Toolbar Painter v1.0

Toolbar Painter is a simple program that will help you to set up a bitmap on your Internet Explorer/Outlook Express toolbar.  Toolbar Painter does not use its own skinning process but uses registry settings.  It is not compatible with Hotbar though you can make use of the bitmaps downloaded from hotbar.com.  It will work on both versions 4 & 5 of Explorer.

Toolbar Painter will create a bitmap as wide as your current screen and 135 pixels deep.  You can select any suitable graphic (jpg, gif, or bmp.  You can also use emf/wmf but the graphic will disappear after creating the bitmap).  The bitmap can be created with the graphic stretched to fit a full screen width or with the graphic tiled to full width.  You can choose to use a transparent graphic and create a different looking bitmap, however not all graphics can be made satifactorily transparent.

Simply 'Open a graphic'. 'Try it on the screen'.  If you like it, 'Set as IE bitmap' to be used. If not try another!  The bitmap is created when you show it on screen.  It is this bitmap that will be used when you start IE or Outlook Express.

To revert to the default plain toolbar use 'Return to default' which will clear the registry setting set by the program.

	[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar]
	Value Name: BackBitmap or BackBitmapIE5  

If you want to create your own graphic, make it 797 x 135 pixels if you are using 800 x 600 as that ensures minimum distortion.  It is best to use 256 colors.

That's all there is.  Put the program where you want and run it. The bitmap created will be named IEPainter.bmp and saved in the same folder as the exe.  If you want to save any of your masterpieces, copy IEPainter.bmp to another name.

Toolbar Painter is FREEWARE and you can use it as you see fit however you use it at your own risk.  The author accepts no responsibility whatsoever.  If you don't agree, don't use it.

Brian Shepherd
brian@wotsizname.com
May 2000

Internet Explorer, Outlook Express are copyright of Microsoft and Hotbar of hotbar.com.






