Get Active (Desktop)

Windows' Active Desktop can give your PC a new face. So why haven't you started using it yet?

Lenny Bailes, special to PCWorld.com

Microsoft first added Active Desktop to the Windows environment as the most obvious browser-integration feature of Internet Explorer 4. The basic idea behind Active Desktop is that it allows you to do all kinds of great stuff with your Windows desktop: You can embed live Web links, still or moving graphics, Web page windows, and even Java applets for quick and easy access.

When Active Desktop first appeared, many users disparaged it. At the time there were some good reasons to do so--the feature used too much CPU time and slowed down Windows performance. Active graphics embedded in the desktop taxed 1997-era graphics boards to their capacity, and since most Internet connections were slow and worked intermittently, modem users hated it.

But times have changed. Active Desktop now works quite well if you have a newer PC equipped with a modern, much faster processor. Broadband Internet connections don't hurt, either. Nowadays, embedding a Webcam window or live links is no less convenient than adding a family picture to the desktop wallpaper. Here's what you'll need to know to start using Active Desktop yourself.

Active Desktop Setup Requirements

You will have a much more positive experience getting Active Desktop going if you have a PC that is less than two years old. If you still run IE 4 or 5 under Windows 95 or 98, you should consider the upgrade to Windows 98 SE or Millennium Edition, as the newer operating systems fix major browser bugs and run Active Desktop faster. In addition, Windows 95 and 98 require you to install a component called Desktop Update, of which Active Desktop is a part; this code is part of the standard Windows 98 SE and Me installation.

The base PC should have at least a 450-MHz Pentium II/III or Celeron CPU. You will want the PC to have at least 64MB of RAM (128MB would be even better), and it should have a relatively current graphics board with at least 8MB of video RAM. If you intend to embed a Webcam window (or more than one live Web page), you'll want a 17-inch or larger monitor set to 1024 by 768 screen resolution.

Just for reference, we ran all of the Active Desktop objects mentioned in this story on a 1997 Pentium-166 laptop with 64MB of RAM. Everything worked fine, though slowly--we sometimes had to wait a few seconds for a reaction when we clicked the Start button or switched windows while a camera image was refreshing.

Adding Your First Active Object

To switch Active Desktop on, right-click any blank area of the Windows desktop and select Active Desktop, View as Web Page. (If you use Windows Me or 2000, it will be Active Desktop, Show Web Content.) Your desktop should switch to a dark blue background with the Windows logo in the upper-right corner: This logo is a live Web link. If you click it while you're online, Internet Explorer will open the Microsoft home page. But this is only a test of what you can do with Active Desktop. Soon you'll see how to change the background color, add your own links, and remove the Microsoft logo if you don't like it.

Here's how Active Desktop works: When you turned Active Desktop on, you told Windows to select a new wallpaper file called Windows98.htm (or WindowsMe.htm or Windows2000.jpg), stored in the C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper folder (or in Windows 2000, the C:\WinNT\Web\Wallpaper folder).

If you didn't get the blue background with the Microsoft logo in Windows 98 or Me (or if you experience problems seeing the blue desktop), you can manually select it through the Display Properties panel: Right-click the desktop, select Properties, and choose the Windows HTML file from the list on the Background tab. (Active HTML background files can be distinguished from ordinary bitmaps by their Internet Explorer icon.)

Active Object Placement 101

In Windows Me and 2000, you get a bonus: Microsoft provides a sample "My Current Home Page" embedded desktop object. You can turn it on while you're connected to the Internet by right-clicking the desktop and selecting Active Desktop Menu Options. This object is a live link to Microsoft's MSN home page.

Windows 98 users can add this (or any other) object by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Active Desktop, Customize My Desktop, which opens the Display Properties panel to the Web tab. Click the New button, answer No to the prompt to visit Microsoft's gallery, and enter http://www.msn.com in the New Active Desktop Item dialog box. Click OK in the next pop-up dialog box, and Active Desktop will add the link to the list of Active Objects. Click OK again to close the Web tab. The embedded MSN window appears on the desktop, where you can resize the window by dragging any of its borders. Reposition the window by pointing and clicking just above the top border to reveal a hidden, gray title bar.

Windows 98, Me, and 2000 users can all embed windows for other Web pages (such as the Google search engine or the Yahoo portal) by following the same procedure. Why would you want to? By embedding search engine pages into the desktop, you eliminate the need to open a new browser window just to do a search. (In Windows Me and 2000, you can speed the process by right-clicking the desktop and choosing Active Desktop, New Desktop Item, instead of selecting Customize My Desktop and working from the Display Properties Web tab.)

Find Good Active Objects to Embed

Now that you have Active Desktop up and running, it's time to add some fun stuff to your Windows desktop.

If you're looking for an all-purpose research tool, try entering the URL http://www.itools.com/research-it/research-it.html in the Location field of the New Active Desktop Item dialog box. Research-It is a handy site that contains a variety of dictionaries, a thesaurus, foreign language translators, a people search, and geographic map tools.

To embed a live Webcam object in your Active Desktop, open the New Active Desktop Item dialog box and enter the URL for the Webcam. You'll find a number of interesting links at EarthCam.com, including views of the Earth from space; feeds from aquariums, night clubs, and zoos; and images of the traffic in many U.S. cities. If you're an on-the-go commuter, you may want to check out the Etak Web site and install one of their real-time traffic maps.

Touring the Active Gallery

We skipped Microsoft's Active Desktop Gallery when we first stepped through the process of embedding objects in the desktop, but if you're online you can visit the gallery by answering Yes after clicking the New button on the Desktop Properties Web tab (in Windows 98), or by clicking the Visit Gallery button (in Windows Me/2000).

