Windows XP Pro The Missing Manual [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

9.7 Display

Have you ever admired the family photo or Space Shuttle photo plastered across a co-worker's monitor desktop? The Display iconone of the most important programs on your PCis your ticket to such interior decoration stunts, and many others.

This icon opens into a window (see Figure 9-6) whose controls are then divided into five tabs: Themes, Desktop, Screen Saver, Appearance, and Settings.

Figure 9-6. Lower right: Here's a tool chest filled with everything you need to change the look of your desktop. In addition to redecorating the desktop, you can even redo the design scheme used for the windows you open as you work. Middle: The Desktop tab lets you choose a picture to plaster onto your desktop backdrop. Upper left: Some screen savers are animated; they move, grow, or appear with fade-in effects. The My Pictures Slideshow shown here, for example, offers an endless slide show.

NOTE

Here's a quick way to open the Display program: Right-click any blank spot on the desktop and choose Properties from the shortcut menu.

9.7.1 Themes Tab

Past versions of Windows let you change the background picture for your desktop, but that's kid stuff. This tab, new to Windows XP, lets you radically change the look and emotional tenor of your entire PC with a single click (see Figure 9-6, lower right).

Each of the themes listed here comes with a color scheme, font selection for your menus and dialog boxes, pictures for use as desktop icons, sounds, cursor shapes, and a desktop picture. (These special desktop pictures, by the way, are bonus backdrops that aren't listed in the Desktop tab, described next.) Now you know why it's so easy for people who don't care for the new, blue Windows XP graphic-design look to switch back to the old designsince each look is nothing more than a Theme.

NOTE

Choosing "More themes online" from the Theme drop-down list does indeed take you to a Microsoft Web page where you can download additional themesas well as additional screen savers, games, and so on. But these aren't free. In fact, they're part of the $40 Microsoft Plus pack. (Operators are standing by.)

It's easy enough to design a new Theme of your own, however. Just use the other tabs in this program to set up the desired appearance of your PC screen, complete with your choice of desktop background, menu and window fonts, icons, and so on, exactly as described in the following pages. (Visit the Mouse and Sound programs in the Control Panel, too, to select cursor shapes and beep sounds.)

Then return to the Themes tab and click the Save As button. Finally, give your new theme a name, so that you can call it up whenever you like.

9.7.2 Desktop Tab

Your desktop's background surface doesn't have to show a sunlit hillside forever. You can very easily decorate it with a picture, pattern, or solid color.

9.7.2.1 Applying wallpaper

Wallpaper, in Windows lingo, is a picture that you can "hang" on your screen backdrop. Click one of the names in the Background list box (Figure 9-6, middle) to see how it looks on the miniature monitor in the dialog box. You'll quickly discover that Windows XP is blessed with some of the most spectacular full-screen photos ever amassed, including close-ups of flowers, the moon, spacey-looking ripples, Stonehenge, and several desert shots that some photographer must have sweat a lot to capture.

NOTE

Not everything in the Background list box is a photo, however. Many of them are repeating patterns. Choosing one of these leaves a bit more memory in the PC pot for use by your programs.

If nothing in the list excites you, use one of your own graphic files as wallpaper, such as a scanned photo of your family or your family dog. Then click the Browse button to find the file you want. You can use any graphics file with one of these extensions: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .dib, , or l.

If the graphic is a small picture, you can specify how you want Windows to handle it by choosing one of these commands from the Position drop-down list:

Center puts the graphic right smack in the middle of the screen, surrounded by a margin of whatever color you choose from the Color drop-down menu.

Tile multiples the image, repeating it over and over, until it fills the entire desktop.

Stretch distorts and expands the single image to fill the desktop, sometimes with extremely coarse and grainy results.

After selecting a backdrop you like, click OK to apply it and close the dialog box. Or, to preview the wallpaper on your desktop, click the Apply button, leaving the dialog box open so that you can make another choice if the first one looks hideous.

To remove wallpaper, return to the Display Properties dialog box and select (None) at the top of the Background list box. Whatever color you've chosen in the Color drop-down menu reappears on your desktop in place of the wallpaper.

9.7.2.2 Solid colors

To change the color of your desktop without actually putting a picture there, click (None) in the Background list box, and then choose the color you want from the Color drop-down menu.

