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Please see this post for more details.

Vista LBT Theme!

landbeforetimelover

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Well, I've realized that I didn't like my old LBT theme because it just wasn't flashy enough.  I decided to modify the default windows vista theme to include some LBT elements.  Here are some screen shots:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...album/shot1.jpg

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...album/shot2.jpg

The theme itself is rather mild.  This is because I wanted it to really look like windows vista but I wanted it to also have an LBT touch to it.  I could add more content, but I don't think it really needs it.  I tried stretching the picture into the black area of the start menu as well, but it didn't look too good.  I think it's just about perfect.  Now, let's start on the instructions for applying this theme.  First off, in order to install this you must use tuneup utilities.  Before you go wining to me, I've made it portable which means there is NO INSTALLATION REQUIRED! :D You may download the zip folder Here.  It's called "VistaLBT Theme.zip".

Follow these instructions to apply the theme sucessfully:

1.  Unzip contents of zip archive to a folder or the desktop

2.  Double click the tune up utilities program

3.  Click on "Tuneup Styler2"

4.  A window in some odd language will come up.  Just ignore it and click the only available option

5.  Under the section called "select a task", click on the very bottom option that says "Select a visual style......"

6.  Click on "add" and then on "install visual style from file"

7.  Locate the file you extracted called "VistaLBTfinal" and click okay

8.  Select which theme you want from the newly installed themes (I recommend the Dark theme) and hit "apply visual style"

9.  Wait a few moments when it applies and enjoy!



There may be some people who experience problems however.  In some computers I tested this theme on, the program froze after selecting the theme.  You may get something like this while doing step 7:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...lbum/frozen.jpg


If you get a screen like this, simply wait about 5 minutes and then forcefully quit the program by trying to X out.  You'll get an end now dialog box:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...lbum/endnow.jpg


Go ahead and end it.  After that, just start up the system styler again and the VistaLBT themes should be in the list.  Then you can proceed to step 8 and 9. :D


NOTE:  I wanted to make the background part of the theme, but some may not like it and it would have made the theme file much larger than it already is.  I've included the background image in the zip archive however and you may apply it after installation of the theme.

I'm not exactly sure why it freezes sometimes on some computers.  My guess would be because I have a total of 6 variations of themes integrated into one msstyles file.  That's over 10mb of theme files to load!  Some computers just can't handle it and the program freezes.  It's no big deal just so long as you let it stay frozen for a few minutes.  Then when you restart the program all the themes are there.


After applying the theme, you may delete ALL downloaded files and all of the files you extracted from the archive.  It won't make any difference.  Then after tuneup utilities is gone you can change your theme in the appearance properties in your computer.

I hope you all like. :yes B)


Lillefot

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Looks brilliant matey!
Extraordinary work as always!  :yes

/Lillefot
Do well. Live well. And dress very well.


Clawandfang

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Looks interesting...it might clash with my Halo background currently though, so I'll leave it... for the time being anyway.


landbeforetimelover

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I'm glad you think it's cool.  It was a lot of work to make this theme.  Hours of work was put into it and my computer was stretched to the limit trying to do everything.  Here's what my photoshop looked like trying to edit every single image file manually:




Here's what they looked like when I un-bunched as many as I could:



NeptuneNavigator2001

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Hmm...  Looks nice!  If I ever get around to using Vista - which I seriously doubt I ever would, were it not for DirectX 10, which I seriously wish Microsoft would port to XP, too - then I will definitely use this!  But...  Is it possible for this to work in XP?  I hear that there are many changes that were done in between XP and Vista, GUI-wise...  Is it possible to just install it in XP, or would it not work?

Again, great job! :D
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


landbeforetimelover

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Yes.  I'll never switch to Vista no matter what Microbutt does to convince me to do so.  I've tried this theme with BOTH XP and Vista and it worked seamlessly.  Vista sucks royally.  I'd never make a theme that would only work in Vista.  This is mostly to make your copy of XP look like Vista with an LBT touch and to allow Vista users to be able to apply my theme as well.  I had another theme, but it wasn't as flashy and I don't think people with vista would want to give up their nice Aero themes to have a pic of Littlefoot in their start menu.  That's why I created this.  That and the fact you need windows blinds to apply my old theme (which isn't free).  I thought about making a simple install EXE, but I don't think I could do that honestly.  I'm not the best programmer and I'd have to take a lot of code from tuneup utilities to do that, which wouldn't be legal.  This is the only legal way to do this.


NeptuneNavigator2001

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Ah, good!  Yeah...  I'm still peeved about DX10, because that limits newer games to Vista only...  (I'm thinking of the eventual Doom 4 here.)  Not that I play newer games much...  I've played so much Doom, though.  Mostly out of rebellion against my evil ex-stepdad, who hated it because it was too violent.  Well, so was he...

