The User Guide - Version 2 DesktopX is a program that lets people easily create desktop “objects” (sometimes called “widgets”). These objects can be combined together to build entire desktops as well as create micro-programs that extend desktop functionality in many different ways. It runs on Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. 1 Table of Contents What is DesktopX 2 Enhanced Desktop Icons 3 Desktop Objects 3 Using IconX 4 Basic Configuration - Themes and Objects 7 Creating a Theme 8 Creating an Object 11 DesktopX Settings 30 How to secure your desktop 31 Object Z-Order, Movement, Activation, etc. 32 Object Relationship – Parent, Child, Identity 35 Sending messages to Objects 37 Using Scripts to extend DesktopX 39 Living with DesktopX 46 Living with DesktopX 51 On-Line Support and Content 52 What is DesktopX There are 4 main uses for DesktopX: 1) It can enhance your existing desktop by giving users the ability to enhance their existing icons to be much more visually appealing. 2) Users can import or create objects (sometimes called “Widgets”) onto their desktop that can display information such as stock tickers, sports scores, calendars, weather info, website info, RSS feeds, etc. 3) Users can “build” their own custom desktop environments for use in movies, kiosks, power users, or corporate environments. 2 4) With the Pro version, objects can be turned into stand alone executables that can be distributed (without requiring any support files) to anyone. In all cases, desktops and desktop objects can be exported and distributed on the net. There are thousands of objects and themes (a theme is an exported desktop) available for download on the Internet on websites such as WinCustomize.com. Enhanced Desktop Icons Just running DesktopX will bring an immediate improvement to your Windows desktop. Windows, by default, only allows for a single sized icon choice system wide. That means if you want to have the standard 32x32 pixel icons in Explorer but would like to have 64x64 pixel icons on your desktop you’re out of luck – unless you have DesktopX. DesktopX not only allows users to control the size of their desktop icons but also add shadows to both the icon and icon label and make icon labels on the desktop any size, color, and font they choose. Moreover, users can set up different visual options for icons depending on the mouse event. For example, a user could have an icon grow to 128x128 pixels in size when the mouse is over that icon. Sound effects and visual effects can also be added to icons in response to mouse events such as clicking, double clicking, mouse over, etc. Desktop Objects DesktopX extends Windows to support objects right on the desktop. This means that items on the desktop are no longer limited to being just static pictures (icons). They can be interacted with and interact with each other. Users can take these objects and use them to create widgets that display information about anything that can be pulled from the system or from the Internet. A user can, for instance, create their own media player without having to program anything. They could create a news feed from their favorite website and display it on their desktop without having to learn programming. 3 Developers and companies have been creating “widgets” for the desktop for years. The difference is that each one was an actual program written in C++ or Java that might take weeks or months to do. With DesktopX, the same thing could be created in hours because DesktopX handles all the layout and drawing. End users don’t even have to do that. They can go to sites like WinCustomize and download objects/widgets that other users have created and exported to be used by other people. Using IconX When you run DesktopX for the first time you will get an initial prompt as to whether you want IconX to control the appearance of your desktop icons, or whether you want to maintain existing windows functionality. There's no reason really to retain standard functionality so I'd recommend letting IconX do it's stuff! After this first prompt if you open the DesktopX Settings dialogue, you can amend your choice on the IconX tab. To open the DesktopX Settings dialogue, you can double click the DesktopX icon in the system tray. 4 If you click 'Configure' in the above view you will be presented with a dialogue where you can totally configure IconX to your liking. It might look quite intimidating, but really it's very easy. If you consider your regular desktop the icons on it can either be selected or deselected, which is done by clicking them, or dragging a box around them. IconX lets you change the appearance of icons in both these states. In either state the mouse can be 'away' from the icon or 'over' it. In either of these scenarios, IconX allows you to adjust the appearance of both the icon and it's label. This should explain the list of options on the left. Around this you have a whole range of options which can be changed for any of these permutations. This range of customization may seem a bit daunting, but remember you can you click 'Apply' at any point and see the impact of your changes on the desktop icons. Also, you can select from the 'Presets' at the bottom and click 'Load' at any point if you want to get back to a a predefined style. To start below, you can specify if you want changes between states to be animated, and if so, over how many frames. By varying the 'Icon size' of the items's 'Mouse away' and 'Mouse over' state, you can specify how much the icon 'zooms' when you move over it. The larger the difference, the more frames you will need to make the transition smooth. Most of the options on the right should be fairly self-explanitory. For these, checking the box implements the effect and the slider/text box allows you to specify the degree of effect. The only option that may be slightly unclear is the 'Merge color' option. If you check this box, and then select a color, then adjusting the slider gradually fades the colors in the icon from it's default (Blend = 0) to being completely the merged color (Blend = 255). 'Offset' lets you shift the icon or label away from it's default position. By adjusting this between the 'Mouse away' and 'Mouse over' states, you can get some quite interesting sliding icon effects! Remember, once you have some settings you like, you can enter a name in the 'Presets' box and click save to store them. 5 The next tab allows you to add some special effects when you interact with your icons. You can specify a different effect for when the mouse moves over the icon, when it is clicked and when it is double clicked. In each of these scenarios, you can choose a sound and a visual effect to occur by selecting an item from the lists on the right. The final tab allows you to specify a few parameters which affect how IconX displays icons. You can either place icons anywhere, or check the first option so they snap to a grid on the screen You can then specify the size of the grid to adjust spacing between icons. Windows can also display special icons on the desktop. On this screen you will see a list of these icons, and you can specify for each one whether you want it to be displayed on your screen using IconX. 6 Basic Configuration - Themes and Objects Before we get too far, we need a quick definition of these elements. An 'object' is a single DesktopX item which has it's own unique properties including it's visual appearance and functionality. Themes are basically large collections of objects which are grouped together, typically because in combination they provide a collective desktop experience. Where people have essentially tried to define the complete look and feel of the desktop they will have created a theme. DesktopX can either Load or Save themes from the 'Desktop' tab of the DesktopX Settings dialogue. You can also Import objects here. We'll talk more about saving them later. You can download themes and objects from WinCustomize (www.wincustomize.com). Themes that you download will have the extension '.dxtheme' and objects will have the extension '.dxpack' You should be aware that object packs do not necessarily contain just a single object. In reality they often contain several objects grouped together. Most 'objects' are actually made up of several separate objects that work together. For example, a media player 'object' would contain separate objects to play music, stop music, display the song title etc. 7 Creating a Theme If you are planning to start working on DesktopX objects it is often easier to start with a blank canvas so you aren't distracted by other objects on your desktop. The easiest way to do this is to select 'New Theme' from the DesktopX configuration dialogue that you saw in the last section. After choosing whether to save your existing theme, you will then be asked to confirm that you reset all of the existing theme's elements like wallpaper and work areas. In the DesktopX settings, you will find all the theme related items that you can define. These are ways of ensuring that the user experience of this theme will be consistent. On the first tab in this section you can define elements relating to the user 'Desktop'.