9.7.3 The "Customize Desktop" Button

Clicking the Customize Desktop button at the bottom of the Display Properties dialog box takes you into an absolutely enormous world of additional options, including the famous Active Desktop feature that turns your entire desktop into a Web browser.

The first thing you see after clicking the Customize Desktop button is the General tab.

9.7.3.1 General tab

A better name for this tab might have been "Desktop icons," since all of its options pertain to the icons that sit, or don't sit, on your desktop.

Desktop icons. Microsoft is on a crusade to clean up the desktop. "The Start menu," its designers seem to say, "is the proper launching bay for opening files, programs, and folders. The desktop, meanwhile, is just supposed to be your placematso keep it clean."

That's why most of the desktop icons that appeared in previous versions of Windows no longer appear on the desktop in Windows XP. This is Phase I of Microsoft's campaign to keep the desktop clean.

If you want My Documents, My Computer, My Network Places, and
Internet Explorer to sit out on your desktop, you must put them there
yourselfby turning on the corresponding checkboxes here. (They
also return to the desktop automatically when you switch the Start
menu to its Classic view,
as described on Options for the
Classic Start Menu.)

Change Icon. The middle section of the dialog box lets you change the pictures that Windows uses for the important desktop icons. If, say, you can't stand the look of the Recycle Bin icon, click it in this scrolling list and then click the Change Icon button. You'll be shown an assortment of potential replacement images. And if you've created or downloaded additional miniature pictures, you can use one of those by clicking the Browse button and navigating to the folder that contains them.

Desktop cleanup. Phase II of Microsoft's clean-up-your-desktop campaign in volves the Desktop Cleanup Wizard. Every two months, a message pops up on your screen, offering to sweep away any desktop icons that you haven't used in a while (Figure 9-7).

Figure 9-7. Windows doesn't actually delete anything when it cleans away shortcut icons for your desktop. It just moves them into a folder called Unused Desktop Shortcuts (also on your desktop). You don't have to wait 60 days to reap the benefits of this little software janitorjust click the Clean Desktop Now button in the Display programDesktop tabCustomize Desktop buttonGeneral tab. (Or, if it's easier, just right-click the desktop and choose Arrange Icons ByRun Desktop Cleanup Wizard from the shortcut menu.)

9.7.3.2 Web tab

You use the Web tab to turn on Active Desktop, a feature that presents information from the Web directly on your desktop, live and self-updating. If you want to keep an eye on an approaching tornado, the stock market, or a live Webcast, this is the feature for you.

Of course, receiving live, continuous Internet information requires a live, continuous Internet connection. It's great if you have a cable modem or DSL line, for example, but less practical if you dial the Internet using a modem.

Once the Web tab is in front of you, turn on a checkbox in the Web Pages list box (such as "My Current Home Page").

These checkboxes represent the various Web pages you'd like to see plastered across your desktop. To add to this list, click the New button, type the URL (Web address), and click OK.

You can add any kind of Web information to your Active Desktop. Frequently updated pages like stock tickers are popular, but you can also use Web pages that don't change much.

In fact, by clicking New and then the Visit Gallery button, you can check out the Microsoft Web site, which offers an array of newsy, constantly updating Active Desktop elementssuch as sports, weather, or travel newsthat have been specially designed for desktop use. That is, they aren't actually Web pages, but blurbs that appear in their own little boxes on your living desktop.

And if you click the Browse button in the New Desktop Item dialog box, you can choose a graphics file or HTML (Web page document) on your hard drive for displaying on the desktop.

NOTE

Here's something to tuck away for future Web-browsing sessions. Whenever you stumble onto a Web page that might make a good Active Desktop display, right-click its pageright there in Internet Explorerand choose Set as Desktop Item from the shortcut menu. You've just added a new option without fiddling around in the Display program.

No matter how you select your desktop Web material, however, the process always ends with an "Add item to Active Desktop" confirmation box. It identifies both the name and the URL (Web address) of the page you've selected. It also contains a Customize button, which lets you specify how often you want your PC to update the Web page information with fresh data from the Internet. (Later, you can always adjust the schedule using the Properties button on the Web tab of the Desktop tab of the Display program in the Control Panel.)

