A Kaleidoscope Of Color

Are you bored with the default, plain-jane color scheme that comes with Windows 95 or Windows 98? If so, you will be relieved to know that you can quite easily change the colors to your liking.

To accomplish this feat, you will need to change the Display Properties of your system. You can open this dialog box either by right-clicking on a blank area of your desktop and choosing the Properties item, or by opening the Display icon in your Control Panel. Once there, click on the Appearance tab.

This window shows you an example of the color scheme you are editing, with several options below. The Scheme drop-down box is a quick way to change to other predefined color schemes. These color-coordinated schemes include both color and font changes. Note that some schemes require your display adapter to support more colors than others. For example, the schemes marked "VGA" can run on even a basic video card. Most schemes require at least 256 colors, but a few (marked "high color") require even more colors to display properly. The schemes marked "large" use larger fonts, which may be useful on computers running higher resolutions.

If you do not like the predefined color schemes you can create your own. Simply click on the item you wish to change in the sample picture, or choose an item from the Item list. You can then change the size, color, and font of each item as appropriate.

After you have modified the colors to your liking, choose the Apply button to apply your changes throughout Windows. When you have perfected your new color scheme, use the Save As... button to permanently save the color scheme in the list.

December 1998

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