Windows desktop

Another customization frenzy, I felt bored.

Click the image for the Flickr version with embedded notes explaining the desktop.

I was bored with the normal Windows Vista (Yes, you probably think Vista sucks, no need to mention that in a comment), so I decided it was time to beef it up a bit. I usually don’t spend a lot of time staring at my desktop, but when I do look at it – I want to look at something nice, minimalistic, clean and informative. Since none in the programming world seems to know what design, usability and nice user-interfaces are – we, the users, are left with a pretty standarized way of having our desktops.

So then we have to create it and customize it the way we wish it was. That’s not really a bad thing though, at least they gave us the possibility, not easily done considering a lot of the dumb road blocks that Microsoft have laid out to stop people who want difference in this world. But they did give us a small possibility by at least allowing us to install third party applications and other neat things.

Another reason for doing this is me being tired of people in the desktop-threads over at 4chan who never explain the gears working behind their, sometimes beautiful, desktops. Their usual respond is “newfag” when someone politely asks about the desktop user-interface of their wet dreams, but yeah, that’s 4chan anyways, scum of the internet and all that. The other, and main reason, for creating this post is so that I remember what I did and how the heck I got my desktop to look this way – so when I sometime, in the future, start over with a fresh install can easily modify my desktop to be nice, minimal, clean, and informative once more.

My desktop, apart from what’s in there already from the Windows OS, consists of mainly two small applications with heavy modifications (design, mostly) of the standard look you’re given when you start using the application. I’m using

• Start-Killer – To remove the ugly and totally meaningless Windows button. Heck, every keyboard (more or less, ‘least the ones that are up to date) is given the super button, or the Windows-key as most people know it by. So why would I want a stupid, bloated, fat start-icon sitting there, taking up space for my task-bar? Yes, that’s right, I wouldn’t want it!
• Taskbar Shuffle – To rearrange open tasks in the taskbar, and to rearrange icons in the tray. I like to keep my desktop clean and informative, remember.
• RocketDock – I don’t like flooding my pretty wallpaper with a heap of ugly icons, I would rather have them sit nicely in a docked bar with fancy “bubble” effects when I hoover over the application I want to launch.
• Rainmeter – Because I want to have information given to me quickly, whether it’s new torrents (automatically feeded to my torrent client using RSS (I love RSS)), reading Twitter updates from a specific source, checking the clock, remembering which day it is, or easily writing down notes/to-do lists.
• Launchy – Because I dislike opening up Windows Explorer every time I want to find some folder, open up a document, or do anything else consisting of finding files or opening applications I seldom use. With Launchy I can press a key-combination, type what I want to find, and hit enter.

For RocketDock I’m using a style called Blank (standard style in the application) and a icon-set called Reflections, with some self-made icons since the icon-set didn’t have everything I am using.

For Rainmeter I’m using a customized set of widgets/desklets called Enigma, with small config-edits to make it suit my desktop, as well as for some of the widgets to work for me (like a mail notifier, RSS-feed with things I want, Twitter-updates)

For Launchy I’m using a skin called Sutra

You can find most of those skins on DeviantArt, or by simly searching on Google.