PortableApps (R34 Mod)
Menu Modification Tutorial

Please note (again) that the Mod menus are not officially supported on PortableApps.com or in the PortableApps.com forums or elsewhere. Even so, there are plenty of knowledgeable fans who are willing to help with questions.

In Part 1 of this tutorial, we learned ways we can change the Autorun.inf and the Locale files to customize the R34 Mod Menu appearance.

Here in Part 2, we will take a look at some of the other files that come with the R34 Mod Menu.

Let's first take a look at the different directories you'll find. Follow the directory tree down from the root of your portable drive until you see the "Data" directory. In here there are three folders:

1. Locale
• We've already talked about the contents of the Locale folder in the first part of this tutorial.
2. OtherApp
• The OtherApp folder holds the information about the different applications you have installed. One of the primary advantages with the R34 Mod Menu is that you can use categories in your menu AND directories on your portable drive. The files in the OtherApp folder tell the R34 Mod Menu how to list and run applications found in different places on the drive. If you poke around in there, you will be able to read information on each of your applications.
3. Theme
• The Theme folder holds all of the themes you have installed. Each theme is in its own folder and you'll notice that each carries the name of the theme. If you want to delete one of the themes, just delete the folder here and restart the menu.

The "Default" theme is most important since it is distributed with the menu and runs on initial startup (that's what default means, right?). It will load if the alternate theme you've specified is corrupted or damaged, maybe due to incorrect editing. The Default theme is provided with all the files necessaary to run a theme. It is complete.

However, some replacement themes are incomplete. They don't specify everything brand new. In those cases, the menu will fill in the missing parts and pieces with the corresponding parts from the Default theme. So, if you change the Default theme, you might end up unintentionally changing other themes.

For these reasons, when you are experimenting, I recommend using a theme other than the Default theme. Let me repeat that: Use a theme other than the Default Theme when you are making ANY customizations.

Just to make it easy to follow this tutorial and modify a real theme on your own, PTC has created a Tutorial Theme.

It is a standard theme with all the basics to get us started, with nothing too strange to give us unneeded complications.

Please download and install:

• The Blue Tutorial Theme or
• The Red Tutorial Theme

For help with installation, refer to the How to Install Themes tutorial.

Once you have installed the Tutorial theme, your R34 Mod Menu should look like this:

While there may be a readme or other text files present, three folders and one file make the complete theme:

1. FolderIcons
• This folder holds the main icons.
• This doesn't seem to be needed, maybe retained for backward compatibility?
2. IconTheme
• This folder holds all the icons used in the menu.
3. Theme
• This folder holds the three main graphic files used in the theme:
• background.jpg
• background_top.bmp
• drive_space_slider.bmp
4. The theme.ini file

A downloaded theme might have all of the parts listed, but that isn't required. Quite a few themes change just the overall appearance by providing only the backgrounds and drive_space graphics. Remember that any part missing from a downloaded theme will revert to the Default theme.

Explore to the Tutorial theme and open the theme.ini file in a text editor. The theme.ini file is constructed logically. The commented lines start with a semi-colon. Further down you'll see a heading for a section, always enclosed in square brackets, followed by the different items and the values assigned to each.

You can fairly easily translate what the section headings mean:

• The basic visual of the menu
• The images for the main folders such as Help or Search
• The labels to those folders
• The PortableApps.com logo
• The application folder images (open and closed)
• and so on....

That's it for this section of the tutorial.

Click here for the first section where we looked at the Autorun.inf and Locale files.

In the next section where we'll edit the theme.ini and have some fun!