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Hehe... I got annoyed at Windows Explorer, so...

8 replies · 1,875 views · Started 12 December 2006

What happens when you get annoyed to death because Windows Explorer keeps resetting all your customized icons (and renaming "My Computer," "My Network Places," and "Recycle Bin" back to their default names when you go out of fullscreen mode in any program?

This is what resulted when I finally just got TOO annoyed at it for doing that:
http://www.filehigh.com/serve/14042/297686.png (Bad quality? I know.. the host hates big pictures. That'll all change once I decide to get my own space.)

Anyway, I guess I ought to start from the top:

First, we have random haiku poems and kanji in the top left corner. Pretty basic, but hey, it does the job.

Gotta have the CPU/RAM/Bandwidth monitor sitting right on the side of course. Even tells me my WAN IP incase it decides to change for any reason. It's supposed to be a static IP, but it has changed a couple times in the past year or so.

Right below that, we have a clock I found and modified to show in Japanese instead of English. (I can read the dates and times, so why not have it that way? It fits better with the rest of the desktop.User posted image)

And another clock is right below that one, this time for kepping track of what time it is in FFXI Online.

Below that is obviously my WhatPulse sig image.

The little circular thing next to that is basically a mood ring for the computer. It hasn't turned a bad color (Yet anyway. it will be once i force it to re-encode video for about 72 hours straight.User posted image)

Next to that is the new recycle bin. Even tells me how much crap I have stashed in it. Luckily there's none right now. It'll fill up really fast with failed encodes once I get around to re-encoding all those videos.

The box to the right of that should be extremely obvious. Can't get any other RSS feed but PureZC's to even load. Apparently its the only one that's formatted without errors.

Then we have the icons. I've got them categorized better than I did have before. They're also in different folders now instead of the Desktop folder in my user folder. (Try screwing with them now, Windows Explorer!)

9 Categories, all soon to be using Japanese for the names instead of English, since it'll fit better with the theme I want:

Computer, Games, Game Tools, Internet, Media Players, Video Editors, Graphics Editors, Misc. Stuff, and 日本語「にほんご」(Japanese Language in English btw.)

When I hover over and icon, it's numerical position and the name of the program/file the shortcut points to will fade in next to the category name. Its just a simple double-click to open the program of course.

I'll probably be changing this thing a lot more often now, adding even more stuff to it.

So, has anybody else out there ever get annoyed at Windows Explorer for doing things like that and just went to the extreme changing everything like I have?

its not that. its just the color reduction I had to do.. Firefox doesn't do that scaledown crap like IE, because I turned it off.

By big pictures i meant big filesize.

Why do things in half measures? If you hate explorer, chuck it and get something like Litestep or bblean. It takes some getting used to, but having your 'start menu' bound to your right mouse button is increadbly awesome, plus you can get some really nice looking desktops out of the bargin. And it likely uses less memory than explorer.

User posted image
bblean

User posted image
litestep

I've had problems in the past with bblean missing startup programs and starting exploerer when you tried to browse your filesystem, but I think those issues have gotten cleaned up since then. Personally, I'm partial to using plain exploerer with a custom theme, but if you need a riced out desktop, know you have options.

And speaking of alternatives, I'd suggest considering Odamex as an alternative to ZDaemon. 😊

The problem with those things: No IME support. The Japanese IME, which I obviously use a lot doesn't show up with other shells, not to mention that LiteStep won't display Japanese correctly in icons and stuff (Apparently no Unicode support, which is pretty much standard these days). I've already tried it and ditched it within 2 hours of installing.

Questwizard88 wrote:The problem with those things: No IME support. The Japanese IME, which I obviously use a lot doesn't show up with other shells, not to mention that LiteStep won't display Japanese correctly in icons and stuff (Apparently no Unicode support, which is pretty much standard these days). I've already tried it and ditched it within 2 hours of installing.

Japanese language support seems to work OK for some people.

User posted image

This guy's desktop seems about twice as wapanese as what you're going for. What's missing?