When you click OK, a strange thing happens: Your entire desktop becomes a Web browser. Here's what you can do now:

Click links. Web page material now appears directly on your desktop, complete with pictures, textand links. Clicking one of these links takes you to a new Web page, exactly as in a Web browserin fact, it will be in your Web browser, which opens automatically. You can actually surf the Web using the pages plastered to your desktop.

Move the page. By pushing your cursor to the top of the Web page area, you can even make a little title bar/menu bar appear. Just drag it like a handle to move these little Web windows around the screen. (If you right-click outside the Web page portion of your desktop, you can choose Arrange Icons ByLock Web Items on Desktop from the shortcut menu. You've just frozen the size and position of your Active Desktop windows. Repeat this process to unlock the positions.)

Enlarge the page. To make a little Web snippet fill your entire screen, or only the part unoccupied by icons, simply click one of the Fill Screen buttons shown in Figure 9-8. Of course, you can also drag the lower-right corner of a Web window to make it larger or smaller.

Figure 9-8. The Control menu of each individual Active Desktop window contains useful commands. To make the menu appear, push your cursor close to the top of the mini-page. The Investor ticker (top) works a little bit differently. Click Custom to type in stock symbols you want to track; click the tiny square to pause the motion of the text. This item doesn't offer the usual mini-menu bar.

Update the
page. Unless you've set up a schedule, as described in the
box on Active Desktop for Modem Fans, your Active Desktop windows don't automatically update themselves to reflect the latest stocks, weather, and so on. To update the information, open the drop-down menu shown in Figure 9-8 and choose Synchronize.

NOTE

The usual Internet Explorer menu bar doesn't appear when your desktop is a browser. Therefore, you won't find standard commands like Back, Forward, Add to Favorites, and so on.

But if you right-click the desktop, a special shortcut menu appears that contains all of these important Web-browsing commands.

To turn off a particular Active Desktop window, choose Close from its drop-down menu (shown in Figure 9-8). You can also turn it off in the Display program, of course.

9.7.4 Screen Saver Tab

You don't technically need a screen saver to protect your monitor from burn-in. Today's energy-efficient monitors wouldn't burn an image into the screen unless you left them on continuously, unused, for at least two years, according to the people who actually design and build them.

No, screen savers are mostly about entertainment, pure and simpleand Windows XP's built-in screen saver is certainly entertaining.

The idea is simple: A few minutes after you leave your computer, whatever work you were doing is hidden behind the screen saver; passers-by can't see what's on the screen. To exit the screen saver, move the mouse, click a mouse button, or press a key.

NOTE

Moving the mouse is the best way to get rid of a screen saver. A mouse click or a key press could trigger an action you didn't intendsuch as clicking some button in one of your programs or typing the letter whose key you pressed.

9.7.4.1 Choosing a screen saver

To choose a Windows XP screen saver, use the Screen Saver drop-down list. A miniature preview appears in the preview monitor on the dialog box (see Figure 9-6, top).

NOTE

If you have graphics files in the StartDocumentsMy Pictures folder, select the My Pictures Slideshow. Windows XP puts on a slide show that features your My Pictures images one at a time, bringing each to the screen with a special effect (flying in from the side, fading in, and so on). You can also click the Browse button to choose a different folder full of pictures.

To see a full-screen preview, click the Preview button. The screen saver display fills your screen and remains there until you move your mouse, click a mouse button, or press a key.

The Wait box determines how long the screen saver waits before kicking in, following the last time you moved the mouse or typed. Click the Settings button to play with the chosen screen saver module's look and behavior. For example, you may be able to change its colors, texture, or animation style.

At the bottom of this tab, click the Power button to open the Power Options Properties dialog box described later in this chapter.

9.7.5 Appearance Tab

Windows XP includes a number of schemes: predesigned accent-color sets that affect the look of all the windows you open. (Don't confuse schemes with Themes, of which schemes are just one portion.) These color-coordinated design schemes affect the colors of your window edges, title bars, window fonts, desktop background, and so on. They also control both the size of your desktop icons and the font used for their names (as shown in Figure 9-9), and even the fonts used in your menus.

Figure 9-9. Left: For the full arsenal of design-scheme controls, choose "Windows Classic style," as shown here, before clicking the Advanced button. Right: As you click parts of the view pane, the Item list identifies what you clicked (such as Desktop, Scrollbar, and so on). Then use the drop-down lists to choose colors and type sizes for the chosen interface element.