Microsoft was more zealous about keeping the Active Gallery up-to-date in the days of Internet Explorer 4, but you'll still find a number of useful and entertaining tools there, such as the well-known Investment Stock Ticker in the News category, the AudioNet Jukebox in the Entertainment category, and the 3D Java Clock and Microsoft Search Component, both in the Cool Utilities category. Add any of these items to your Active Desktop by clicking the Add to Active Desktop button next to the object in the Internet Explorer description. Couldn't be simpler, right?

Managing Your Active Desktop

If you mix embedded browser windows with an accumulation of application shortcuts and other icons, your Active Desktop will start looking pretty cluttered in short order. To avoid that, you can hide the icon shortcuts on the main part of the desktop and access them through a neat Windows taskbar trick. In Windows 98, you can hide desktop icons by opening Display Properties, selecting the Effects tab, and placing a check in the box next to 'Hide icons when the Desktop is Viewed as a Web Page.' In Windows Me and 2000, its even easier: Right-click in an empty area of the desktop, select Active Desktop, Show Desktop Icons, and release the mouse button to remove the check mark.

Now you still might want to use those desktop icons. Don't worry, you can replace the icons with a cascading toolbar in the taskbar area: Right-click any empty area of the taskbar and choose Toolbars, Desktop. A toolbar containing all of your desktop objects will appear on the taskbar. The cool thing about this is that you can collapse the new toolbar by double-clicking its Desktop title. Then if you click the double arrow to the right of the word Desktop, a cascading menu will open, allowing you to access all of the hidden icon objects on your desktop.

In Windows Me and 2000, you can temporarily hide embedded Active Desktop windows instead of icons by right-clicking on the desktop, choosing Active Desktop, and removing the check mark from the names of the windows that you want to hide from the list of Active Objects.

Advanced Stuff for Power Users

We mentioned earlier that you don't have to stick with the background color and Microsoft objects embedded in the default Active Desktop background page. Better yet, with a little HTML savvy, you can build your desktop background from the ground up, embedding text links, form buttons, or any other standard HTML and JavaScript tags.

Customize Your Desktop

As with Web pages, you don't have to limit yourself to Microsoft's offerings. Active Desktop can handle any CGI, JavaScript, or Java object that Internet Explorer can handle. This means that you can visit your favorite watering hole on the Web for scripted applets and graft one that you like directly into the Windows desktop.

For example, we found a pop-up Java book shopping list at The Java Boutique. Unlike live Web links, scripted applets can be encoded in HTML pages stored on your local hard disk, so you don't need to be connected to the Internet to use them.

Sound tricky? Well you don't need to be a Java wiz to install an applet like this. All you need to do is:

1. Find a site that contains a cool Java applet.

2. Download the HTML file that contains the Web page code and the applet script. For our shopping list example, all the files you need are in a file named jtreetable.zip; download that file and unzip the contents to your hard drive.

3. Right-click an open area of the desktop and choose Active Desktop, Customize My Desktop, New (in Windows 98) or Active Desktop, New Desktop Item (in Windows Me or 2000), and enter the location of the HTML file included with the applet. For instance, if you downloaded and unzipped jtreetable.zip to C:\Jtreetable on your hard disk, you would enter C:\Jtreetable\Example.htm in this dialog box.

Get Colorful

To change the background color from Microsoft's default blue page, temporarily switch Active Desktop off (right-click the desktop, choose Properties, select the Web tab, and uncheck 'View My Desktop As a Web Page').

Next, fire up Notepad and click File, Open. Change the 'Files of Type' option in the Open dialog box from Text Documents to All Files to show all of the files in the directory. Navigate to C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper and load Windows98.htm or WindowsMe.htm.

Once you have the file open, search for the BGCOLOR= attribute in the BODY tag and substitute the "#000080" with either the code for your favorite color (you can use this chart to determine the correct RGB color code) or the English name of a color, such as BGCOLOR="White". Save the file and switch Active Desktop back on to see the change take effect.

Coding Your Own Desktop

If you want to be even more ambitious, you can build your own Active Desktop background from scratch using Notepad or any HTML editing tool, such as the free AceHTML. (Our Downloads section lists dozens of other HTML authoring tools you can download for free.) This simple example contains RealPlayer links copied from a Netscape Bookmark file and two simple form buttons.

To customize this Sample.htm file, download it and open it in Notepad. You can replace the "Sample Desktop" title or just delete it. To customize the first button, edit the text that reads Insert Your Own Button Text, between the quote marks under the Form tag. Substitute your own URL between the single quote marks for http://myurl.htm/. After you edit the file, save it in the C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper folder on your hard disk. You can test this file to see how it would look as your Active Desktop background by opening the Display Properties dialog box, choosing the Background tab, selecting Sample.htm from the file list, and clicking Apply.

Living the Active Lifestyle

If you have a relatively new PC and you use the Web a lot for work or entertainment, once you start using Active Desktop you probably won't want to stop. Active Desktop will allow you to put all of your most important links and online tools at your fingertips--you won't even have to launch a browser window to use them.

In the past we haven't always liked Active Desktop. But now that PCs have evolved to a level where the enhancement doesn't slow systems down to a crawl, we've reconsidered our opinion of Active Desktop. If you're interested in learning to do more with the feature, check out this Windows Tips article, in which we cover the topic. You can also browse Microsoft's own pages about Active Desktop for more information.

Lenny Bailes is the author of Maximizing Windows 98 and is a frequent contributor to PCWorld.com.