Thank you for downloading the Lyre theme.  I started this theme with the music - a song by Cat Stevens.  So I needed to find a subject and was exploring ArtMagick whose painting of the day was by Gustave Moreau.  The rest followed along in succession.  The paintings displayed are all the work of Symbolist Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898).  They were mostly downloaded from the fabulous art site ArtMagick (http://www.artmagick.com/) and their short biography is quoted:

"Without a doubt one of the greatest Symbolist artists. Entered the studio of Francois Picot at the Paris Beaux-Arts in 1846. A friend of Théodore Chassériau, whom he frequented from 1850 until the latter's death in 1856. From 1857 to 1859 he travelled in Italy. Won considerable reputation at the 1864 Salon with his "Oedipus and the Sphinx". His unfavourable critical reception in 1869 meant that he returned to the Salon only in 1876 with his "Salome Dancing Before Herod", which was admired by many critics, notably Huysmans. In 1884 succeeded Elie Delauney as a teacher at the Beaux-Arts.  Matisse, Marquet, Camoin and Roualt were among his students and their works show his influence. 

The heir of Romanticism and an admirer of the Italian masters of the Quattrocento, Gustave Moreau is the embodiment of Symbolism. He defined his art as a "passionate silence" and transcribed in it obsessions and oneiric themes which made him one of the great masters of sexual Symbolism. He seized upon the personage of Salome and made her one of the main themes of his work, if not indeed the most important. In his many variations on this theme, he portrayed Woman as both a seductress and an innocent."

The THEME INSTALLATION needs to be in steps:

1)	Extract all the files in the zip into c:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\Lyre.  This is done automatically by double-clicking the LyreTheme.exe inside the lyreth.zip you downloaded.  Go to c:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\Lyre in your Windows Explorer next to find the rest of the programs below inside.

2)	The screensaver is available for download separately.  Now is a good time to install it by double-clicking the Lyre.exe inside the lyress.zip.  It will be then activated with the theme.

3)	Double-click the Lyre________.theme file of your choice to open your theme installation program (this will be associated with this type of file).  Hit OK to install theme.  It is included in four sizes so pick the one closest to your monitor size for greatest clarity and choose the one for either Windows 95-98 or Windows 2000.  If you have Windows ME, try both and see which works better.  Apologies, I no longer have that operating system on my computer. If you don't have a theme installation program, please check my Utilities Links Page for links to Desktop Architect, which is freeware, which I have heard works better with Windows 2000 but I cannot backup as I've only had that for a couple of weeks.  

4}	IF NECESSARY - The three logo screens are included separately and with a self-installing program (Lyre Logos.exe).  Just double-click to install.  Please see the help file included for more details.  The three files are also included separately if you like to have another program cycle your logo screens (I use Winlogo or Media Changer Deluxe available through ZDnet.com).  NOTE: Desktop Architect installs logos with the theme, so if you use that, this step is unnecessary.  Logos don't work in Windows 2000 and not very well in Windows ME.

5)	IF NECESSARY - After the theme is installed, double-click the wvinstaller.exe to install the three webviews if they weren't installed with the theme.  These will only show if you have Windows 98+ and webview active checked under your Windows Explorer\View menu (they all three show when you click on the Windows folder).  The installer copies the webviews you currently have into backup files and installs the ones for this theme.  To change them back, just double-click the wvinstaller.exe again.  NOTE: Microsoft Plus! and Desktop Architect both install webviews with the theme so this step will not be necessary if you use either of those programs.  The left logo doesn't work in Windows ME and is a different size in Windows 2000, which lead to the different types of .theme files.

The sound clips are from Cat Stevens' "Lady of D'Arbanville", originally on his "Mona Bone Jakon recording produced in April of 1970.  I got it off of his recent CD "The Very Best of Cat Stevens" from UTV Records.  If you have difficulties with the sounds, your computer might need a small upgrade available at my site so that it recognizes the sound compression used.  It is available here: http://www.lagiraffa.com/l3codecp.zip .

I'd love your feedback.
LaGiraffa@aol.com
www.lagiraffa.com
Themes, Screensavers, and Giraffes, of course!
November, 2000

This theme may not be included on any CD for retail sales or distribution without the author's permission.

P.S. If this is your first theme, save your original desktop settings as a theme so that uninstallation is easy.  You can do this by opening your theme program before you install any theme and hitting the "Save As" button by the drop-down menu that says "Current Windows Setting".  Then name your theme something like Original.theme and put it within your Plus!\Themes folder.


