In the Background section, you can select either a Transparent background or a Black background. (The Transparent option is the same as the screen saver's default configuration.) In the Surface Style section, you can select either Transparent bubbles or Solid bubbles. As you can see, there are four settings that you can use to manipulate the appearance of the Bubbles screen saver.įigure B The Bubbles Screen Saver Settings HTA allows you to alter the screen saver's display configuration. To configure the Bubbles screen saver, just double-click the Bubbles.hta file and you'll see the main screen, as shown in Figure B. As they do, the bubbles change colors and can be rather entertaining as they bump into the edge of the screen and bounce in the opposite direction. The Bubbles screen saverĪs you know, the Bubbles screen saver provides a very pleasing display of transparent bubbles that gently float across your desktop. In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I'll describe my HTML applications and show you how to use them to tweak the Bubbles, Ribbons, and Mystify screen savers. Therefore, I sat down over the weekend and dug out the three HTML applications (HTA) that I created in the Vista time frame and refreshed them to provide a simple user interface for configuring Windows 7's screen savers. However, I encountered the message shown in Figure A.įigure A In Windows 7, there are no settings that you can configure to customize the display of the Bubbles, Ribbons, or Mystify screen savers. 
When Windows 7 came onto the scene, I discovered that there were fewer screen savers, but I really expected to be able to click the Settings button in the Screen Saver Settings dialog box and see a GUI that would allow me to customize the display of the Bubbles, Ribbons, or Mystify screen savers. While that may have been the intention, Microsoft always had more important things to patch in Vista. Since the settings were in the registry, I always figured that Microsoft would release a patch via Windows Update that would provide a GUI that would make the settings available. I quickly discovered that none of the new screen savers provided any configuration settings with which you could customize the display. However, I was really bummed out when I clicked the Settings button in the Screen Saver Settings dialog box and encountered an error message. When Microsoft launched Windows Vista, I was excited to see several new, native screen savers in the operating system. The HTML applications and the PDF version of this blog post are available in this TechRepublic download.
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