Unless you ar still using prehistoric configurations (less than 98SE, less than IE4...), you are able to enhance your interface using Active Desktop. Old versions of this were a bit buggy, but it works fine under XP (and it's even enabled by default ;-)), so let's see what can be done with it. Here's the cookbook :
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I assume you have a little knowledge of HTML and CSS to do this properly. You can also use DHTML, JavaScript or even Flash if you like ;-).
What you need to take the better of Active Desktop is :
- a nice Wallpaper ;-)
- the run:protocol handler (see info and download at Virtualplastic, that will enable you to launch apps from simple HTML links
- some nice graphics (for example icons, converted in .gif's)
- Why not an app to quickly shutdown/reboot Windows (I tried using shutdown.exe with the RPH, but it doesn't work well... try Poweroff, very powerful and configurable - download link is at the end of the page...)
Now, here is how it works. I have the habit to set an external stylesheet, but you can make it embedded to your HTML file if you want. Here is a very basic example of stylesheet :
body {
background: url(path_to_wall.jpg);
}
img {
border: 0px;
}
div {
font-family: Homespun BRK /*or the font you want, you can put here any font installed on your system!*/;
font-size: 8pt;
color: #000000;
}
The "target="_self" is very important! If you don't put it there, a blank IE page will appear when you click the link...
Using the RPH here is quite interesting, because it allows you to have all your apps available on a single click, without having your desktop filled with icons. You can mouseover effects, make text or image links and make it as small as you want. You have the example above of text links and image links.
2. Keep the HTML file as simple as possible. If it's cluttered, you won't be able to quickly add or delete something form this file. As the background won't scroll at all, you can define all your CSS elements with an absolute positioning, that's a lot easier to place these elements correctly.
3. The file for the javascript menu is available here. You'll have to edit it a bit to suit your needs, of course... Don't forget to link this file in your HTML page with the following line :
The same for your stylesheet with :
4. There are some files that can add functionalities to your Active Desktop, you can do almost anything you could do on a simple HTML page. Some ideas and stuff are available here. You can also play with HTML in your taskbar, I think VP covers that perfectly... Mainly, your limitation is that you can only use client-side languages (unless you have a server running...)
5. As I mentioned before, shutdown.exe (XP) doesn't seem to work well with the RPH, so prefer using Poweroff!
6. To use your Active desktop, you'll have to define the HTML file as the wallpaper in the appearance properties. Don't forget to check that all the elements you use are correctly linked.
Ok, that was for the case where you use an HTML file stored locally on your computer. But if you have a permanent connexion to the net, you can also define a remote HTML page as your "Active Wallpaper". This is really a lot more powerful, since you can use any scripting language, including server-side languages like Perl, PHP, take advantages from MySQL databases, etc. There are, of course, important security issues in these cases, so you should think twice... You can also define "embedded pages", if you want, but the result is not really fine for the eyes most of the time...
Nice thing, for example, would be to add RSS newsfeeds...
The way to do these two operations is the same. Right click on the desktop, choose "properties" (huh.. if you still have it in your rightclick... otherwise, make it through the Control Panel ;-)).
- 9x/Me/2k have a tab called "web" : simply define the page of your choice and synchronize it every time the page is accessed. Define also the number of page levels you can load from there.
- XP doesn't have this tab anymore, it's under "desktop", you can access it through the "personalize" button.
- Simply make the page the same size of your desktop...
Well, hum, that one was long, and there is still a lot to say about what you can do with Active Desktop. But for the rest, I'm sure you can figure it out by yourself ;-)