The factory setting, called "Windows XP style," creates the sunlit blue look of window title bars, the new rounded shape of OK and Cancel buttons, and so on. By choosing "Windows Classic style" from the "Windows and buttons" drop-down list (Figure 9-9, left), you return your PC to the visual look of Windows Me/Windows 2000. The top half of the dialog box provides a preview of the effect.

9.7.5.1 You, the interior designer

The real fun, however, awaits when you choose "Windows Classic style" (Figure 9-9, left) and then click the Advanced button. Now you find yourself in a dialog box that lets you change every single aspect of this scheme independently (Figure 9-9, right).

NOTE

Microsoft put a lot of work into the new look of XP, and doesn't want people diluting it with their own random changes. "If you want the XP look," the company is saying, "it's all or nothing."

The bottom line: If "Windows XP style" is selected in the "Windows and buttons" list (Figure 9-9, left), the changes you make in the Advanced box (Figure 9-9, right) generally have no effect whatsoever.

Proceed with your interior decoration crusade in either of two ways:

Change the elements of the scheme one at a time. Start by choosing from the Item drop-down list (or by clicking a piece of the view pane, as shown in Figure 9-9). Then use the Size, Color 1, and Color 2 drop-down lists to tailor the chosen elementsuch as Desktop or Scrollbarto suit your artistic urges.

Some of the screen elements named in the Item drop-down list have text associated with them: Icon, Inactive Title Bar, Menu, Message Box, ToolTip, and so on. When you choose one of these text items, the Font drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog box comes to life. Using this menu, you can change the typeface (font, color, and size) used for any of these screen elements. If you have trouble reading the type used in tooltips, wish your icon names showed up a little more boldly, or would prefer a more graceful font in your menus, these controls offer the solution.

If you create an attractive combination of colors and type sizes, remember that you can preserve it for future generations. Click OK to return to the Appearance tab, click the Themes tab, and then click Save As. You'll be asked to name your creation. Thereafter, you'll see its name listed alongside the "official" Microsoft themes.

9.7.5.2 Effects

Effects is the other button on the Appearance Tab. It takes you to a dialog box that lets you control what Microsoft calls special effects in Windows XP. These aren't exactly the kind of special effects they make at Industrial Light and Magic for use in Star Wars movies. On the contrary, they're so subtle, they're practically invisible. Nevertheless, they existsometimes slowing down your PC in the processand you can control them in this dialog box. Here's what you'll find:

Use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips. When this box is checked, menus, lists, and tooltips don't just pop open when clicked; instead, they gracefully slide openan attractive, but time-wasting, effect. (Try it on your Start menu.) The drop-down list allows you to specify whether you want them to fade into view or scroll into view.

If the checkbox is filled in with a solid color rather than a checkmark, then the transitions are turned on for some elements (like menus), but not for others (like tooltips).

Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts. When fonts are enlarged, they become ragged on the curves. But when you turn on this option, Windows XP softens the curves, making all text look more professional (or slightly blurrier, depending on your point of view; see Figure 9-10).

Figure 9-10. Using the drop-down list, you can choose a smoothing technology that's new in Windows XPsomething called ClearType. It's designed especially for flat-panel screens, including the ones on laptops. By changing the colors of the individual pixel on the edges of certain letters, it makes the type appear to be smoother than it really is.

Use large icons. This checkbox refers to desktop icons. If you're having trouble seeing your desktop icons, turn on this option to produce jumbo icons. Factory setting: Off.

Show shadows under menus. Take a look: In Windows XP, open menus actually seem to cast faint, light gray drop shadows, as though the menu is floating an eighth of an inch above the surface of the window behind it. It's a cool, but utterly superfluous special effect that saps a tiny bit of speed from the proceedings. This checkbox is the on/off switch. Factory setting: On, if your PC belongs to a network domain; Off otherwise.

Show window contents while dragging. If this option is off, when you drag a window, a faint outline of its border is visible; you don't see all the items in the window coming along for the ride. As soon as you stop dragging, the contents reappear. If it's on, however, as you drag a window across your screen, you see all its contents, toowhich can slow the dragging process on slower machines. Factory setting: On.

Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the Alt key. This option refers to the small underlines that appear on certain letters in menus and dialog boxes, something like this. These are designed to help you remember the keyboard shortcuts for those menu commands. It's reminding you that by pressing the Alt key along with the underlined letter, you can choose the corresponding menu command without even using the mouse.

In Windows XP, however, these underlined letters are hidden. They don't appear until you actually press the Alt key (or the Tab key, or an arrow key), which tells Windows XP: "I'd like to use my keyboard for navigating now, please."

The factory setting is On. If you turn off this checkbox, the underlines appear all the time, exactly as in older editions of Windows.

9.7.6 Settings Tab

The Settings tab (Figure 9-11) is where you can ensure that Windows XP is getting the most out of your video hardware.

Figure 9-11. All desktop screens today, and even most laptop screens, can make the screen picture larger or smaller, thus accommodating different kinds of work. Conducting this magnification or reduction entails switching among different resolutions (the number of dots that compose the screen).

9.7.6.1 Screen resolution

The "Screen resolution" slider snaps to the various possible resolution settings that your monitor's software driver makes available: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, and so on.

When using a low-resolution setting, such as 640 x 480, the size of the pixels (dots) that comprise your screen image increase, thus enlarging the picturebut showing a smaller slice of the page. This setting is ideal, for example, when playing a small movie so that it fills more of the screen. At higher resolutions (such as 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768), the pixels decrease, reducing the size of your windows and icons, but showing more overall area. Use this kind of setting when you want to see as much screen area as possible: when working on two-page spreads in a page-layout program, for example.

9.7.6.2 Color quality

Today's monitors offer different color depth settings, each of which permits the screen to display a different number of colors simultaneously. This drop-down list varies by video driver, but generally offers settings such as Medium (16-bit), which was called High Color in previous versions of Windows; High (24-bit), once known as True Color; and Highest (32-bit).

In the early days of computing, higher color settings required a sacrifice in speed. Today, however, there's very little downside to leaving your screen at its highest setting. Photos, in particular, look best when you set your monitor to higher quality settings.

The Low (8-bit) optionif you even have itmakes
photos look blotchy. It displays only 256 colors on the screen, and is
therefore useful only for certain computer games that, having been
designed to run on ancient PCs, require the lower color setting. (In
any case, you shouldn't set your whole system to 256 colors just to
run these older games. Instead, you should use the new compatibility
mode described in Figure 4-5.)

9.7.6.3 Multiple monitors

By installing two or more graphics cards, or one graphics card with multiple connections, you can hook up two or more monitors to your PC simultaneously, creating a gigantic virtual desktop. As you work, you can move icons or toolbars from one monitor to another, or stretch windows across multiple screens. This setup also enables you to keep an eye on Web activity on one monitor while you edit data on another. It's a glorious arrangement, even if it does make the occasional family member think you've gone off the deep end with your PC obsession.

When you have multiple monitors attached, the controls on the Settings tab change; it now displays individual icons for each monitor. By dragging them around, you can arrange the icons in this dialog box to reflect the way Windows "thinks" of them: beside one another, or stacked vertically, for example. That is, you can indicate which edge of your primary monitor permits your cursor to travel beyond the glass and onto the next monitor.

One monitor is considered the primary monitor. This is the screen that will display your opening Windows XP screen, the Login dialog box (if you use one), and so on. When configuring the monitor settings, be sure to assign your primary monitor to monitor icon #1.

NOTE

Don't have the cash for three more monitors? Then try the next best thing: a software version, courtesy of PowerToys for Windows XP, Microsoft's free goody bag of extra features (available from http://www.missingmanuals.com).

PowerToys includes Virtual Desktop Manager, a new taskbar toolbar that gives you four side-by-side virtual monitors. Each screenful can have its own background picture and holds its own set of open programs and windows. You can switch from one desktop to the next by pressing a keystroke of your choice, or by clicking the 1, 2, 3, or 4 buttons on the Desktop Manager toolbar.

9.7.6.4 Advanced settings

If you click the Advanced button on the Settings tab, you're offered a collection of technical settings for your particular monitor model. Depending on your video driver, there may be tab controls here that adjust the refresh rate to eliminate flicker, install an updated adapter or monitor driver, and so on. In general, you'll rarely need to adjust these controlsexcept on the advice of a consultant or help-line technician.