Anyway, getting back on topic, I'm so glad this works in XP!  Okay, I think I'll try it out!  But...  Probably not on this computer.  I have themes turned off on this machine to save resources because I'm only running 256 megs of RAM (SDRAM) with a 700MHz CPU.  Heck, I don't even have mouse trails turned on, on this machine! :lol

Even then, things are running a little slow... :DD And I'm using some tweaks.
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


landbeforetimelover

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Well, I would offer you my tweaked version of xp, but I don't think I can.  I could get into trouble if anyone found out I was messing around with the windows OS without a license.  I've totally tweaked it though.  I got it to run on a computer with a regular pentium processor running at 133mhz and 32mb of ram. :lol:

DirectX10 will be out for XP soon.  Just be patient.  Last I heard, it's supposed to be out by the end of this year.  Though I'm not really following up on it since I'm not a gamer.


NeptuneNavigator2001

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...What?  Oh, booyah!  You mean, official?  From Microsoft?  It's about time...!

Yeah, I've got XP Media Center Edition.  No worries, man...

EDIT: But, I will say, I find it amazing that you managed to tweak XP like that...!  ...That could prove to be useful...
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


landbeforetimelover

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No, it's not an official Microsoft release.  It's from the freeware programmers community.  They're trying to get a license to release it to the public and Microsoft isn't giving them any trouble about it.  It looks promising.  Even if Microsoft doesn't authorize it's release, I'm sure there'll be ways to get it through........other channels if ya know what I mean.  No one is going to  put up with Vista for very long.  It's such a crap OS. -_-


NeptuneNavigator2001

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Hmm... There have been attempts to "hack" DX10 - I actually have such a build, but it doesn't show it in dxdiag, so I have no real "proof" that it's even working - but I wasn't aware of it going that far...  I'd hope that dxdiag would show that, yes, it's DirectX 10, not 9.0b, not 9.0c...  Or whatever.  10.  And that the games would recognize it as such...  You know, without having the patch the games...
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


kjeldo

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sssssssssssssssssssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupppppppppppppppppppppppppppper good!


landbeforetimelover

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This version of my customized LBT theme doesn't seem to be as popular as my last version.  What's wrong?  I thought it was tons easier to install than the old theme.  Is the theme not good enough?  Do none of you care about it looking vista-like?  Is there something missing?.............

I hope you all understand that this is compatible with BOTH XP and VISTA computers.


NeptuneNavigator2001

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No way dude, I like it...!  It looks really good...

You'll have to excuse my rather somber mood...  One of my birds is now lost...  I've posted about it in The Fridge section...

But, yeah...  I think you should go all-out, and make replacements for everything, you're that good!  Startup logo, login background, etc...  Go for the gold!
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


landbeforetimelover

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Quote
But, yeah... I think you should go all-out, and make replacements for everything, you're that good! Startup logo, login background, etc... Go for the gold!

I've tried to make a total LBT computer before.  I can't make a decent LBT boot screen because it has to be in 16 colors.  Looks like garbage.  I prefer the xp boot screen because at least it looks decent.  I've already created a few good LBT screensavers.  I suppose I could create a screen to replace the image when you go to log in.  Ya know, this ugly little thing:



I've already created LBT desktop icons, but I suppose I could create icons to replace the default "My computer" icon and such.  As for the windows vista theme I have here in this thread, I don't think I can do anything more to it sadly.  It just wouldn't look right.  I mean, there's nothing that you could use as an image for the tasbar itself.  The start button needs to stay round.  Inside the start menu, it only looks good if the image is on one side of the menu.  I really don't see any more I can do with this theme.  I can't put an image in the background of the all programs menu that pops up because it's size is different with every user (because the more programs you have, the larger the area becomes).  Replacing major default computer icons is a good idea though.  I just made this for the "My Computer" Icon.  I think it looks rather nice:



I'm not exactly sure if I can do much more than I already have.  One day, I'll release something called the "LBT PACK" which would contain every single file I have to totally LBT out your computer, but I have more stuff to make first.  If you have any ideas, don't hesitate to suggest them.


NeptuneNavigator2001

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Heh..  Sure...  Well, what about mouse cursors?  I don't see anything in that department yet...  Yeah, release it all some day, even the screensavers; I'd really like to see those!
"And the Most High said unto Moses, Ahayah-Asher-Ahayah.  And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ahayah hath sent me unto you...  This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

1953-2011...  One day, mother, I shall see you again...


landbeforetimelover

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Yeah, I've made mouse cursors.  Look around in the Projects section and you will find them all.  I've made 2 mouse cursors and around 19 icons.  I must admit that I like the background of the login screen.  Here is an idea for a LBT login screen:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...ginscreen-2.jpg