Section 10.9. Display


10.9. 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 whose controls are then divided into five tabs: Themes, Desktop, Screen Saver, Appearance, and Settings.


Tip: 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.
  • The Themes Tab lets you change the look of your PC with a color schemes, fonts for your menus and dialog boxes, pictures for use as desktop icons, sounds, cursor shapes , and desktop pictures (Figure 10-4).

  • The Desktop Tab lets you decorate your desktop's background surface with a picture, pattern, or solid color.

  • Clicking the Customize Desktop button at the bottom of the Display Properties dialog box takes you into an absolutely enormous world of additional options. You can change the standard Windows icons, add icons to your desktop, and clean up the desktop.

    But the most useful (and most fun) part of customizing your desktop is tucked into the Web tab. Welcome to Active Desktop (Figure 10-5), 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 (provided you have a continuous Internet connection such as a cable modem or DSL line).

    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 Web address, and click OK.

    Figure 10-4. The Display program's Themes tab lets you change the appearance of all windows and icons on your computer with just one click.


    Tip: 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.
    Figure 10-5. 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 (circled) to pause the motion of the text. This item doesn't offer the usual mini-menu bar.

  • The Screen Saver Tab lets you pickyou guessed itscreen savers. These entertaining little gizmos kick in a few minutes after you leave your computer, hiding whatever work you were doing; passersby 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.
  • The Appearance Tab lets you pick from 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 , and even the fonts used in your menus.

The Settings tab (Figure 10-6) is where you can ensure that Windows XP is getting the most out of your video hardware, by changing the screen resolution and number of colors available.




Windows XP for Starters. The Missing Manual
Windows XP for Starters: The Missing Manual: Exactly What You Need to Get Started
ISBN: 0596101554
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 162
Authors: David Pogue

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