Windows Vista provides several ways of controlling the display appearance. You can apply an overall collection of settings, called a theme, or you can customize each individual aspect of the display, from the fonts to the background color.

Changing and Saving Themes

Themes are all-in-one groups of settings, including window appearance, icons, backgrounds, color choices, screen saver, and so on. Windows Vista comes with two themes: Windows Vista and Windows Classic. Windows Vista is the default for Vista; Windows Classic sets up the display to look like Windows 2000 and Windows 9x. You can also create your own themes by configuring individual settings and then saving them.

To change themes, go to the Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization, click Personalization, and then click Theme. The Theme Settings dialog box opens. Modify the current theme as you like, and then click Apply. Vista renames the current theme to Modified Theme, as shown in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3: Theme Settings dialog box.

To save those settings as a new theme, click the Save As button, type a name for the new theme, and then click Save.

Saving multiple themes comes in handy when two or more people share a computer, because each person can call up their preferred settings easily. However, another way of accomplishing the same thing is to set up multiple user accounts and let each person log on to her own account each time she uses the PC. Each user's account settings are retained separately, including the active theme.

Now that you know how to save and apply themes, let's look at how to change some of the individual settings that comprise a theme.

Changing the Background

You can set the background of your Windows desktop for a solid color or a picture. If you set the picture so that it doesn't fill the entire screen, you can select a solid color to appear around the edges.

Windows Vista comes with many pictures you can use, including scenery, textures, light auras, and paintings. You can stretch a picture to fill the entire screen, center it in the middle of the screen, or tile it so that multiple copies fill the screen.

To change the background:

1. In the Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization.
2. Click Personalization.

As a shortcut to Steps 1 and 2, just right-click the desktop and select Personalize.

3. Click Desktop Background.
4. In the Choose a desktop background window, shown in Figure 3-4, select the picture you want. To select pictures from other locations, open the Picture Location drop-down list and select another location, or click the Browse button to identify a specific picture.

Figure 3-4: Select a background.

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5. Select the picture placement using the option buttons at the bottom of the window.
6. (Optional) If you chose to center the picture in Step 5, click the Change background color hyperlink, and then select a background color and click OK.
7. Click OK to complete the background change.

Now that you know how to change the desktop background, move on to learning how to change other display settings.