Hyperion Theme Project

Author: Jason Bassford.

This project page was last updated on 5/28/06.

Hyperion Theme Download Screenshot
UxTheme Patch UXTheme MultiPatcher

History

5/28/06:

  • Found a new uxtheme.dll patch utility (UXTheme MultiPatcher) that will patch all of the versions of XP and 2003 via the single utility. The links I have are to the file on my server – but the original location for this from Softpedia here.

1/8/06:

  • It has been brought to my attention that the graphic elements for this theme do not work properly if large fonts are used. (I.e. A DPI setting of something other than 96.) At present, I have no idea how this might be solved. The work I did with the elements was all “static” – just modifying .bmp images. There wasn’t anything while I was doing this that indicated that they should or shouldn’t scale with a DPI change. I have been unable to determine how to fix this, either not being able to properly Google the problem or to get a suitable hit on a solution.

8/13/04:

  • Updated uxtheme theme patch for XP SP2.

11/5/02:

  • Fine tuned scrollbar controls so that they no longer change colour (which is a bit too “busy”), and so that they appear to have been “pushed in” when pushed.
  • Modified combo box control button so that it also appears “pushed in” when pushed.

10/29/02:

  • Changed slider icon from a sphere to a rectangle, and made it so that it no longer appears mis-aligned horizontally to the right.
  • Minor change to the progress bar so that it looks more 3-dimensional. It’s still not quite right (this is obvious when the progress bar is quite large, as with a CD-RW erase with Nero Burning ROM) but the logic behind the “progress tray” and the “progress chunk” interaction is messed up. I can either get a single pixel of vertical space surrounding the pixel chunk, or the chunk bleeds over into the tray – there is no way of making the chunk fit exactly inside the tray that I can determine.

10/25/02:

  • Minor tweak to the active and inactive title bar colour scheme that’s used by “legacy” applications that don’t follow the visual style – like, ironically, a command shell window. This change makes it follow the overall “metal grey” appearance of Hyperion.

10/24/02:

  • Hyperion theme released publicly.

When I first started using Windows XP I immediately hated the “toy-like” interface that Microsoft had come up with in their native “Luna” theme. However, I did like the general intent of the interface more than I did the Classic look. I quickly tweaked some of the icon sizes to “de-toy” the default Luna to something acceptable.

Recently, I got annoyed by the fact that only in the Classic theme do text boxes look 3 dimensional. For instance, go to Google and look at the difference in the text search box when using Classic as opposed to Luna (XP). With Classic it’s shadowed and highlighted so that it appears as if the box is set “into” the page, but with Luna it only appears as a simple two dimensional thin line – there is no shadowing effect.

So, I thought I’d look at the various customized desktop themes available, and eventually stumbled upon ThemeXP, a site for free “.msstyle” themes, as well as reference to a utility (UxTheme Utility) which will allow them to be displayed. (By default, Microsoft’s uxtheme.dll file will only allow the operating system to display Microsoft signed .msstyle files. This path allows it to also display unsigned themes.)

After spending several hours looking at all of the themes there, I discovered two things. First, none of the themes managed to make text boxes look 3 dimensional. It seems as if this cannot be changed. (Which is unfortunate.) Second, I found that there were very few themes that I actually liked. However, I did manage to find one,
iTunes, the overall idea of which caught my fancy. Some of the specifics I would have preferred changed so I wrote to the author. He made some changes, but at that point I decided to simply spend time customizing it myself. (At the bottom of this page is a list of the changes I made to the original theme.)

I made a one time change to the overall theme (to remove a secondary colour scheme and change its name) with TGTSoft’s styleBuilder, then performed further customizations with TGTSoft’s resBuilder and Serif’s free version of PhotoPlus 5.5 (an excellent, and also free, graphic utility that I highly recommend – I’ve since purchased the full commercial version).

I continue to work on the theme and tweak various screen elements to improve its visual impact. This Web site will include a history of what I’ve modified from when I first “published” the theme (named “Hyperion” for no other reason than that that’s the name of my computer). I will not be keeping any previous versions of the theme available. So, be sure to back up your current version in case you don’t like the new version I have – if not, there’s no going back. Following are the initial changes that I made to the original iTunes theme. To install the Hyperion theme follow these next steps.

  1. Download and run UxTheme MultiPatcher. Reboot your computer.
  2. Download and unzip Hyperion.zip into your c:\Windows\Resources\Themes directory.
  3. In Explorer, navigate to the above directory and double-click on the file “Hyperion.theme”.
  4. Click OK.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.

Here are the changes that I initially made to the iTunes theme. Any further changes are reflected in the “History” section at the top of this page.

  1. Reversed the logic of the buttons on the taskbar so that the taskbar button for the active window displays as being “pushed in”, while all of the inactive windows are displayed as “pulled out”. The same thing was done with the quick launch buttons – they appear “pulled out” when cursored on top of, then pushed in when clicked. I believe that this more accurately reflects a “control panel” with buttons that you push to activate programs.
  2. Lightened the colour of the buttons so that the text is more readable.
  3. Made the “pushed” colour of the start button the same as the “hover” colour. I found the tri-state to be too distracting.
  4. Changed the graphics for the checkboxes and radio buttons to give them more definition.
  5. Modified the windows control buttons (Minimize, Maximize, Restore, Close, and Help) so that they are clearer and do not “bleed” into the background colour. Most especially, redrew the images for the button when the window is not active and when the button is not available so that they no longer appear as indistinct white “blobs”.
  6. Redesigned the buttons so that they are rectangular rather than oval. Although I like the oval shape, there is a problem with Windows sometimes drawing a dotted rectangular box around buttons when clicking on them or, always, when tabbing into them. This added graphic destroyed the existing button (the dotted rectangle would extend past the borders of the oval buttons) so that it looked bad. With a rectangular design, the dotted rectangle fits inside the confines of the normal button and does not distract from it.
  7. Added colour to tabs and buttons so that there is a clear distinction between those elements that are being hovered over, those that are selected by default, and so on.
  8. Tweaked various elements so that they are shadowed and now appear to be 3 dimensional, rather than having the original 2 dimensional look.
  9. Changed the colouring scheme for the progress indicator and the listview headers. I like the overall blue used, but found there to be too many elements that used the same colour.

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