CandyBarZ

Wake up!! CandyBarZ is here! CandyBarZ is THE theme engine for OS/2. CandyBarZ' primary feature is the ability to 'skin' the OS/2 public window classes. Thus far Titlebars, frames, and buttons are skinable. Menus are on the horizon as well as scrollbars. !NEW IN VERSION 1.40.1! - Just about everything! - Support for pseudo transparency for backgrounds of frame windows - Improvements for all button classes (Push, Radio, and Check). The background is painted correctly, image drawing is accurate now. - MinMax buttons are drawn correctly now. - New plugins for color setup and desktop background! - A lot of bug fixes. ahem.... - More bugs especially in the themebuilder and setup program... !!CAUTION!! Uninstall any previous version of CandyBarZ and delete the candybar.ini. The format has changed. Some themes require long filenames so installation must be on a drive which supports them. BTW FAT is so inferior nobody should use it nowadays. PLEASE read the instructions thoroughly before proceeding with installation. As CandyBarZ REPLACES PART OF OS/2, failure to follow the instructions accurately may result in severe problems. Online help is also available but does not yet reflect the current development status. The Files --------- Just to make sure everything is in order before you start, check that the following files were extracted from the CandyBarZ archive: CandyBar.dll cbzutil.dll CBSetup.exe CBSetup.hlp CBBuild.exe CandyBar.txt (since you're reading it now...) plugins\cbztext.dll plugins\cbzimage.dll plugins\cbzlines.dll plugins\szeimage.dll plugins\chkimage.dll plugins\cbzbrdr.dll plugins\brdrimg.dll plugins\gradient.dll plugins\transimg.dll plugins\syscolor.dll plugins\sysbackg.dll plugins\minmax.dll Requirements ------------ OS/2. CandyBarZ has been tested with OS/2 Warp 4. It should work on any 32-bit OS/2 platform, however. MMOS/2 is used for image file support and must be installed. Some themes require long filename support. So installation on a filesystem which supports them (HPFS) is recommended! New Installation ---------------- Start the CBSetup program. Until CandyBarZ is installed, the setup notebook has only one page, Install/Uninstall. Libpath statement in config.sys will be updated to include the candybarz directory, and some settings for candybarz will be saved in the system ini files. (note that CandyBar.ini is NOT included in the archive, it will be created when CandyBarZ is first loaded). Context sensitive help is available for all controls on this page (tab to the control and hit F1). Note: Since this is merely a developer release the help isn't yet accurate. When the installation is complete, you must reboot so that OS/2 can load CandyBar.dll. NOTE: Whack-A-Mole uses a previous version of PSRT.DLL. However, CandyBarZ no longer uses PSRT.DLL. If you DO NOT have Whack-A-Mole installed, but DO have a previous version of CandyBarZ installed, you may remove the PSRT.DLL. Upgrade ------- !!CAUTION!! - This version of CandyBarZ is NOT compatible with earlier versions. You should uninstall any previous version before installing this version. DO NOT REUSE YOUR CandyBar.ini!!! Start the CBSetup program and turn to the Install/Uninstall page. Press the "Install" button. Reboot to load the new DLLs. Customization ------------- Once CandyBarZ is installed, two additional pages are added to the CandyBarZ (CBSetup.exe) installation notebook dialog, one for the default theme, and one for custom themes. The Default Options page will let you set up the theme that CandyBarZ uses for all windows which don't have an explicit custom theme. The Custom Options page of the installation dialog, lets you choose custom themes program by program, as well as disable CandyBarZ program by program. And again, please be sure to click the "Save" button that appears on the first page of the dialog box if you wish your changes and/or customisations to be preserved between reboots! Caution: Whenever changing themes be sure to *always* select and apply the empty theme first! Afterwards you may apply the desired theme. Note: The program name on the custom theme page is case sensitive. Make sure you keep that in mind when building for example exception lists. Potential Problems --------------------- First of all, this IS a BETA release!!! Some programs may either have problems with CandyBarZ or completely ignore CandyBarZ. In addition some programs (such as FileStar/2) change the title bar color to indicate certain program states to the user, etc. Although this is not really a bug in either program, the user may wish to selectively disable CandyBarZ just for those programs. (I.e. have CandyBarZ change the titlebar color for ALL programs but the one for which it is disabled.) Also there have been several problems reported with users having certain S3 Video Cards and/or Sounds enabled. The most common symptom is playing the normal .wav sound files in a repeated loop on boot-up followed by the system locking up. We think we have fixed this problem and we hope this version of the beta will put an end to the difficulties experienced by those users. If you STILL experience trouble with CandyBarZ, PLEASE LET US KNOW!!! In addition, please try disabling the system sounds and also report those results to us. We would be most appreciative! Lastly a number of users have written to say that the customizations and other changes they have made dissappear when the machine is rebooted. Once you have made such changes you must click the "save" button that appears at the bottom of the first page of the CBSetup notebook. (Note this button is disabled until such a change is actually made.) A list of known problems is included in the online help, as well as instructions for selectively disabling CandyBarZ. There may be additional problems not listed in the online help. Please report them to us at candybarz@egroups.com The following problems are already known: - The theme builder and the setup tend to crash. - Some programs may crash (PhotoGraphics>pro, ...) with some themes and corrupt the candybar.ini file. Strange behaviour may be observed afterwards. Delete the candybar.ini and add the crashed program to the exception list. A reboot may be necessary. - The names in the custom theme/exception-list are case sensitive - Sometimes the background image remains locked when changing themes. Restart the WPS if this happens. Registration ------------ There is none! CandyBarZ has been released to OS/2 Netlabs and, as a consequence, is now FREE! You may help development. Visit http://www.netlabs.org for more information. The whole source is avaiable online via CVS. License and Disclaimer ---------------------- There are no warranties, express or implied. The authors and OS/2 Netlabs may not be held responsible for any damage, direct or indirect, caused to your computer, productivity, or anything else by this software. This software is not warranted to be free of bugs. You may use this software freely. If you want to reuse some code get in contact with netlabs. We are currently in the process of clarifying the licence but this process isn't finished yet. History ------- 24 July, 1997 1.00 Initial release 02 August, 1997 1.01 Fix lots of bugs, probably introduce some others 02 September, 1997 1.10 Add horizontal gradients, fill option, 3D border highlight, clean up CBSetup some, fix bugs, some optimizations 20 September, 1998 1.20 Fix bugs, of course. Add 3D text, redesign CBSetup, add image support, add PMView and S3 workarounds 28 November, 1998 1.202b Fixed an incompatibility with Object Desktop and our PMView fix. Removed dependency on MMOS/2 because it was causing looping system sounds on some systems. For now only bitmaps are supported for titlebar images. 14 May, 1999 1.30 b1 First public release using the new plugin interface and Buttons/Frames have been added. 1.30 b2 Bugfix release 17 Oct 2000 1.40.1 New beta with a load of new features. CB is becoming a complete theme engine now.