Section 4.7. Change Your Theme: All Versions

4.7. Change Your Theme: All Versions

You know about color schemes from the beginning of this chapter. Now meet the bigger picture: Themes.

A Theme is a design scheme that incorporates much more than your color scheme. It also involves the background picture for your desktop, sounds, and even the mouse pointer shape.

Theme options let you radically change the look and emotional tenor of your entire PC with a single click (Figure 4-7).

Figure 4-7. You may notice, after specifically applying a theme, that the theme you seem to be using is "Modified Theme." This happens whenever you apply a theme, then change anything, any single component of a theme, including changing your desktop background. Vista takes note and reports the theme you are using as modified .

There are only two themes to choose from out of the box: Windows Vista and Windows Classic. Windows Classic theme is the unsnazzy look of Windows 2000; the Windows Vista theme, of course, is what you've been looking at all along.

It's easy enough to design a new Theme of your own, however. Just make any of the other changes described in this chapter. Fiddle with your wallpaper, window fonts, icons, and so on. Then return to the Themes dialog box and click Save As. Finally, give your new theme a name , so you can call it up whenever you like.