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BlueDev

Join Date 12/2003

+16

Adventures in OS customization

-or- A beginners journey to nirvana

Untitled Disclaimer: The full sized images linked to in this article are at a high resolution (1600X1200) in order to not lose too much image quality when compressing to .jpeg format. They should load pretty quick, but will be large. All links open in a new window. Credit for original works go directly to the authors. I just am showing how I used their works on my desktop.

OS customization is a big deal. There are numerous companies out there making software to customize your desktop and even more people out there making "skins" or pieces of artwork or code to use with those programs.

And you know what? I am neither of those.

Nope. What I am is a user. A normal end product user. I know enough about computers to make sure I keep mine running smoothly. I know enough to tinker around to fix problems I create, and enough to create new problems right after that! But in terms of programming and scripting and such I know next to nothing. As far as graphics and image editing, well I play around with things like The Gimp and Paint Shop Pro, but only to tweak existing images, not to create my own. So the purpose of this article is to look at OS customization for the normal person. Well, okay, I hardly qualify as normal so let's call it OS customization for those confident enough to play around with things, but not knowledgeable enough to be creating their own themes and objects.

What I really hope this article becomes is an exploration in ways to tweak your desktop for those of us who just want to make cool, functional and personal desktops. So that is my disclaimer of sorts. I make no claims of having expertise in this area, hold no delusions of any sort of technical background to make this article anything more than a discussion of my recent adventures in customizing my desktop.

We are all familiar with the "Luna" look that MS introduced with Windows XP. Before that MS also had "Plus!" which I used for different themes on Win 98. Both offered great aesthetic advantages over the traditional green background and gray toolbars. But "Plus" certainly seemed to slow down my old 98 system, and the Luna style from MS, well, just gets old. After all, there is only so much you can do with really bright blue, a sort of yucky olive color and the silver taskbar (which inevitably was the one I switched to promptly after getting my laptop with XP). You were still stuck with the same window borders, the same look and setup to your start panel, the same color buttons, and, well, you get the idea. More of the same.

Then I discovered Windowblinds and Style XP. I tried the shareware version of Windowblinds and snagged a bunch of themes. Overall I was impressed, but there were some issues with some of the skins and little graphical glitches here and there. Plus, I was cheap and was using the shareware version that popped up a little dialog every time I started my computer or switched themes. I then decided to give Style XP a try and found numerous MSStyles that I found attractive and functional, but they were generally more simple in terms of content and appearance. And the program itself was painfully slow when I was waiting to load up the list of skins, and the difference between visual styles and themes was confusing to me and ended up in some things looking a bit odd. Then of course I understood more the manner in which Style XP worked in your system, but that is a different article all together (and not one I feel qualified to write).

So I went back to Windowblinds, which had now become version 4.something early. I started using it again and found that I preferred it to using MSStyles so I continued to be a freeloader and use the shareware version far longer than I really should have. I was having fun making my desktop look different from the other 99 people in my med school class (we all had laptops and used them all the time, so it was fun to see something attractive on mine rather than the plain old Windows 2000 desktop). I began to really appreciate a minimalistic desktop and for the first time turned on the new Windows XP Start Menu, removed all icons from my desktop except my Recycle Bin and started playing around with the positioning of my Windows taskbar. I started placing it on the left hand side, wide enough for 3 small "Quicklaunch" icons to fit in a row. I also started using the "Quicklaunch" toolbar and put a number of programs I used regularly there. It was nice. It was different. And I was having fun.

But I could tell there was still more I could do. And the truth is many of these programs were relatively resource lite enough that I knew I could play around without really slowing down my system performance. After all, most the time I am writing papers in Word, surfing the net, listening to music, or reading (very boring) articles on the latest and greatest developments in the world of medicine. I felt I could sacrifice a few megs of RAM to making my desktop look even more interesting. I began to hunt around at Wincustomize for more than just wallpapers and Windowblinds skins. I read up on other programs such as IconPackager, Cursor XP, and Desktop X. I tried shareware versions of these and used them for a brief time, but didn't find anything really to my liking. So I stuck with changing my wallpaper and skin on a regular basis (it is a neurosis of mine. I change it all up more than once a week!).

