaking the appearance of windows and other elements such as the Start menu.

First, let’s revisit how to enable the Aero interface in the event that it’s turned off. And remember that Aero is enabled by default if your computer has the hardware guts to support it. To turn on the Vista Aero color scheme:

1. Open the Control Panel’s Personalization application.

2. Follow the Window Color and Appearance link.

3. From the Appearance Settings dialog box, choose Windows Aero.

4. After a brief wait, you should now be dealing with transparent windows, live preview thumbnails, and all other elements that describe the Aero color scheme.

Now, then: the point of this section is not to detail turning on and off the Windows Aero color scheme, but rather to point out the differences in the Window Color and Appearance dialog box once Aero is on.

With Aero enabled, and after following the steps just listed, you will see a very different Window Color and Appearance dialog box. In fact, it will look much like the one shown in Figure 4-26.

As you can see, several color options here let users select a color of glass to use and then set a level of transparency with a single click. The Transparency slider can change how easy it is to see through the current window.

For even more options that will dictate window color, click the “Show color mixer” button, as I did before grabbing the screenshot shown in Figure 4-26. With these options showing, users can manipulate the hue, saturation, and brightness of the window color by using the corresponding slide controls.

Figure 4-26.  Window Color and Appearance options with Aero

Additionally, users still have the ability to manipulate any of the individual Vista graphical elements no matter what theme (if any) they are using. If you want to configure a different look and feel for message boxes, for example, or if you want to change how the application title bars display their text, you can. Just follow these steps when using Aero:

1. Open the Control Panel’s Personalization application, and then follow the Window Color and Appearance link.
   
2. From the dialog box shown in Figure 4-26, click the “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link.
   
3. In the Appearance Settings dialog box, click the Advanced button.
   
4. You now see the Advanced Appearance dialog box, as shown in Figure4-27.

From this dialog box, it’s now just a matter of selecting the item from the drop-down menu and then using the other configuration options to make the desired changes.

Note that not every element will use every configuration option. You won’t configure a font, for example, for the Desktop item (and it’s probably worth mentioning that changing the desktop color won’t have any effect on appearance if you’re using wallpaper for a desktop background). Select the ToolTip item, on the other hand, and you can then specify a font, size, and color for the displayed ToolTip text.

Figure 4-27.  Configure appearance for specific window elements here

In previous chapters, we discussed how to use Windows Flip 3D. But there are a few items worth pointing out that let you customize how this program’s switching functionality works.

Limiting the number of windows available in Windows Flip 3D

As mentioned previously in this title, Windows Flip 3D is a function of Vista’s new Areo interface. As such, it won’t be available on every computer out there. Your computer must meet certain hardware specifications that designate it as “Windows Vista Premium Ready.” At the time of this writing, that didn’t include a whole lot of existing computers, especially if we’re talking about laptop systems.*

* At the time of this writing, Microsoft was being sued in the state of Washington for deceptive advertising. The claim: Microsoft marketed computers as being “Vista Capable,” when in fact they were only capable of running Windows Vista Basic. But what do you see in the marketing campaign? Aero, of course, and as you now know, Vista Basic is not “capable” of running Aero or Media Center or many of the other features that make Vista worthwhile. Personally, I think the lawsuit has merit—how is the average computer consumer supposed to know or understand that there are 15 different versions of a single operating system? I’d guess that 95 percent of Microsoft employees don’t realize there are that many, much less have the ability to articulate the differences among the multiple versions. To the average Joe watching an advertisement, a computer either runs Vista or it does not.

Moreover, the Aero interface won’t be available on every Vista version, either. To review, Aero is available on Vista Home Premium and higher. It’s not available on Home Basic.

Because of the hardware requirements for the Aero interface, some users might experience a considerable performance hit if their system hardware just barely meets Vista Premium capabilities.

If you have several open windows, Flip 3D has to render each window when switching among programs. As a result, some users might notice glitches in performance when several windows are open. If this is the case, you might consider limiting the number of windows displayed in Flip 3D.

Here’s what to do:

1. From the Start menu, type regedit, and then launch the Registry Editor application from the Programs list. Alternatively, you can press the Windows key and the R key and then type regedit from the Run dialog box.
   
2. Choose Allow when asked permission to launch the Registry Editor (assuming User Account Control is enabled).
   
3. Now, navigate to this registry key:
   
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\DWM
   
   and create a new DWORD (32-bit) entry; give it the nameMax3DWindows.
   
4. Then, as shown in Figure 4-28, double-click to open and set the DWORD value to the maximum number of windows you want displayed by Vista’s Flip 3D. For low-end Vista Premium machines, try a maximum of 5. For more robust machines, 10 should work without a performance hiccup.
   
5. Click OK and exit the Registry Editor.

In Chapter 6, we’ll discuss the Windows Experience Index (WEI). This will allow you to get a good score for your computer’s performance at a glance. The tips discussed here might be a good idea if your system’s WEI score is 3 (less than that, and it won’t be able to run Aero anyway).

Please check back next week for the conclusion to this article.