Certain patterns are provided courtesy of Brian Foster.
Compatibility
Menu Bar Pattern has been tested under System 6.0.7 and System 7.0.
There are a number of software products that do things in the menu bar. Menu Bar Pattern has been tested with the following:
MICN 1.6, by Mark Valence — MICN is a utility to conserve menu bar space (or just make it look cool) by replacing standard menu titles with small icons. All icons are black&white, so with Menu Bar Pattern active, they display properly but with the menu bar pattern showing through.
Notification Manager (Apple System software) — Programs that need to display an alert from the background do so with the Notification Manager, which can flash an icon over the Apple or the Application Menu icon. Most programs using this provide only a simple black&white icon; if such an icon is flashed, it will be surrounded by a white square (or whatever color the menu bar’s background would be without Menu Bar Pattern).
PopChar 2.5.1, by Günther Blaschek — PopChar is an excellent replacement for the KeyCaps DA. When you click the mouse at a certain hotspot in the menubar, a window pops up allowing you to select a character in a certain font. PopChar is significant here because that hotspot is optionally marked by a small white square containing a red “P”. With Menu Bar Pattern active, the little PopChar icon continues to be visible in the corner of the menu bar. It has a white background, so it is still easy to see. An interesting “feature”: if the System font size is increased to the point that the menu bar is taller than the title bar of PopChar’s pop-up window, then Menu Bar Pattern’s patch routine is fooled and the pop-up window’s title bar is filled with the menu bar pattern.
SuperClock 3.9.1, by Steve Christensen — SuperClock is a handy utility that keeps a digital clock running in the menu bar, which when clicked changes to the date and then to a stopwatch. SuperClock continues to display in the appropriate color, with the menu bar pattern showing through it. However, SuperClock’s stopwatch icon will be surrounded by a white square (or whatever color the menu bar’s background would be without Menu Bar Pattern).
TypeIt4Me 3.2, by Riccardo Ettore — TypeIt4Me is a utility that’s one up on most glossaries, in that it is global, and you don’t have to select a glossary command. It does however have a command menu, which drops down from an icon at one end of the menu bar. With Menu Bar Pattern active, the icon remains visible, but the menu bar pattern shows through it.
Zipple 1.0, by Christopher Suley — Zipple replaces the menu bar’s Apple logo with the user’s choice animated icons. Icons that do not change shape and are large enough to completely cover the Apple (e.g. the spinning globe) work just great. Icons that change shape (e.g. PacMan) or that cannot cover the Apple (e.g. the Dogcow) are partially surrounded by white (or whatever color the menu bar’s background would be without Menu Bar Pattern). I like this utility, so I will try to figure what Mr. Suley did so I can compensate for it.
Zipple 1.1 — Suley released this at about the same time that I released Menu Bar Pattern 1.0. He did a couple of things to speed it up from Zipple 1.0, but one of those things was to test the color of an arbitrary pixel in the menu bar, and fill an entire square of that color over the Apple icon. This square will be one of the colors of your bar pattern, but which color depends on how your pattern lines up with reference to his arbitrary test pixel. I have communicated with Mr. Suley, but at present there doesn’t appear to be any efficient way to resolve this dilemma.
Version History
1.0 — Original release. (Think C 5.0.3)
1.01 — Fixed a problem with incorrect colors in the Pattern Editor. (Think C 5.0.3)
1.02 — Fixed a problem with the Installed pattern not being saved as such. (Think C 5.0.3)
1.03 — a) Changed the traps being patched in order to have a much smaller effect on overall system performance. [However, this causes the Finder, when launching an app, to display the app name on a white menu bar instead of a patterned one.] b) Corrected a bug in the way patterns are saved after editing [especially noticeable on 8x8 patterns]. c) Truncate patterns that are larger than 32x64. (Think C 5.0.3)
1.04 — The trap change of 1.03 had some displeasing effects, especially in relation to SuperClock, so reverted to original scheme. (Think C 5.0.4)
