You choose "Appearance" from Apple Menu: Control Panels: Appearance. Here is where you create the environment which is most comfortable for YOU. Why own a computer if you can't personalize it?

Themes

Here is where you save what choices you have made in the subsequent tabs. Once you have made your selections you will return here to save them.

Appearance

Here you choose which colors will highlight your selected text and your menus selections.

Fonts

Here you choose which fonts you would like to use for various text. 

Desktop

Here is where you set your desktop pattern. You can scroll through the list of patterns and choose the one you like and click "Set Desktop".

You can add patterns to the list.

First copy the pattern to your hard drive (it can't be on a floppy or CD).

Then drag and drop it to the window on the left displaying the patterns.

Click on "Set Desktop".

You can also use pictures for your desktop.

To use a picture you can drag & drop a picture as described above or

Click on "Place Picture" an open dialog box will appear.

Navigate to the picture you want to use and click choose.

You have choices as how to use the picture.

NOTE: If you want to fill the screen with your picture it has to be nearly as large as your screen resolution. Otherwise it will become distorted.

Sounds

Here you choose which sounds, if any, you would like to hear when certain movements or choices are made. This does not affect the system alert sound which is set in the "Sound Control Panel".

To install a sound set you need to download a complete sound set and drop it onto your CLOSED System folder and it will be put into Appearance:Sound Sets. It will then be available in the popup menu above.

Options

There are two options here which affect the way you can use windows.

Smart Scrolling will put all the scroll arrows very close to one another, eliminating the need to move the mouse much to scroll a window in either direction. 

Double-clicking on the title bar will hide the window all but the title bar. Helping to make more of the screen viewable.

It will turn a window from this:

To this:

This can also be accomplished by clicking on the "window shade" box. It is the box on the far right of the Title Bar

Save Your Theme

Now that you have made the changes that you like you can save this set in the Theme tab. Click on Save Theme and give it a name. That theme will always be available in the theme menu. This is a good way to change the way different users like their desktops.