Stardock then released ObjectDock as freeware and I decided to play around with it. I had never checked out any of the other docks out there, but soon discovered that there were alternatives. Y'z Dock, Moby Dock, and probably others that I am forgetting had already adopted the idea of the Mac dock and taken it over to Windows. Here was a neat little toy. A snappy looking dock that would zoom when moused-over, that I could drag whatever programs I wanted on it. I played with it and at one point had it configured to be the only item on my desktop. I turned off the Windows taskbar and got rid of the recycle bin. It took a lot of tweaking and such to make it work, but I had everything I wanted access to there on the dock. Of course at this time there weren't yet released docklets like the great KK Menu or the Start Menu docklet that would have greatly simplified this.

But the dock was still in its early stages. Memory leaks abounded, leading the dock to gobble up RAM at an alarming rate (at least on my machine) if used continuously for too long. Also it was buggy. Crashes occurred at a pretty regular rate (including every single time I tried to use the "Quit Dock" docklet). And to be quit honest it wasn't that useful. If I tried to disable the Windows Taskbar then I had to cram way too much onto the dock. If I left the Taskbar visible all I wanted on the dock was the contents of the "Quicklaunch" toolbar. And Object Dock used a lot more system resources than that, so there wasn't really a purpose. Being the freak I am I probably installed and uninstalled Object Dock at least 10 times. I finally decided to install it, then just never use it. Yeah, I know. I have issues.

So, fast forward a bit. My birthday rolled around. I received some money and really didn't know what I wanted to spend it on so I took a gamble. I had read so many times, both here and over at Wincustomize, about Desktop X and the other programs included in Object Desktop that I bought it. Finally I didn't have the Windowblinds nag screen. Finally I didn't have (appropriately) handicapped versions of some of the software I had been tinkering around with. I immediately started using Windowblinds to its fullest extent and then started using some of the other programs. I mostly used IconPackager. I toyed around with Desktop X, but wasn't ready to use it yet. Then, shortly after that Stardock released Object Dock Plus. With a little of the left over cash I bit and snagged that little program, even though it was still in its beta stage (you can read my article about that here). And now, as it is in its RC (release candidate) stage many of the bugs have been ironed out and it is stable enough and resource friendly enough for daily, continued use. I began experimenting with it, and finally payed some attention to Desktop X, and have now achieved, at least for me, Desktop Customization Nirvana!

Okay, so that being said it is time for some show and tell.

I started off with the amazing Killer theme from Tiggz and the very cool looking retroTECH wallpaper from Wolf-ZR2. Nice and dark, easy on the eyes, and the colors go well together. But to make it more interesting I loaded Desktop X along with a few great objects. A very cool, clean clock, and matching calendar and weather objects. Of course, still sticking to my minimalistic guns I moved them out to the edges, letting them still be accessible when working on something, but not too obtrusive. After all, when you run your desktop at 1600X1200 you very rarely need to maximize anything to see everything you need or want to. Trust me. Of course, none of these things are really necessary, but the look great and add an amazing degree of personality to my desktop. And of course, I have really come to appreciate Icon X making my icons a little larger, sharper, and animated. A nice touch to the whole package.

But to top it all off I needed to add Object Dock Plus. I know there have been other articles on it, but I cannot overemphasize just how cool it is. The tabbed docks are genius, allowing you to put a lot of stuff on them, have it right there ready to access, but not taking up too much desktop space. So I load it up, turn the tabs all dark and shiny, and make the background on my zoomer dock match the rest of the theme. Thanks to the power of Object Dock plus I disable the Windows Taskbar entirely and stick my own custom tabbed docks around the edges.

There they sit, quite unobtrusive, labeled and configured to my own liking. I can, of course, make the tabs and background match any theme I want. The Taskbar is gone, but I still have the great Windowblinds skins on everything I open (like th HTML editor I am using to write this), and I have full access to everything I need or want. And just to show you how much stuff I have access to (and how cool the fly out menus are) while my desktop still being clean, uncluttered and obsessively organized I offer up this final shot, all tabs out:

So you can see it doesn't take a programming or graphics design expert to really put the power of some of the OS customization programs to work for just about anyone. All you really need is the desire to give it a try and the willingness to play around with it for a while. And to be quite honest the end result is really quite satisfying. So go and customize!

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